Just how important are pull exercises? I recently bought a power rack without a lat attachment. I thought I’d save a few hundred bucks and get about the same results out of pushing exercises. Am I wrong? Are pulling exercises just as essential as pushing exercises? Or, does it really matter, as long as you’re working out?
Are they important. lets see is the whole back side of your body important?? Is should health posture important? Are imbalances that limit your Oh so godly presses important?? Yes Id say they are important and even more so than pressing as they are the first skipped and over looked, undertrained and lead to lack luster performance and injury.
Do a search plenty of great articles on pulling, rowing etc.
Phill
[quote]UrbanSmooth wrote:
Just how important are pull exercises? I recently bought a power rack without a lat attachment. I thought I’d save a few hundred bucks and get about the same results out of pushing exercises. Am I wrong? Are pulling exercises just as essential as pushing exercises? Or, does it really matter, as long as you’re working out?[/quote]
I dont know what you mean by a lat attachment but you do need a pull up bar. “If you’re not rowing, you’re not growing.”
How do you figure that you can push but not pull? Does day have night? Man have woman? Everything action has an equal and opposite reaction. If you push you have to pull.
Or, don’t pull. Have no strength in the back and arms, and then see how you look and feel.
I would say in our society that pulling exercises are even more important than pushing. Think about how much we sit (and our posture). Sitting in a car, sitting at a desk (where the shoulders round to type on a keyboard). These leads to horrible posture and rounded shoulders where people’s palms face more backwards than inward where they should be.
If anything I’d rather see someone include more pulling exercises (more rows, reverse cable flyes, etc) than pushing.
YES. They matter. If you keep pushing and not do enough pulling, you’ll gradually have muscle imbalances. Muscle imbalances could lead to flexibility issues, and maybe even shoulder impingement? Make sure you balance your training.
What do you guys think?
Oh lord. Pulling exercises are VERY important. You better ballence all that pushing out with pulling. Actually, I’m pretty sure that if you do a search on this site or just look through the archives you’ll realize this.
DD
[quote]TrainerinDC wrote:
How do you figure that you can push but not pull? Does day have night? Man have woman? Everything action has an equal and opposite reaction. If you push you have to pull. [/quote]
If you thrust, must you not also retreat so you can thrust again?
Not to mention the occasional swirl.
Actually I think I put more emphasis on the pulling muscles than the pushing.
I used to have minor shoulder pain quite often. I started doing more pulling exercises and the pain has pretty much gone away. Take it for what its worth.
If you don’t want to spend more money, you can at least do deadlifts, barbell, and dumbell rows as pulling exercises.
[quote]UrbanSmooth wrote:
Just how important are pull exercises? I recently bought a power rack without a lat attachment. I thought I’d save a few hundred bucks and get about the same results out of pushing exercises. Am I wrong? Are pulling exercises just as essential as pushing exercises? Or, does it really matter, as long as you’re working out?[/quote]
The answer to your question is YES you need to do pulling exercises, but NO you don’t need an expensive lat attachment. Pull ups are pretty much always better than pulldowns. Also, if you have a power rack presumably you have a barbell and plates, which will allow you to do all sorts of rows. You made a good decision by saving that money, now make another good one by balancing your pushing work with lots of pulling – otherwise you’re setting yourself up for pain and injury.
Thanks for the responses, all. Great input here. So, if I don’t need any sort of pulley system, what kind of pulling exercises are we talking besides barbell rows (yes, I do have an olympic barbell set), deadlifts, etc?
Fatt man pull-ups.
Pull-Ups.
Thanks, anymore?