Close Grip Pull Down Straight Bar Exercise for Back Strength

Video Transcript

" Hi! I’m personal trainer Mike Coangelo. I’m here at Fit for Life Training Studio in Glassboro, New Jersey. In this clip, we’re going to go over how to do a close grip pull down with a straight bar. What you want to do is put your straight bar in the hook and grab the ends of the bar like so, underhand grip. Find your seat, put your feet in front of you. Okay, keep your back nice and straight. You’re going to be looking straight up at the bar. What you’re going to do is you’re going to angle back just a little bit so you can get the bar to your chest. With the underhand grip, bring the bar down, squeeze against your upper chest, bring it back up slowly where your scapula starts to stretch, and return the motion. Exhale at the bottom. Okay, again, what we don’t want to do is move the angle of our back; keep it nice and smooth, just like so. If you’re going like this, it’s too heavy for you and your range of motion is too fast. You want to keep everything straight. You want to come down, squeeze it or results will be better, with better form plus the fact that our safety is very important also. You want to set your rep range at 12-15 repetitions. Again, when you get to 10 you should start sort of a fatigue, a burn , that’s what you want to feel. If you can’t get to 10 to 12 to 15 repetitions you need to lighten your weight. Safety is always important. Coming down, nice clean range of motion. What we’re going to do is start to feel that burn I was talking about. Squeeze the scapula at the end, down and squeeze. It’s very important to get that squeeze down at the contraction. I’ve got about 3 more, 2 and 3. That is the proper way to do a close grip pull down with a straight bar. "