Pull-ups vs lat pulldown: what each trains, what the loads show, and why one doesn't replace the other

A pull-up moves your body to the bar. A lat pulldown moves the bar to your body, with a weight you choose on the stack. It's the same pulling motion in two directions, and a 2026 review of the lat research calls pull-ups and chin-ups the closed-chain counterpart of the lat pulldown.¹ Closed-chain means your hands stay put and your body moves. This page compares the two: what each worked in the studies, how the loads compared in the same people, and what the pulldown does and doesn't do for your pull-ups.

How to do each one is on its own page: how to do a pull-up and lat pulldown form. Where they go in a session is on the back workout.

Pull-ups vs lat pulldown at a glance

Muscle activity, measured with electrodes on the skin, shows which muscles are working during a set. It doesn't show how much they'll grow over months, so read those rows as tendencies.

Muscles worked: mostly the same, with a few differences

• The pull-up: lats first. In 21 men and 4 women doing a pull-up, a chin-up and a third bar exercise, the lats were the most active muscles measured, at 117 to 130% of a maximal test contraction, followed by the biceps at 78 to 96%.² The chin-up (palms toward you) used more biceps and chest than the pull-up (palms away), and the pull-up more of the lower trapezius.² The grip question is on chin-up vs pull-up.
• The pulldown: lats and biceps too. A 2013 study compared chin-ups with lat pulldowns. As the bar came down on the pulldown, the lats and biceps worked harder than the chest, triceps and lower back.³
• Where they differed. In the same study, the chin-up produced more biceps and lower-back (erector spinae) activity on the way up, and showed more movement at the shoulders and the base of the neck. As the bar went back up, the pulldown drew more on the abdominals. A difference in lat activity between the two wasn't among the results reported.³ The authors read the chin-up as the more functional exercise of the two.³

So for the lats, the studies show the same main muscle doing the most work in both. The chin-up asked more of the biceps and the lower back.

The loads: the numbers don't translate one for one

• The heaviest pull-up was heavier. In 35 college men and 23 college women, each person's heaviest single pull-up was found by adding weight or counterweighting their body, and their heaviest single pulldown on the machine. Relative to body weight, the pull-up max was higher: about 1.16 against 0.93 in the men, and about 0.73 against 0.55 in the women.⁴
• The two maxes tracked each other in the men, less so in the women. The correlation between them was 0.78 in the men and 0.44 in the women, which wasn't significant.⁴
• Reps didn't match either. At 80% of each max, the men did more pulldown reps than pull-up reps, while the women did about the same of each, and the women did more pull-up reps than the men (about 10.5 against 8.1).⁴
• In athletes, the link was loose. In 28 women on a college swim team, the number of pull-ups they could do was only moderately related to their heaviest pulldown (r = 0.34, not statistically significant) and not related to how many pulldown reps they could do at 80% of it (r = 0.07). The authors' conclusion: the two "should not be substituted for one another in a training regimen".⁵

In practice: pulling your body weight on the stack doesn't mean you can do a pull-up, and a number of pull-ups doesn't tell you your pulldown weight. Log each one on its own.

Do lat pulldowns build pull-ups?

They raised pull-up reps in the one trial that tested it. 34 recreationally active male college students did lat pulldowns three times a week for eight weeks, four sets of 12, on a normal machine or an unstable setup. Pull-up reps and pulldown pulling force rose in both groups.⁶ Everyone in it could already do a pull-up (anyone who couldn't complete one was excluded), so it says nothing about getting a first rep.⁶

Put next to the load studies above, the reading is that the pulldown trains the pull but doesn't stand in for the pull-up. If a pull-up is the goal, keep practising the pull-up itself (negatives, assisted reps, then full reps) alongside the pulldown (practical). How to do a pull-up has the route from zero to one, with the pulldown as one of four ways in.

What these studies didn't test

No study found for this page trained one group on pull-ups and another on pulldowns and measured muscle growth, so there's no head-to-head answer on which builds more muscle. The activity comparison used chin-ups, not palms-away pull-ups, and its abstract doesn't give the group size.³ The load studies tested college students and college swimmers in single sessions.^4,5 So "for muscle growth" comes down to what the activity data suggests (the lats work hardest in both) and to the version you can train hard and add to over weeks.

How to choose, or use both

As a practical guide, not a finding:

• Can't do a pull-up yet: pulldowns for the pulling muscles, plus pull-up practice for the pull-up itself, as above.
• Can do a few: pull-ups first in the session while you're fresh, then pulldowns for the extra sets the pull-ups can't give you.
• Can do plenty: add weight to the pull-up, or keep it for higher reps and load the pulldown heavier. Both count toward your back sets for the week.
• Training at home: a pull-up bar does the job of the stack. The back workout has a home version.

If a pull brings sharp pain, not just effort, stop and see a doctor or a physical therapist.

Common questions

Are pull-ups better than lat pulldowns?

Not for the lats, on what was measured: the lats were the most active muscles in the pull-up and among the most active in the pulldown, and a difference in lat activity between the chin-up and the pulldown wasn't among the 2013 study's reported results.^2,3 In the 2013 comparison the chin-up asked more of the biceps and the lower back; the pulldown lets you choose the weight. Which suits you depends on whether you can do clean reps yet, and what you want to get good at.

Pull-ups vs lat pulldowns: which muscles do they work?

Mainly the lats, then the biceps, in both.^2,3 The chin-up drew more on the biceps and the lower back on the way up, and the pulldown more on the abs as the bar returned.³

Which is better for muscle growth?

No trial compared them for muscle growth. Both work the lats hardest, so the practical answer is to train whichever one you can do for hard sets, add load or reps over time, and count both toward your weekly back volume. How many sets a week that adds up to is on how many sets per week.

Can lat pulldowns replace pull-ups?

Not one for one. In the swimmers' study the authors concluded the two shouldn't be substituted for each other, and in the college students the heaviest pull-up and pulldown didn't line up in the women.^5,4 Pulldowns did raise pull-up reps in men who could already do one.⁶

Is the lat pulldown just an easier pull-up?

Easier to load, yes, because you set the weight. It isn't the same lift: in the 2013 comparison the chin-up worked the biceps and the lower back harder and showed more movement at the shoulders.³

If you'd rather not plan it alone

Pull-ups or pulldowns is a small call next to fitting your back work around everything else in the week. Coaching is the version where your workouts live in the Trainerize app, built around the days you actually have, and a weekly call looks at the week you just had and rebuilds the next one. Coaching to build muscle explains how that works, and here's how to apply. Otherwise: start your next back day with three sets of pull-ups, assisted if you need to be, then three sets of 10 pulldowns.