Behind the Neck Wide Grip Lat Pulldown – Potentially Dangerous Exercise #2

This is a dysfunctional movement in a rarely adopted posture (I.e pulling loads down behind your neck with a wide grip). The exercise places stresses across the shoulder joint and cervical spine. Many clients who have limited shoulder flexibility and/ or poor posture perform this exercises utilising trunk flexion with a kyphotic spine (i.e round back/ hunchback) to pull the bar behind the neck. –

This posture is also commonly, incorrectly adopted in order to activate the abdominal muscle to assist pulling heavier loads. Pulling the bar behind the neck may also increase the activation of the upper trapezius muscles which originate on the cervical spine (which is in a poked neck position) . This has the potential to aggravate or initiate neck pain. –

An alternative exercise that would increase the effectiveness of the exercise and reduce the potential risk of injury would be the wide grip front lat pulldown and underhand close grip pulldown. The underhand close grip pull down places the lattisimus dorsi muscle in a lengthened position with a direct line of pull from the origin to insertion – unlike the wide grip. But in saying that both are favoured over the behind neck wide grip pull down.