V-Bar Pulldown Exercise to Increase Back Strength

Video Transcript

" Hi! I’m personal trainer Mike Coangelo. I’m here at Fit for Life Training Studio in Glassboro, New Jersey on behalf of Expert Village. We’re going to go over, in this clip, how to do a V-bar pull down. What you want to do is you want to approach the bar like so. There are two handles to it. You sit in your seat. What you want to do is get your feet in front of you. You’re going to be looking right up at the bar. So what you want to do is angle your back just a little bit back , so that when you bring the bar down , it’ll hit your chest. So you bring it down, squeeze your shoulder blades together, come up slowly, let them separate, come down slowly, and squeeze. Now, this close grip gives a different angle on your lat muscles. You always want to change the angles on a particular muscle group you work so that they won’t get stale. What you also don’t want to do is go too fast with your range of motion. You want to go 2 seconds down, squeeze, and 3 seconds back up. Control the range of motion. You want your back in a fixed position. What you don’t want to do is you don’t want to come back because you’re doing too much weight, more than you can handle. That’s bad for your lower back. What you want to do is keep is strict, down, up, down, and up. Again, keeping your range of motion clean, your rep speeds exactly where you want them to be. Toward the end of the contraction, you’re going to feel your back, biceps, and forearms start to fatigue. Between 12 and 15 repetitions you want to adjust your weight so that’s where you fatigue, 12-15 repetitions. I’ve got 2 more, 1 more, and that’s it. That’s how you properly do a V-bar pull down."