If you can do five or more clean pull-ups, make them your first vertical pull and use the lat pulldown for extra volume. If you cannot, the lat pulldown is the better main lift while you build towards your first sets. Neither replaces the other, and no trial has compared them for muscle growth.
This guide uses six published studies to compare the two on muscle activity, strength carryover and grip. It then gives a way to program both and a method for logging them so each trend stays honest.
Is the lat pulldown or the pull-up better?
Neither is better in general. The pull-up is the stronger test of relative strength because you lift your own body. The lat pulldown is easier to scale and to load in small steps. Pick the pull-up when you can do five clean reps, and the pulldown when you cannot or when you want more volume.
A pull-up is a vertical pull where you hang from a bar with an overhand grip and pull your chin over it. A lat pulldown is a vertical pull on a cable machine, where you sit under a bar and pull it down to your upper chest against a weight stack.
For the overhand pull-up versus the underhand chin-up, see our pull-up vs chin-up comparison. Here is how the pulldown and pull-up differ in practice:
| Factor | Lat pulldown | Pull-up |
|---|---|---|
| Resistance | Weight stack you choose | Your body weight, plus any added load |
| Load changes | Set by the stack's increments, which vary by machine | Added plates or a band for assistance, depending on your equipment |
| Dependence on body mass | Low | High |
| Torso support | Seat and thigh pad hold you in place | You hold your own position |
| Grip demand | Moderate | High, because you hang your whole body |
| Easy to match week to week | Yes | Only if body weight is recorded |
The last four rows are practical reasoning, not study results. Machines differ, so check how yours adjusts.
Do pulldowns and pull-ups build the same muscle?
Probably the same main muscle, but no trial has tested it directly. We found no randomised study comparing pulldown and pull-up training for muscle growth. The evidence is EMG, which measures muscle activity in a moment. High lat activity in both suggests both train the lats, but it does not prove equal growth.
Youdas and colleagues (2010) measured 25 people (21 men, 4 women) performing a pull-up, a chin-up and a rotating-handle pull-up. Average latissimus dorsi activity was 117 to 130% of a maximal voluntary isometric contraction across the three. Biceps activity was 78 to 96%, and infraspinatus (a rotator cuff muscle) activity was 71 to 79%.
The study did not include a lat pulldown, so it describes the pull-up, not the comparison. It also found that the chin-up used the pectoralis major and biceps more than the pull-up, while the pull-up used the lower trapezius more.
The pulldown studies below measured lat activity with different protocols, so their numbers cannot be set side by side with Youdas's. If your goal is back size, both vertical pulls are reasonable choices, and the better one is the one you can train hard and progress. Our guide to compound and isolation exercises covers where vertical pulls fit in a program.
Does lat pulldown strength carry over to pull-ups?
Only partly. Two 2009 studies found the lifts related but not interchangeable. In men the 1RM numbers tracked each other closely, and in women much less. A 2025 trial found that eight weeks of pulldown training improved pull-up endurance, so some carryover exists. It is not the same as practising pull-ups.
Johnson and colleagues (2009) tested 35 college men and 23 college women. Both sexes lifted more relative to body mass in the pull-up than in the lat pull, where the pull-up load included body mass:
| Group | 1RM pull-up (x body mass) | 1RM lat-pull (x body mass) | Correlation between the two |
|---|---|---|---|
| Men | 1.16 | 0.93 | r = 0.78 (p < 0.01) |
| Women | 0.73 | 0.55 | r = 0.44 (not significant) |
Halet and colleagues (2009) looked at 28 elite women swimmers. Pull-up reps were only moderately related to 1RM lat-pull (r = 0.34, p = 0.08) and unrelated to lat-pull reps at 80% of 1RM (r = 0.07). Multiplying pull-ups by body mass predicted lat-pull 1RM much better (r = 0.86). The authors' conclusion was blunt:
"the seemingly analogous exercises of pull-ups and lat-pulls were not highly related and should not be substituted for one another in a training regimen." (Halet et al., 2009)
The newer study points to some transfer. Li and colleagues (2025) randomised 34 recreationally active male students to eight weeks of lat pulldown training, either on a stable setup or with joint instability. Pull-up endurance improved in both groups. The instability group did 45.5% more pull-up reps than the stable group afterwards. That trial tested endurance reps in men who trained the pulldown, so it does not tell you how much a pulldown max transfers to a first pull-up.
All three samples were small and drawn from students or swimmers. Treat them as a direction, not a prediction for your own back.
Does grip width matter on the lat pulldown?
Not much. Two studies found that the overhand versus underhand choice changed lat activity more than the width of your hands. Width within about one to two times the distance between your shoulder bones gave similar activity. Choose the width that lets you reach a full range of motion comfortably.
Lusk and colleagues (2010) tested 12 men on wide and narrow grips, each overhand and underhand, at 70% of 1RM. The overhand grip gave greater lat activity than the underhand grip. Their conclusion:
"an anterior LPD with pronated grip is recommended for maximally activating the LD, irrespective of the grip width" (Lusk et al., 2010)
Andersen and colleagues (2014) had 15 men do 6RM pulldowns with narrow, medium and wide overhand grips (1, 1.5 and 2 times the biacromial distance). The 6RM load was higher with the narrow grip (80.3 kg) and medium grip (80 kg) than the wide grip (77.3 kg, p = 0.02). Lat, trapezius and infraspinatus activity was similar across widths over the full movement. The authors wrote that lifters can expect similar muscle activation and likely similar hypertrophy across grips from 1 to 2 times the biacromial distance.
So a very wide grip lets you lift a little less and does not bring a lat advantage. Most people can leave width alone and spend the effort on range of motion and load.
When should you choose each one?
Choose the pull-up when you can do about five clean reps and want a test of relative strength. Choose the lat pulldown when you cannot reach that, want lighter or finely adjusted loads, or want more sets without grip or body weight limiting you. Do both if your recovery allows it.
| Your situation | Better pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
| You can do 5 or more clean pull-ups | Pull-up first, pulldown after | Pull-up strength is not well predicted by pulldown strength (Halet et al., 2009). |
| You cannot yet do a full pull-up | Lat pulldown as the main lift | Stack loads scale to your level (practical reasoning). |
| You want to improve pull-up reps | Practise pull-ups, add pulldown volume | Pulldown training raised pull-up endurance in one trial (Li et al., 2025). |
| Your grip fails before your back does | Lat pulldown for extra sets | The pulldown has a lower grip demand (practical reasoning). |
| You are unsure about width | Overhand, about 1 to 2 times shoulder-bone width | Similar lat activity across widths (Andersen et al., 2014). |
| You have shoulder or elbow pain that persists | See a physiotherapist or doctor first | A comparison of studies cannot tell you what is safe for an injury. |
Both lifts also fit well into a push pull legs routine, where the vertical pull usually sits on pull days.
How do you program pulldowns and pull-ups together?
Put the lift you want to improve most first, while you are fresh. A common arrangement is pull-ups for sets stopping one to three reps short of failure, followed by pulldowns for higher-rep sets taken closer to failure. This is practical reasoning, not a tested protocol.
A simple pull day starts like this:
- Pull-up: 3 to 4 sets of 4 to 8 reps, stopping with 1 to 3 reps in reserve (RIR).
- Lat pulldown: 2 to 3 sets of 8 to 15 reps, finishing closer to failure.
- Row and curl work: your usual horizontal pull and arm work.
If you cannot yet reach four pull-up reps, flip the order or use assistance on the pull-up sets and keep the pulldown as your main lift.
Progress each lift on its own. Double progression works well for the pulldown: pick a range such as 8 to 12, add reps until you hit the top, then raise the load and start again. For the pull-up, add reps first, then a small amount of added weight. If you rate effort with RIR, a pull-up at 2 RIR and a pulldown at 0 to 1 RIR are both genuinely hard sets, just on different tools.
If you want to rotate in one-arm variations later, our guide to unilateral and bilateral training covers what the research says.
How do you log lat pulldowns and pull-ups in IronLedger?
Log them as two separate lifts, and write your body weight or assistance in the set note. Then compare each lift only with its own history. IronLedger is a free strength training app for iOS, with Android in closed testing, and it keeps a history for each exercise so each trend is its own.
On the product page, the logging features that matter here are:
- Per-set records. Each set stores weight, reps, effort as RPE in half steps or as RIR, and an optional free-text note.
- Notes for context. Use the note to record body weight, a band, or an added-weight belt, so a pull-up from last month can be matched to today's.
- Estimated 1RM and personal records. IronLedger estimates 1RM using the Epley formula and tracks personal records from what you logged. Our guide to estimated one-rep max explains how far to trust the estimate.
- Per-lift trends and tonnage. The progress page shows trends for each lift, and your full training history has no cutoff.
- Changing the session mid-workout. If the pull-up bar is taken, you can replace the exercise while the workout is running, and the rest timer keeps counting when your phone is locked.
IronLedger does not have a dedicated bodyweight-reps field that we could verify on the site, so the weight and note fields are the reliable way to keep pull-up entries consistent.
What mistakes should you avoid?
Most mistakes come from treating the two lifts as one. They have different loads, different limits and different numbers. Judge each by its own trend, and decide in advance which one is your priority for the block.
- Substituting one for the other and expecting the same result. Halet et al. (2009) found them not highly related.
- Comparing numbers across the two. A pulldown of 0.93 times body mass and a pull-up of 1.16 times body mass were typical for men in one study (Johnson et al., 2009), so equal-looking numbers mean different things.
- Obsessing over grip width. Lat activity was similar across 1 to 2 times the biacromial distance (Andersen et al., 2014).
- Using an underhand grip and expecting the same lat work. The overhand grip gave greater lat activity in one study (Lusk et al., 2010).
- Swinging to finish reps. Momentum takes tension off the muscle you are trying to train.
- Ignoring pain. Persistent shoulder or elbow pain needs assessment, and no exercise comparison can replace that.
Frequently asked questions
Possibly, but no trial has compared them for muscle growth. EMG shows both load the lats, and the better choice is the one you can progress. Use the pull-up if you can do five clean reps and the pulldown for the rest of your volume.
Sources and references
- Youdas et al., Surface electromyographic activation patterns and elbow joint motion during a pull-up, chin-up, or Perfect-Pullup rotational exercise: lat activity 117 to 130% of MVIC across pull-up variations (J Strength Cond Res, 2010).
- Johnson et al., Relationship of lat-pull repetitions and pull-ups to maximal lat-pull and pull-up strength in men and women: 1RM lat-pull and pull-up correlated in men (r = 0.78) but not significantly in women (J Strength Cond Res, 2009).
- Halet et al., Relationship of 1 repetition maximum lat-pull to pull-up and lat-pull repetitions in elite collegiate women swimmers: pull-ups and lat-pulls not highly related (J Strength Cond Res, 2009).
- Li et al., Eight-week lat pull-down resistance training with joint instability leads to superior pull-up endurance performance: pulldown training improved pull-up endurance in both groups (Eur J Sport Sci, 2025).
- Lusk et al., Grip width and forearm orientation effects on muscle activity during the lat pull-down: pronated grip gave greater lat activity (J Strength Cond Res, 2010).
- Andersen et al., Effects of grip width on muscle strength and activation in the lat pull-down: similar lat activity across grip widths (J Strength Cond Res, 2014).
- IronLedger product page: per-set RPE and RIR, notes, estimated 1RM and personal records.
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