Reverse Grip Lat Pulldown: How to Do It and Muscles Worked

The reverse grip lat pulldown is a standard lat pulldown done with your palms facing you, hands about shoulder-width apart on a straight bar. You'll also see it called the underhand or supinated lat pulldown; they're all the same exercise. The underhand grip tucks your elbows in front of your ribs, gives you a longer pull than a wide overhand grip, and is easier on a lot of people's shoulders.

It won't hit your lats harder than the overhand version, whatever the gym floor tells you, and the research on that is covered below. What it gives you is a different elbow path, a strong position to pull from and a cable version of the chin up that you can load in small steps. If you're new to pulldowns in general, start with our main lat pulldown guide and come back here for the underhand details.

How to do a reverse grip lat pulldown

You need a high pulley, a straight or slightly cambered lat bar and a thigh pad. A gym lat station does the job, and so does a home lat pulldown machine or a multi gym with a top pulley.

1. Set the pad. Adjust the thigh pad until it pins your legs with your feet flat on the floor, so the stack can't lift you off the seat.
2. Grip the bar underhand. Stand up and take the bar with your palms facing you, hands shoulder-width apart or slightly inside, thumbs wrapped round. Sit down with your arms straight.
3. Lean back a little. Tip your torso back 10 to 15 degrees and lift your chest. That's enough for the bar to clear your chin, and you hold that angle for the whole set.
4. Shoulder blades first. Before your elbows bend, pull your shoulders down away from your ears. The movement is small, a couple of centimetres, but it stops the first third of the rep turning into a curl.
5. Elbows to your back pockets. Drive your elbows down and slightly behind you, keeping them close to your sides, until the bar reaches your collarbones or the top of your chest.
6. Pause, then take three seconds up. Hold the bottom for a second, then let the bar rise slowly until your arms are straight and you feel the stretch under your armpits.

Breathe out on the pull and in on the way back up.

Muscles worked

• Latissimus dorsi. The prime mover. With your elbows travelling down in front of your body, the lats work mostly through shoulder extension, which is the same action as a chin up or a straight-arm pulldown.
• Biceps and brachialis. They bend the elbow on every rep. A supinated forearm puts the biceps in its strongest line of pull, which is why this grip feels so arm-heavy.
• Lower and middle trapezius, rhomboids. These pull the shoulder blades down and together, and they're the muscles the "shoulder blades first" cue is aimed at.
• Teres major and rear deltoids. Both help the lats bring the upper arm down and back.
• Forearm flexors and core. Your grip holds the bar, and your trunk keeps the lean-back angle from growing as you tire.

What the EMG studies found

The reverse grip has a reputation as the best pulldown for lower lats and biceps. The published measurements don't support the first claim, and they're lukewarm on the second.

Signorile and colleagues compared four hand positions in 10 men lifting their 10-rep max in 2002. The wide overhand pulldown to the front produced more lat activity than the supinated grip, the close grip and the behind-the-neck version, during both the pull and the return (Signorile et al., 2002). That study changed width and forearm position at once, so in 2010 Lusk's group separated them: 12 men, 70% of one-rep max, wide and narrow grips, each done overhand and underhand. The overhand grip gave higher lat activity than the underhand grip at both widths, and grip type made no difference to the biceps or the middle traps (Lusk et al., 2010).

A more recent and larger study muddies it further. Forty men with at least five years of training performed seven pulldown variations that differed in grip type, width and trunk lean, and the researchers found no significant difference in lat, biceps or trapezius activation between them (Buonsenso et al., 2025).

So on the evidence we have, an underhand grip gives you equal or slightly lower lat activation than an overhand one, and no measured biceps advantage at a matched relative load. Bear in mind that these are small studies using surface EMG, which records how hard a muscle is firing during a set and can't tell you how much it will grow over six months. Nobody has run a long training study comparing the two grips directly.

Reverse grip vs overhand lat pulldown

	Reverse (underhand) grip	Overhand grip
Hand width	Shoulder-width or narrower	Shoulder-width to 1.5 times shoulder-width
Elbow path	Down in front of the ribs	Down and out to the sides
Bar finishes	Collarbones to upper chest	Upper chest
Lat EMG	Equal or lower in studies	Equal or higher in studies
Wrist demand	High on a straight bar	Low
Carries over to	Chin ups	Pull ups

My take: the overhand pulldown should stay your default, because the evidence favours it slightly and it's the easier grip on the wrists. Add the reverse grip as your second pulldown of the week, or swap to it for a training block when the overhand version goes stale or starts to irritate your shoulders. If you want a middle route, the V-bar version in our close grip lat pulldown guide keeps the elbows-in path with a neutral wrist.

Who should use it

People whose shoulders dislike a wide bar. With your elbows in front of you instead of flared out, the upper arm stays in a position many lifters find more comfortable overhead.

Anyone working towards a chin up. Same grip, same elbow path, adjustable load. Once you can pull close to your bodyweight for 6 to 8 reps, the bodyweight version is within reach, and our lat pulldown vs pull up comparison explains how the two fit together.

Lifters short on time who want arm work in the same set. Your biceps work on every pulldown, and the supinated grip trains them through a long range under a heavy load, even if the EMG difference between grips is small.

It's a poor fit if you have limited forearm rotation or a history of sore wrists or inner elbows. A straight bar locks your hands fully palm-up, and some people simply can't get there without strain at the wrist or the inside of the elbow. Don't push through that. An EZ-style lat bar, a pair of D-handles that let your hands rotate, or a neutral-grip bar from our lat pulldown attachment guide usually sorts it out.

Common mistakes

Gripping too wide. The underhand grip only works at shoulder-width or narrower. Wider than that and your wrists bend sideways against the bar while your elbows get pushed out, which defeats the point of the grip.

Curling the bar down. If your wrists flex and the bar ends up near your chin with your elbows still in front of you, you've done a heavy cable curl. Keep your wrists straight and finish with your elbows beside or just behind your ribs.

Leaning back further every rep. A 10 to 15 degree lean is part of the setup; rocking back to 40 degrees to get the stack moving is a row with momentum. Drop the weight, and if rows are what you're after, do a seated cable row properly.

Cutting the top short. Stopping with your elbows still bent keeps tension on the biceps and skips the stretched position for the lats. Let your arms straighten fully while keeping your shoulders from jamming up into your ears.

Thumbless grip on a heavy set. A false grip is popular on overhand pulldowns, but with your palms up the bar sits on your fingers, and a sweaty bar can roll out of them. Wrap your thumbs.

Variations

• EZ-bar or cambered-bar reverse pulldown. The angled handles turn your palms in by a few degrees, which takes most of the twist out of the wrists. This is the first thing to try if the straight bar hurts.
• Single-arm underhand pulldown. Clip one D-handle to the pulley and pull with your palm rotating from forwards at the top to facing you at the bottom. Your wrist finds its own path, and you can train each side separately.
• Half-kneeling version. Kneel on one knee facing a cable machine with a high pulley if you've no thigh pad. It limits the load to roughly what your bodyweight can anchor, so use it for sets of 10 to 15.
• Paused reps. Hold the bar on your collarbones for two seconds each rep. It strips out momentum and shows you quickly whether the weight is honest.
• Band or bodyweight substitutes. With no cable at all, an underhand band pulldown from a door anchor or an inverted row with palms up covers the same pattern. Our lat pulldown alternatives page lists the options by equipment.

If you're setting up at home, any single-stack multi gym with a high pulley and a lat bar handles this exercise. The Marcy HG3000 is one we've reviewed: it has a 68kg stack, which is plenty for learning the movement but which a strong puller will outgrow, and it was around £499 on Amazon at the time of writing. The full Marcy HG3000 review covers its limits.

Check the Marcy HG3000 price on Amazon

Sets and reps

• Muscle building: 3 to 4 sets of 8 to 12 reps, resting 90 seconds. Take the last set to within a rep or two of failure.
• Strength: 4 sets of 6 to 8 reps with 2 minutes of rest. The underhand grip suits heavier work as long as your wrists stay straight.
• Chin up preparation: 3 sets of 5 to 6 reps at a load near what you'd eventually pull on the bar, with a two-second pause at the bottom, plus negative pull ups on another day.
• Technique practice: 2 to 3 sets of 12 to 15 with a light stack and a three-second return.

Once or twice a week is enough. A simple back session would be overhand pulldowns for 3 sets, reverse grip pulldowns for 3 sets and a row to finish; on that plan, you may find you need one fewer set of direct biceps work afterwards. Add the smallest increment your stack allows once every set reaches the top of the rep range with a full stretch and no extra lean.

Recommended reads

• Lat pulldown: how to do it, muscles worked and grip variations
• Close grip lat pulldown: how to do it and muscles worked
• Chin ups: how to do them and muscles worked
• Lat pulldown machines for home: what to buy
• The best multi gyms in the UK