Horizontal Pulls are one of our favorite exercises to prescribe to clients. They blast the upper and middle back muscles. They do a great job for your biceps too, especially if you use an underhand grip like you would for Chin-Ups. Horizontal Pulls are easier than Pull-Ups, and can be done in many different areas. Some of those areas include bars on a playground (like shown below with our client, Christine), the handles on a dip machine, arms of two treadmills side by side (don’t do this during peak hours in a gym), or a smith machine bar (again don’t do this during peak hours) to name a few. The higher the bar is, the easier the exercise is. Lower the bar to make the exercise more difficult. Here is our client, Christine performing a Horizontal Pull at a playground in Washington, DC.







Horizontal Pulls are a great exercise to superset with Push-Ups and Bodyweight Squats so you can get a full body workout anywhere! We also will put together drop set workouts starting with pull-ups, then dropping to a low level Horizontal Pull until failure, then raising the bar to have the client do more reps. Here is an example


Pull-Ups – Failure
Horizontal Pulls (Smith Machine bar, quadriceps height) – Failure
Horizontal Pulls (Smith Machine bar, chest height) – Failure