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Tonal Coach Tanysha Renee perfoming a seated cable lat pulldown on Tonal.

Cable Lat Pulldown: Build a Stronger, Wider Back

Develop a broader, more powerful back with cable lat pulldowns. Work the largest muscle in your back with this key exercise that also supports posture and a long, tapered physique.

The cable lat pulldown targets the largest muscle in your back — a muscle that quietly works overtime to support nearly every pulling, lifting, and stabilizing movement you make.

Your latissimus dorsi, better known as your lats, are often compared to the base of a pyramid (it's even triangular shaped). This wide, fanning muscle spans from the sides of your torso toward your spine, anchoring your upper body, providing significant strength and coordination, and helping you stay upright during walking, carrying, and reaching tasks.

Lats are also deeply involved in exerting and rotating your arms, which means every overhead reach, pull-down, or cross-body grab relies on them.

And while all these functional benefits are meaningful on their own, many people appreciate how finely developed lats contribute to that long, lean, "tapered" look to many athletic builds.

This guide centers one of the lats' most targeted movements: the cable lat pulldown. We'll review step-by-step steadying form using the popular cable machine variation so you can build strength that feels useful both inside and outside your workouts. We’ll also note complementary cable pulldown variations, including single-arm and cross-body, to help you explore what feels most natural for you.

Contents
  1. Cable Lat Pulldown: Step by Step
  2. Cable Lat Pulldown: reps & intervals
    1. Average Duration of Cable Lat Pulldown
    2. Estimated Calories Burned
    3. Recommended Number of exercises Per Week
    4. Warmup & Cool Down Exercises
    3.
  3. Muscle Groups Targeted
  4. Equipment Used for Cable Lat Pulldown
  5. Who This Exercise is Best For
  6. Answers to FAQs about Cable Lat Pulldown
  7. Concluding words on Cable Lat Pulldown

Cable Lat Pulldown: Step by Step

How to Do a Standard Seated Cable Lat Pulldown

  1. Sit tall, chest up, with your thighs wedged securely under the leg pads, feet flat on the floor.
  2. Overhand grip the bar slightly wider than shoulder-width with your palms facing the machine.

    Tip: You can also explore underhand grips during lat pulldowns, if more comfortable for your wrists. Do note this switch can subtly change the muscles most targeted, particularly switching the emphasis onto the lower lats and biceps.
  3. Begin pulling the bar, focusing on "taking it to your collarbone," or pulling your elbows down and back to your hips.
  4. Focus on really engaging those lats and squeezing together your shoulder blades. Your biceps and forearms do some work, but shouldn't fatigue first.

    Tip: Avoid leaning back too far. You should be tall and vertical at the top of a pulldown(when your arms are vertically stretched straight up), and only slightly angled back on the descent (around 10-15 degrees is generally enough to keep the bar path clear.)
  5. Stop once the bar lightly taps your upper chest, keeping your ribs from flaring upward.
  6. Pause briefly at the bottom, then return at the same tempo back to the starting position. Be mindful of controlling that "negative" part of the lift, i.e. the bar's return to start.

Variation 1: Single-Arm Cable Lat Pulldown

A single-arm version can better highlight left or right imbalances and makes it easier to feel one-sided lats at a time.

  • Use a single-handle attachment on a high pulley setting.
  • Sit or stand tall and grip the handle with your working hand.
  • Steadily draw your elbow down along your torso, avoiding any twisting through midsection.
  • Return the handle slowly and avoid letting your shoulder roll forward, controlling the negative.

Variation 2: Cross-Body Cable Lat Pulldown

The cable's crossed angle can help emphasize a deeper lat stretch and add some anti-rotation core challenge.

  • Kneel or half-kneel perpendicular to the cable machine column.
  • Grip the single-arm handle with your working hand, which should be the one farthest from the machine.
  • Engage your torso, hips, and glutes slightly. This should help ground and stabilize your lower body.
  • Begin pulling your elbow downward in a smooth arc, across your torso and to your hip.
  • Return your elbow along the same path.
  • Avoid twisting or jerking movements.

Cable Lat Pulldown: reps & intervals

These ranges are meant as a starting point, but the best volume is whatever allows you to maintain your form and posture while pushing yourself to an appropriate degree.

  • Muscle growth: Experiment across 6-20 reps
  • Strength endurance: Aim for 8-12 reps
  • Max strength: Push across 4-8 reps

  • Beginner intervals: 2-3 sets
  • Intermediate intervals: 3-4 sets

Average Duration of Cable Lat Pulldown

Tempo naturally varies based on your coordination, rest breaks, and how smoothly you manage the pull. There's never a need to rush a lat pulldown.

  • One cable lat pulldown rep: ~4-6 seconds
  • One cable lat pulldown set: ~40-65 seconds

Estimated Calories Burned

Cable lat pulldowns engage multiple upper-body muscles. Energy use will therefore vary, and is influenced by pulldown tempo, resistance amount, and body size among other things.

Use the following as a calories burned estimate based on performing 3 sets of 10 lat pulldowns:

  • Women (140-180 lbs): ~18-30 calories
  • Men (170-210 lbs): ~22-35 calories
  • Adults 225+ lbs: ~25-40 calories

Recommended Number of exercises Per Week

For many, performing cable lat pulldown variations 1-2x/week is a safe range depending on how often they train back or pulling patterns.

Mixing standing, kneeling, and seated options can help the exercise feel fresh and engaging, as can introducing one-arm variations. Just ensure with each the focus remains on good form.


Warmup & Cool Down Exercises

Warm-Up (choose 1-4):

  • Light resistance band rows (30 sec)
  • Cat-cow stretch (30 sec)
  • Scapular pull-downs (30 sec)
  • Gentle arm circles (30 sec)

Cool-Down (choose 1-4, performed at the end of your session):

  • Overhead lat stretch (30 sec)
  • Chest-opening doorway stretch (30 sec)
  • Overhead triceps stretch (30 sec)
  • Gentle shoulder rolls (30 sec)

Muscle Groups Targeted

Unsurprisingly, the primary target of the cable lat pulldown is the latissimus dorsi — the broad back muscle responsible for pulling your arm down and inward.

The movement also can engage the biceps, rear delts, rhomboids, and the muscles around the shoulder blade that support posture and controlled pulling.

Whether you prefer a seated, standing, or single arm pattern, the goal is relatively the same: teach your upper back to guide the motion while your torso stays sturdy and still.

Equipment Used for Cable Lat Pulldown

For standing cable lat pulldowns, you'll need:

  • Cable machine
  • Wide-grip attachment (for standard version)
  • Single D-grip attachment for single-arm variations
  • Workout bench or stable chair (for seated variation)

Optional alternatives:

Who This Workout is Most Effective For
  • People who struggle to engage their lats during other exercises like rows or pull-ups, and need a slower, clearer pulling pattern to help them build more solid awareness.
  • Adults who often perform lifting as part of their regular days such as caregivers and healthcare workers, professional movers, construction workers, and adults in skilled trades. Lat strength supports these pulling motions.
  • Beginners whose shoulders often shrug during back exercises. Pulldowns can help teach controlled shoulder depression and set a foundation for cleaner pulling mechanics.
  • Recreational athletes like pickleball players, swimmers, climbers, even weekend hikers traveling uneven terrain.
  • Dedicated strength trainees who want long-term shoulder comfort, since pulldowns reinforce the upper-back patterns that support pressing, reaching, and overhead movements.

Answers to FAQs about Cable Lat Pulldown

Seated pulldowns provide a little extra stability, which some beginners say helps them learn and maintain better form. Standing versions do however tick up the core involvement, and for some individuals allows resistance training in more natural body positions. Both are useful, it just depends on your comfort, equipment available, and training goals.

They can certainly contribute to working your rear delts. While the lats are the primary drivers in this vertical pull, the rear delts (located on the backside of your shoulders) as well as a few other upper back muscles come together to support the entire motion. You may feel mild engagement, but rear delt-specific exercises provide more targeted and likely effective work.

Don't sweat things too much if you don't have access to a cable machine. Options like dumbbell rows, assisted pull-ups, and banded pulldowns offer similar movement patterns.

The right alternative to using cables depends largely on equipment and comfort level. Many beginners find band variations easiest to control and a guiding entry point if truly starting from scratch.


Technically yes, but the difference is subtle. Wider grips typically emphasize the upper portion of the lats and backside, while closer grips tend to encourage more elbow travel, emphasize the lower lats, and can therefore demand more arm activation. The "best" grip is the one that allows smooth control and full range without shoulder strain.

Concluding words on Cable Lat Pulldown

Over time, strengthening your lats through the cable lat pulldown can be solid part of a committed back-training routine.

But don't overlook those quieter, stabilizing boosts. This broad muscle helps you lift, carry, rotate, and remain tall. Training the lats deliberately builds a kind of strength that translates across daily activity, while also supporting long-term posture and upper-body harmony.

Whether you prefer the structure of a seated setup, the coordination challenge of a single-arm version, or the deeper stretch of a cross-body pulldown, each variation helps you explore how your upper back handles tension.

Much of this guides comes inspired directly by Tonal’s own lat-targeting movements available in Tonal's at-home systems, as well as the 60+ workout combos in our Resource Hub.

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