Is the Pullover a Back or Chest Exercise?

Is the Pullover a Back or Chest Exercise?
Yes. And Here’s Why You Should Do It.

TAGS BACK, BODYBUILDING, EXERCISE COACHING, PECS
You might remember golden era bodybuilders doing the pullover, their bodies arching across benches, lats flared wide, pumping out reps. Seasoned lifters have long known about this exercise, but these days, it’s rare to see someone do it.

But is a back or a chest exercise? Should you include it with upper-body pulling work or upper-body pushing? Even practitioners squabble about it.

If you haven’t done it in a while, here’s a reminder: The toughest part occurs when the arms are flexed overhead, and it gets much easier when your arms are perpendicular to your torso. This means the resistance profile of the pullover has an extremely steep descending curve when you do it with free weights.

Let’s go over the standard variations, dig into some research, discuss the variations you can do for stiff shoulders, and then get into the modifications that’ll improve the resistance profile so you can make more gains.

But first, the elephant in the room…

Though we’ll discuss it in depth, research is inconclusive about whether pullovers are best for pectoralis major (chest) or latissimus dorsi (back). However, I feel it trains the back more robustly, applying a much greater mechanical stimulus on the lats than the chest.

Performing pullovers with back training has never interfered with my subsequent push session. Therefore, my bias is to include pullovers with the rest of my pulling movements during back training. You’ll see why.

Why Is There Controversy Over This Exercise?
The pullover is a resisted shoulder extension. So which muscles are contributing the most during the shoulder extension: pecs or lats?

Well, if you look up “shoulder extension” in an anatomy textbook, it’ll be listed as an action of the latissimus dorsi, not the pectoralis major. Case closed, right?

Not so fast. The truth is more nuanced. Textbooks provide muscle actions from the anatomical arms-at-sides position. The pullover is performed overhead, toward end-range shoulder flexion (around 100-180 degrees).

To address the pecs versus lats question, we must make educated interpretations based on anatomy and muscle physiology. First, we need a solid framework to understand a muscle’s effectiveness for a given action, such as shoulder extension.

The action of a muscle describes how it tends to move a joint when it shortens (concentric contraction). A shoulder extensor has a line of action behind the center of the shoulder. It crosses behind the joint– when this muscle shortens, it pulls the shoulder into extension.
A muscle’s effectiveness for producing a given action is the muscle “moment,” which is determined by the product of muscle moment arm (distance between the muscle’s line of action and the center of joint) and muscle force (end-to-end pull). This is basic physics: Torque = Force x Distance.
Muscle actions seem straightforward, but actual application of these principles to predict the effectiveness of an exercise for training a given muscle is much more complex.

Muscle moment arms change during a movement as muscles bend and wrap around bone. (8) This is why we can’t simply reference the textbook action of a muscle and call it a day. Special techniques are required to measure muscle moment arms. Even the thickness of a muscle due to hypertrophy can affect moment arms. (10)

It’s not possible to directly measure muscle force from a single muscle during exercise. It’s tempting, but incorrect, to infer force from technologies such as surface EMG. More on this later.

To make valid conclusions about an exercise, basic anatomy is a good place to start.

When Should I Do The Pullover?
For hypertrophy, place pullovers toward the end of the workout, aiming for 2-3 moderate-to-high (10-20) rep sets with a weight that approaches failure. Leave 1-3 reps in reserve.

The pullover undoubtedly trains part of the pectoralis major, latissimus dorsi, and other muscles including the serratus anterior, triceps brachii, teres major, abs, and more. So when should you do them?

It depends. When used to restore overhead range of motion, program them frequently (3-5 times per week) to maximize total weekly time under tension. This may mean you do them on both push day and pull day. Load them lighter initially and gradually build as tolerated by the shoulder.

The pullover undoubtedly trains part of the pectoralis major. By the same logic, the chin-up does too. Yet we don’t commonly program this exercise on an upper-body push day.

To be truly evidence-based, we must combine the best available research with our own experiences. Rarely does this mean hard-and-fast rules. Program the pullover how you see fit.