however one Daniel value here for fitness faq today's video I want to talk to you about the
difference between pull-ups and lat pull-downs pros cons for each which one you should be doing
specific to your goals guys in the comment section below let me know which exercise you prefer the
lat pulldown pull-up let me know why to start with let's talk about the pull-up a pull-up is
a closed kinetic chain exercise this means that the hands fixed on a surface being the bar and
the body moves close kinetic chain exercise are showing the research to be superior to
open kinetic chain exercises this is because they elicit a greater amount of motor unit recruitment
meaning more muscle fibers are recruited during the exercise so theoretically this leads to
greater strength development and more must give a mass as a consequence of this finding before we
get into the specifics of each exercise we should understand what the difference is between relative
and absolute strength this is going to enable us to make good comparisons between the exercises and
also determine which exercise is better suited for our goals relative strength is basically
how good you are at moving your own bodyweight absolute strength refers through maximal force
production and this is tending to be influenced by your body weight so the heavier you are the more
low that you can lift on a given exercise if we look at relative strength and use this an example
comparing two different people so you've got one person who's 65 kilos and they're lifting 90 kilos
in an exercise versus someone who's 80 kilos lifting a hundred and five kilos on the surface
you think that the person lifting more weight is stronger you're correct in terms of absolute
strength they're lifting more total load during that movement that's correct if we're looking
at who's stronger relatively speaking the person who actually weighs less this example is lifting
more in relation to their body weight so if the comparison was to be made more equal the heavier
person would have to actually lift more than this 25 kilos extra than their body weight to calculate
relative strength you get your absolute weight and you divide it by your body weight this will give
you the amount that you're lifting in relation through how much you actually weigh and it's a
really good way of comparing different people at different weights in terms of their strength
of course strength is a lot more complicated than this because we've got high limb length genetics
you've got people's different ratios of fiber types and stuff that is going to determine how
strong we actually are but this just gives you a greater indication when you want to quickly make
a comparison of someone who weighs this lifts this much compared to someone else let's talk
about some of the pros when it comes to doing the poor number one would have to be this exercise is
highly versatile you can do it anywhere you don't need any specialized equipment I mean I've done
pull-ups in such random places over the years trees different structures on buildings you I've
seen people do them on the door framing their door please use caution for that one if you're pretty
happy please don't do it anywhere you can find ways to do pull-ups and chin-ups there really is
no excuse you don't have to go to a gym you don't need specialized equipment you literally just need
something that you can hang from enough distance from the ground as well as if it's sturdy enough
to bear your weight you're good to go and you can do perhaps one of the other benefits of doing a
pull-up most people don't refer to is it develops really good overall body awareness when you're
going through the motion of the exercise you need to have good awareness of what's happening your
shoulder girdle you pelvis what are you doing with your trunk hey stabilizing various things
what's happening with your lower body all this is going to influence your body shape how much force
you can produce during the exercise etc etc made comparison to a lat pulldown with this exercise
the luxury of being fixed your thighs are fixed on the pad and you can generate a lot of force via
hip and leg drive and it allows you to have a nice reference for core positioning body positioning
that you don't have with the pull-up with the pull-up you're forced to ingrain this position
yourself get into this position yourself when you're doing a pull-up on the other hand it's
all upper body you can't get that benefit of the lower body unless you cheat and do Kip's
but we don't kick on this channel guys it's a lot more challenging and likely has a better
carry over to other exercises compared to doing lat pull-downs with this specific point in mind
it's almost comparable to doing an exercise with a lifting belt how it creates that intra-abdominal
pressure and assists you with that feedback that you have via the belt as opposed to just using
your own muscles to create the stability another benefit when doing pull-ups it keeps you really
honest if you're too heavy you're both fats too high it's very humbling to get up on a pull-up
bar and realize that you can't do a rep or many reps at all it's a good wake up call to get your
diet in check and your nutrition in check get your body fat levels down and increase your
relative strength it's very humbling so what are some of the cons when it comes to pull-ups well
if you're too heavy you're not going to be able to do a full range of motion during this exercise so
you'll either do no reps at all or you won't be able to do many reps during your set this
makes it really hard to actually get stronger because a lot of people are going to cheat via
using momentum or abbreviating the range of motion and it's not in graining good habits
you're not going to build significant amounts of strength if the exercise is too hard for you so
even for beginners that are in a good body weight the exercise might still be too hard and the entry
level barrier might be too high so choosing a lat pulldown in this circumstance will be good as a
starting point to build strength before moving on to plots if you're too weak or too heavy to
do full range of motion pull-ups you're probably thinking a good alternative would be to use a
resistance band or an assisted pull-up machine to make the exercise easier by bringing down some
of your body weight and this is not a good way to go about training it's one of the cons that I see
when people try and approach the pull-up this is because using this form of assistance particularly
with a resistance band actually messes with the strength curve of the exercise you see when you
do a pull-up it's actually most difficult at the start of the exercise for most people and
what does a band do it provides the greatest assistance at the bottom you might think that
this is a good option but it actually limits you from developing strength where it matters
most there's much better ways to go about building strength of the plot but the average person that
I see in the gym or train that's not aware of this strength curve will use inferior ways of
training such as using the assistance thinking that they're going to get stronger so this is
a major negative when doing pull-ups let's talk about the lat pulldown exercise now this is an
open kinetic chain exercise meaning your hands move whilst your body remains stationary one
of the great benefits of doing a lat pulldown fantastic for increasing absolute strength so
for those of you that are really interested in just increasing how much total weight you can
lift on an exercise logically the lat pulldown is going to be great for doing so I also think that
pull downs are a really good exercise especially for beginners because it allows you to be very
objective with your progression this means that each week you can increase the amount of weight
that you're lifting during your workout what I tend to see with people when they do pull-ups
is the ego gets in the way they want to progress too quickly and they don't maintain their form
standards when they do a pull-up there going to abbreviate their range of motion they're going
to use momentum or they're going to start doing the exercise too fast and without control with
the lat pulldown you can steadily increase the weight by a manageable amount each week and this
allows you to accurately increase the intensity over time so you can maintain good form standards
when it comes to training guys we really need to take a step back and look at what the purpose of
someone's training is I'm not going to stand here and say that this exercise is superior to this one
for every single person because that's not true even though I love bodyweight fitness and love
doing pull-ups there is a time and a place for using a lat pulldown let's look at an example
of someone that literally just wants to focus on building muscle mass what we know is you need to
do a large amount of volume sets reps and load to increase your muscular mass so a lat pulldown can
be really effective for many sets because you can keep dropping the weight and doing reps as you go
so it's really good for doing drop sets you can start heavy on the lat pulldown do a few sets to
fatigue drop the weight do another set drop the weight do another set Bank there you guys got a
lot of volume for your back the same thing can be done once you've exhausted yourself with pull-ups
you can then go on to the lat pulldown use a weight that's manageable and intensity that's
manual and you can keep going so fantastic for bodybuilding purposes if you're trying to get
as big as possible use the lat pulldown don't be afraid of using it another advantage of the lat
pulldown exercise is especially if you're someone that has poor relative strength it allows you to
use a wide variety of grips so as we know on different grips we're stronger verse weaker so
an underhand grip we're going to be able to do more reps with more weight compared to a really
wide grip lat pulldown how this helps us is we can just easily change the weight depending on
the grip that we're using to make it challenging for the specific grip when we're looking purely at
body weight because you can't change the intensity with your own body weight for different grips
without using some form of assistance which once again marks up the strength curve of the exercise
if you've got someone who can only do say five regular grip pull-ups and they want to do really
wide grip pull-ups they're not going to be able to do many if any because the exercise is that
much harder so variety of grips lat pulldown how's my tick of approval unless you've got
pretty good relative strength then you can do pull-ups in terms of variation and get enough
volume in what happens if you get injured and you can't do your nor pull-up routine because
it causes too much shoulder pain and you're not going to train at all with strength lose
muscle in the process the human body especially the shoulder complex if you get an injury there
requires stability it requires strength the best way to get the shoulder stronger in this situation
may be to use a lat pulldown this will allow you to decrease the load but still stimulate
the shoulder girdle to get activation through your rotator cuff get some stability there and get you
on the road to recovery so you can get back into your plots when your shoulders not as grumpy if
you're doing lat pull-downs there tends to be a pretty poor carry over to your pull-up strength
so guys this is going to sound very simple to get better and exercise do the specific exercise don't
get fancy if you want to improve your pull-up do pull-ups don't think that by doing really heavy
lat pull-downs it's going to transfer directly through your pull-up strength this isn't the case
I've seen so many people who are jacked out of their mind doing really heavy lat pull-downs but
they can either not do a pull-up with full range of motion or they can only do like a few reps
on the plot so clearly there's a huge discrepancy between their absolute strength and their relative
strength if you want to increase your relative strength work on a relative strength exercise
specifically the pull-up if that's what you want to get better at I'm going to get you guys with
a pro for both the lat pulldown as well as the plug when doing exercise we know using
a full range of motion and control eccentric are really important more specifically for increasing
flexibility this happens by two mechanisms one is sarcomere Genesis this is the addition of
sarcomeres in series to the muscle increasing its actual length and what we also get by doing
controlled eccentric is reduced mechanoreceptor firing rates which actually has an influence on
improving our stretch tolerance which consequently increases our overhead range of motion because
we're getting more length through the last in conclusion guys always refer to the set
principle specific adaptations to imposed demands do the exercise that you want to get stronger at
for the specific purpose that you want to get stronger out if you're looking to improve your
relative strength for sports if you're into bodyweight fitness then working on pull-ups
is going to be more advantageous for you guys if you're only interested in improving your absolute
strength think someone that's a power lifter for example or someone that's not concerned with how
they're moving their body through space so someone that's a bodybuilder then use flat
pull downs and also for that case with that said guys don't be dogmatic don't be afraid to use
a variety of exercise it allows you to change the stimulus use variety but if you're someone
that does bodyweight fitness you can use that pull downs to further work in a variety of rep
ranges intensities vary the stimulus change the time under tension there's so many options when
it comes to exercise don't put something in the basket I'm never going to do that always have an
open mind experiment try different things you'll be surprised if you don't stay stuck in your way
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using only your bodyweight thanks once again guys for watching I'll see you guys next week