Most lifters treat pull day as an afterthought — a few sets of rows, some curls, and out the door. That approach leaves serious growth on the table. A well-structured pull day should hit the back from multiple angles, use smart intensity techniques, and give the biceps the targeted attention they deserve.
Here is a complete six-exercise pull day built around hypertrophy. Every exercise earns its spot, every technique has a reason, and the whole session should take about 60 to 75 minutes.
What Are Feeder Sets and Why Should You Use Them?
The workout opens with lat pulldowns using feeder sets — a warm-up method that doubles as a technique primer. Instead of jumping straight into heavy working sets, you perform four progressively heavier sets of 10 reps before arriving at your all-out failure set.
Here is how it breaks down:
- Set 1: Light weight, RPE 4-5. Blood flow only.
- Set 2: Slightly heavier, RPE 6-7. Starting to feel resistance.
- Set 3: Moderate weight, RPE 7-8. Two or three reps left in the tank.
- Set 4 (failure set): RPE 10. Every rep you can get.
After resting two to three minutes, you perform one more set to failure at the same weight, aiming to match your first failure set. Fatigue will typically drop you to seven or eight reps. Finish with a mini drop set — strip 30% of the weight and crank out four to five more reps.
The common objection to feeder sets is that they fatigue you before the working set. That concern is valid for heavy compound lifts where load is king. But for mind-muscle connection exercises like lat pulldowns, feeder sets accomplish two critical things:
- They groove your movement pattern. By the time you reach the failure set, your lats are firing properly instead of your arms doing all the work.
- They calibrate your working weight. If your third feeder set feels heavy, you know not to jump too much. If it feels easy, you load up.
Grip recommendation: Use a middle overhand grip at roughly 1 to 1.5 times shoulder width. Going too wide shortens the range of motion. Going too narrow shifts the load toward the biceps. Keep your grip consistent across all feeder sets since the whole point is establishing a groove and a strength baseline.
Use straps on your failure sets. Grip strength should never be the limiting factor for back development. If you do not have straps, switch to a thumbless (false) grip — it is one of the single best cues for engaging the lats over the forearms.
One more thing: do not be overly rigid. Allow your torso to lean and move naturally within reason. Stiffness does not equal control. Controlled fluidity through the range of motion often produces a stronger contraction and a deeper stretch, especially on the eccentric.
How Should You Structure Rows for Complete Back Development?
Every pull day needs at least two movement patterns: a vertical pull (like the lat pulldown above) and a horizontal pull. Vertical pulls emphasize the lats and teres muscles. Horizontal pulls shift the focus to the traps and rhomboids of the mid-back, especially when you actively squeeze the shoulder blades together at peak contraction.
For the horizontal pull, use a chest-supported machine row for three sets of 10 to 12 reps with an omni-grip approach — a different grip on each set:
- Set 1: Wide overhand grip
- Set 2: Slightly closer grip
- Set 3: Neutral or underhand grip
No access to a chest-supported machine? These alternatives work well:
- T-bar row (plate-loaded or machine)
- Helms row — dumbbells with your chest braced against the back of an incline bench
The reason for varying your grip is simple: the back is an extraordinarily complex structure made up of many different muscles that pull on the skeleton from different angles. Rotating your grip across sets hits more of that musculature than repeating the same angle three times.
Are Dumbbell Lat Pullovers Actually Worth Doing?
The lat pullover has been under fire recently. Some coaches argue that because the lats lack optimal leverage when the arms are overhead, the exercise is a poor choice for lat development.
Here is the counterpoint: as long as the bulk of the muscle fibers sit behind the active joint — which they do during a pullover — those fibers still have leverage on that joint. The lats are not optimally positioned, but they are far from inactive. They experience meaningful stretch and tension, particularly in the bottom (lengthened) portion of the movement.
That is why this workout uses bottom-half dumbbell lat pullovers only — completely cutting out the top half of the range of motion where there is virtually zero lat tension. You stay in the stretched position, where the muscle is loaded under length.
Two practical indicators that this exercise works:
- A deep, unmistakable lat stretch during performance. Not every exercise delivers this.
- Consistent soreness for a day or two afterward. Soreness alone is not a reliable growth signal, but when it lines up with a strong stretch sensation over years of training, it is a reasonable proxy for activation.
The definitive answer would require a longitudinal hypertrophy study comparing lat thickness in a pullover group versus a non-pullover group over several months. That study does not exist yet. Until it does, bottom-half pullovers remain a solid inclusion as a stretch-focused lat accessory.
How to Superset Pullovers With Static Lat Stretches
Pair two sets of bottom-half pullovers with 30-second static lat stretches per side. Grab something solid, lean your hips back, and hold the stretch at about a 7 out of 10 intensity — just shy of discomfort.
The superset structure:
- Pullovers → stretch right lat 30s → stretch left lat 30s → rest 30s
- Pullovers → stretch left lat 30s → stretch right lat 30s → done
Alternate which side you stretch first on each set to keep the stimulus balanced. Interset stretching — stretching the target muscle between working sets — has growing evidence supporting its role in promoting additional hypertrophy, likely by enhancing the stretch-mediated growth signal.
What Is the Best Way to Train Rear Delts and Upper Back?
Face pulls are a staple, but most people lock themselves into one cable height and one pulling angle. A better approach is omni-directional face pulls — three sets of 12 to 15 reps, each from a different cable position:
- Set 1: Cable low, pull from low to high
- Set 2: Cable at shoulder height, pull straight across
- Set 3: Cable high, pull down toward the eyes
This covers the rear delts, mid-traps, rhomboids, and rotator cuff from three distinct vectors. While a vertical pull and a horizontal pull are the two non-negotiable movement patterns for back growth, adding multi-angle isolation work like this is likely more optimal when the goal is maximizing total back and rear delt development.
Keep the weight moderate and the contractions deliberate. This is not the exercise to chase progressive overload. Focus on squeezing the target muscles at peak contraction on every rep.
Should You Train Biceps With Heavy Weight?
Most lifters default to high-rep pump work for biceps and never touch anything below 10 reps. That is a mistake. Including a low-rep, progressive-overload phase for biceps is important for long-term growth.
Use an EZ bar bicep curl for three sets of six to eight reps with meaningful weight. Treat this the way you would a bench press or deadlift:
- Track your weights from session to session
- Aim to increase load or reps week to week
- Keep form consistent — a small amount of hip drive on the concentric is acceptable as long as you control every eccentric
This is not about ego curling. It is about ensuring your biceps receive a progressive tension stimulus, not just metabolic stress from pump sets. Both matter. Most people only do one.
Do Lengthened Partial Reps Build More Muscle?
The final exercise is bottom-half preacher curls — two sets of 10 to 12 reps using only the stretched portion of the range of motion (roughly 0 to 50 degrees of elbow flexion).
This is grounded in research. A 2021 study split subjects into three groups:
- Bottom-half preacher curls (0-50 degrees of elbow flexion)
- Top-half preacher curls (80-130 degrees of elbow flexion)
- Control group (no training)
After five weeks, the bottom-half group saw more than twice the muscle thickness gains compared to the top-half group. The study’s authors also highlighted a broader body of literature pointing toward the same conclusion: training a muscle at longer lengths is disproportionately important for hypertrophy.
Practical tips for bottom-half preacher curls:
- Train one arm at a time. Start with your weaker arm and match the reps with your stronger arm. This prevents asymmetries from developing.
- Focus on the stretch. Mentally direct all tension into one bicep at a time. The single-arm setup makes this dramatically easier.
- Do not bounce out of the bottom. Control the turnaround point where the bicep is at its longest. That is where the growth stimulus is highest.
Lengthened partials are not a replacement for full range of motion training. They are a targeted addition — a way to overload the most hypertrophic portion of the strength curve for a muscle that many lifters struggle to grow.
The Complete Pull Day Workout
| Exercise | Sets x Reps | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Lat Pulldown (feeder sets) | 4 feeders + 2 failure sets | Mini drop set on final set |
| Chest-Supported Machine Row | 3 x 10-12 | Different grip each set |
| Bottom-Half Dumbbell Lat Pullover | 2 x 10-12 | Superset with lat stretch |
| Omni-Directional Face Pull | 3 x 12-15 | Low, mid, high cable position |
| EZ Bar Bicep Curl | 3 x 6-8 | Progressive overload focus |
| Bottom-Half Preacher Curl | 2 x 10-12 | One arm at a time |
Frequently Asked Questions
How often should you do a pull day in a PPL split?
Most people benefit from training each muscle group twice per week, which means running the full push-pull-legs cycle twice across seven days. If you can only train four or five days per week, a single pull day still works — you may just want to add slightly more volume per session to compensate for the reduced frequency.
Can you replace the machines with free weights?
Yes. The chest-supported row can become a Helms row or barbell row. The lat pulldown can become a pull-up or chin-up (with weight added once bodyweight becomes easy). Face pulls require a cable, but band pull-aparts are a serviceable substitute. The principles — vertical pull, horizontal pull, varied angles, and lengthened-position bicep work — matter more than the specific equipment.
Building a stronger, thicker back takes consistent effort and smart exercise selection. If you are tracking your pull day sets and weights over time, you are already ahead of most people in the gym. A simple set tracker on your phone can make the difference between guessing and actually progressing.