Machine-Assisted Pull-Up
Trains the Lats.
- Equipment
- A machine
- Mechanic
- Compound
- Force
- Pull
- Level
- Beginner
How to do it
- Choose the assistance on the weight stack. On this machine the weight you pick helps you up, so more weight means an easier repetition.
- Climb the steps, take the overhand handles a little wider than your shoulders, and kneel or stand on the platform until it takes your weight.
- Hang with straight arms and set your shoulders down away from your ears.
- Pull yourself up by driving your elbows down toward your ribs until your chin passes the handles.
- Lower under control all the way back to straight arms.
- At the end of the set, put your feet back on the steps before you let go of the handles.
Common mistakes
- Reading the stack the wrong way round. The weight you choose is taken off your bodyweight, so getting stronger shows up as choosing less of it, not more.
- Dropping into the bottom and letting the platform throw you back up. The counterweight pushes the whole way, and a fast descent turns it into a bounce; a controlled lowering keeps the pull yours.
- Cutting the bottom short. Stopping with the elbows bent skips the part of the range where the lats are longest, which is exactly the part a pull-up without help will ask for.
- Treating the machine as the destination. Unlike a band, it helps by the same amount at the bottom as at the top, so it hides no part of the range; taking help away a step at a time is the route to a pull-up without it.