It’s pretty rare that I get a question that I’ve not seen or been asked before (or asked myself), so when I do, I get pretty pumped.

That’s what happened the other day. Tom H. from the UK shot me an email, asking me something that had I not really been asked before, but showed a lot of intelligence on his part…dude did some thinking.

I’m paraphrasing here, but the basic gist of Tom’s email goes like this:

Why are "pulling" movements usually considered just supplementary exercises or as assistance work? Tom goes on to describe how most "tested" (be it in powerlifting, Olympic lifting, or pretty much any other lifting competitions) movements are extension movements – not flexion.

Meaning that during the exertion portion of the movement, joints are being opened – not closed. For example, when exerting during a triceps movement, you do it while extending your arm straight, thus ‘opening’ the elbow. This would be an extension movement. On the other hand, during a biceps movement, you exert when bringing your hand to your shoulder, thus ‘closing’ the elbow. This would be a flexion movement.

So, the question begs – why aren’t flexion movements generally treated as ‘primary’ exercises, and why aren’t they tested in competitions?

There are a ton of possible answers to these questions, and quite honestly, most (none?) of them will be "right" or "wrong". That said, here are my thoughts…

First of all, nobody ever said that you couldn’t make pulling movements a primary exercise instead of just accessory work. It all depends on what your training needs and what your goals are. Pulling is much more important than ‘pushing’ in combat sports (esp grappling), so anybody that participates in MMA, wrestling, BJJ, or the like would be smart to give pulling exercises primary focus (at least for a while) in their training. I know I did when I created the Championship Edition 2.0 MMA workout.

I feel one of the reasons why pulling movements generally aren’t done as primary exercises is that in many programs, primary exercises are concerned with improving strength (say building to a 5RM). When your training has this kinda focus, that work you do for that movement is going to have that focus. Or, in other words, you’re gonna be interested in always putting more weight on the bar.

With pulling movements, this isn’t always a good idea.

If you’re bench pressing, you either lift the weight or you don’t. Sure, you can cheat some by bouncing the weight off your chest. But when it comes to completing the rep, anything less than "lockout" isn’t a full lift.

Same kinda thing goes with the squat. Sure, you can not go down all the way, but to complete the lift, you’ve gotta lock the rep out.

Cheating or incomplete ROM aside, once you finally get to that point of the rep (and given proper exercise execution and ROM, it’s at the very beginning of the rep) that you’re testing strength, then it’s up to you to complete the rep. You can’t really cheat the weight up.

Now let’s look at a pulling movement like a bent row. Here, your strongest part of the movement (where the lifter is generally the strongest) isn’t at exercise completion – it’s when you start. (Yeah, I know this kinda thing varies from person to person and exercise to exercise. Just stick w/me for a minute.) You also won’t have a sticking point that if you "get through" it, you can complete the rep (like you might have with a bench press, squat, or the like). Once you stick on a bent row, that’s it – game over. You’re done.

As a result, it can lead to a lot of cheating when doing the exercise, and some pretty funky form. This is the same with all pulling movements.

When people cheat at ‘pushing’ exercises, it’s generally bouncing the bottom of the movement (bench, deadlift, turning a strict overhead press into a pushpress, etc) or cutting the ROM short (squat). Most of these exercises also have a sticking point as we just discussed.

However, when people cheat at ‘pulling’ movements, it’s generally using a bunch of swinging or body momentum. Think bent rows, DB rows, or barbell curls. And like we talked about before, there usually isn’t a sticking point in these movements.

When movements are tested in a competition – like a powerlifting meet, as long as proper ROM is maintained and other certain factors are met (e.g. – feet, ass, and shoulders stay put and don’t move in the bench press), nobody really gives a damn about form. If you get the weight gets lifted and the rep is completed, the lift is good. When going for a true max, many times form is kinda ugly, but that’s Ok. It’s a 1RM attempt – ugly form now and then is Ok (just don’t make it a regular thing) and getting through a sticking point can lead to that.

Imagine trying to do that with a pulling movement though – would never happen. To get more weight up, you’d have to cheat. And unless you bring something into play in order to maintain proper form (say leaning against a wall when doing curls), then it’s too hard to maintain that form.

Maintaining proper form when going for new maxes in pulling movements for less than 5-6 reps generally just results to lousy form. So why even mess with it? In my programs, when I’m doing heavy sets of pulling movements, there’s not really much need to go below 5-6 reps when looking to build strength.

Also, in my programs, because I always wanna make sure pulling and pushing movements are kept equal, though a pushing exercise might be deemed ‘primary’ and pulling exercise deemed ‘accessory’, the pulling movement will almost always have as much, if not more, volume than the primary movement, and generally, more of the volume will be done heavy when compared to the primary movement.

For example, say a program involves building up to a 3RM on the bench press, and after warming up, it takes you 8 sets (which would be a lot) to get there. You just did 24 total ‘work’ reps, with really only the last 2-3 sets being taxing. Then you might follow it up with heavy rows for 4 sets of 6-8 reps, which would be 24-32 total reps – and probably all sets would be taxing.

Just because pulling exercises aren’t always labeled as ‘primary’ doesn’t mean they get ‘secondary’ treatment. You just gotta make sure your program is designed correctly.