I’ve mentioned one of the first controversial articles by Mr. America Doug Brignole we published in Iron Man many moons ago was his “Stop the Overhead Presses.”
He slammed the exercise as not great for shoulder development and most responsible for jamming the joint into painful submission over time.
He argued that it’s the reason so many bodybuilders need shoulder surgery—sometimes sooner rather than later…
But there’s another similar move that can do the same damage—but you’re not pushing weight up, you’re pulling it down.
Yes, pulldowns. And pull-ups are in the same shoulder-shearing boat. That delicate joint gets a similar jamming action as your arms extend overhead to begin a rep…
But what if you stop halfway up, as in this photo of Jonathan?…
Unfortunately, it’s not great for a few reasons:
1) You’re severely compromising the range of motion—losing about half of it
2) The strength curve is wrong—it’s too difficult at the bottom; that’s where the muscle is weakest so it should be easiest
3) The direction of pull is wrong for the lats—you need to be pulling from only slightly up and in toward your spine, which is the origin of the lats
Doug’s ideal lat exercise is the one-arm cable pull-in…
Since I purchase my cable machine for my home gym, I’ve been doing Doug’s versions at many upper-body workouts…
I like it, but the strength curve still isn’t ideal—it still feels hardest in the contracted position…
That’s not a problem with my one-arm version leaning out from a doorway chinning bar set at chin height. Here’s the start/finish pics of that ideal move from the new ebook Old Man, Young Muscle…
With this version, the resistance tails off as I pull my body almost vertical. The main problem with it is that it’s hard to add resistance.
For that reason, I’ll do the chin-bar version first for my high-rep set and maybe a second set. I’ll follow with the one-arm cable version to better stress the contracted position.
My lats seem to be getting wider. Give it a try to look like a human glider.
New: Get the ideal exercise for each muscle, the best add-on moves for ultimate mass, complete 35-minute workouts, exercise start/finish photos and details on building muscle fast and efficiently in Old Man, Young Muscle.
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Till next time, train hard—and smart—for BIG results.
Steve Holman
Former Editor in Chief, Iron Man Magazine
X-Rep.com
Highly Recommended…
This is Doug Brignole’s incredible 400-page, large-format text on the biomechanics of exercise. It’s a guide to get you training correctly and building maximum muscle safely and efficiently.
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