The Body Sculpting Bible for Women (56 page)

TECHNIQUE AND FORM

Once in position and focused on the muscles of the back, pull the bar down to your collar bone while maintaining your postural alignment.

Make sure that you pull the bar down in a smooth, controlled manner, letting the muscles of the back do the work and not your biceps or momentum. If you don’t know the difference between controlled form and momentum already, you will feel the difference in muscle stimulation when you use controlled form.

As you reach the bottom of the movement, make sure to squeeze the back muscles for a count of 1 1/2 seconds with the bar close to or touching the collar bone.

Slowly begin moving the bar upward and allow it to return to the start position.

When you reach the top, do not rest! Immediately begin pulling down making sure you do so slowly while maintaining the correct form and postural alignment. Remember the “time under tension” principle of continued motion and no rest. You are here to work, not rest. You will accomplish a great deal more by keeping constant tension in the muscle throughout the entire set as opposed to resting at every transition of the top and bottom positions.

FAQ:

In the pull-up exercise, you request that you depress the shoulders to help isolate the lats. Would it make sense to do that here, as well?

ANSWER:

Yes! There are many things to remember and if you can remember to include the depression of the shoulders maneuver, in addition to the other variables of the pull-down exercise, it will only help to enhance the results.

Close-Grip Pull-Down

During the narrow-grip pull-down exercise, the positioning of your hands will take a different hand position and grip placement when compared to the narrow-grip pull-up. The narrow-grip attachment as you can see in the pictures on the next page has two handles that are structured parallel to one another. When you take your hand position, the palms of your hands will be closely facing each other.

As you can clearly see, your whole arm position has now changed in comparison to the narrow underhand-grip pull-up. Notice how close the arms are to one another. You can see how the arms remain close to the body from the beginning of the exercise to the finish position. If you perform the narrow-grip exercise and immediately follow with the wide-grip pull-down exercise, you will feel a major difference in the muscles that are stimulated. This is evidence of how the variation in bar attachments and your hand placement can dramatically stimulate different muscles.

The same way you have the option of using the lat pull-down machine to help those women who are not able to do a wide-grip pull-up, the same applies for women who cannot yet do a narrow-grip underhand pull-up.

VARIATION:
One variation you can try are close-grip pull-downs. In this variation, you will install a wide bar instead of a V-bar, and grasp the bar with palms facing your torso and a narrower than shoulder-width grip.

PROPER ALIGNMENT

Position the thigh support so that you are in a snug position with your feet placed flat on the floor.

Choose your desired weight and take the narrow grip that you have chosen.

Lean back slightly from the hips while slightly contracting the abdominal muscles for support.

As you prepare to pull down, stick your chest out while keeping your elbows narrow and close to your body.