Balancing Push and Pull: Why Your Back Needs More Work Than Your Chest

A push pull ratio is the balance between pressing exercises, where you push weight away from your body, and pulling exercises, where you draw weight towards it. Most coaches suggest doing at least as much pulling as pushing, and many recommend a little more, somewhere between 1:1 and 1:2 in favour of pulling, measured in hard sets per week. The reason is practical rather than scientific precision: pushing is what people enjoy and what a desk-bound day already encourages, while the upper back is easy to neglect. A programme with more pulling tends to keep shoulders comfortable and posture capable. There is no magic number, but if you press more than you pull, you are probably out of balance.

When I look at a new client’s previous programme, the pattern is predictable: bench press, shoulder press, push-ups, dips, triceps, and one or two token sets of lat pulldowns at the end, if there was time. That is the problem this post tries to fix.

What counts as push and what counts as pull

	Push	Pull
Horizontal	Bench press, dumbbell press, push-up, cable chest press	Seated cable row, dumbbell row, barbell row, inverted row
Vertical	Overhead press, Arnold press, landmine press	Lat pulldown, pull-up, chin-up
Small muscles	Triceps extensions, front raises	Face pulls, rear delt flies, biceps curls

Ideally, balance both directions as well. A programme with plenty of pulldowns but no rows, or plenty of rows but no overhead work, still leaves gaps.

Why pressing tends to win

• You can see it. Chest, front shoulders and arms show in a mirror. The muscles between your shoulder blades do not.
• Bench press is a status lift. Nobody asks how much you row.
• Daily life already pushes us forward. Laptops, phones and driving all bring the arms in front of the body for hours. The upper back rarely gets asked to do much.
• Pulling feels harder to do well. Rows and pulldowns are easy to do badly, with momentum and shrugging, so people get less from them and do fewer.

What a lopsided ratio can lead to

I want to be careful here. Posture is not a simple cause of pain, and a slightly rounded upper back is not a medical problem. Our piece on the perfect posture myth covers that. But training is about capacity, and a programme that develops the front of the shoulder far more than the back tends to show a few typical things:

• Shoulders that feel tight or pinchy during overhead pressing.
• A bench press that stalls because the upper back cannot hold a stable base.
• Difficulty keeping the shoulder blades still during rows, which gives the impression of a weak back.
• Arms that sit rolled forward when you relax, which many people dislike visually.

More pulling will not cure everything, but it is cheap insurance and it improves pressing strength too. If shoulders already hurt, check with your GP or a physiotherapist first rather than training through it.

How to count your ratio

Count hard working sets, not exercises and not total reps. Warm-up sets do not count.

1. Write down a typical week. Every upper body exercise and the number of working sets.
2. Label each set push or pull. Biceps curls count as pull; triceps work counts as push. Some coaches leave arm work out. Either is fine if you are consistent.
3. Add them up. For example, 12 push sets and 6 pull sets is 2:1 in favour of pushing.
4. Adjust. The simplest fix is not to remove pressing but to add pulling, or to swap one press for one row.

A sample balanced week

Here is a two-session upper body split I might use with a client training twice a week, around their lower body work:

Session A

• Dumbbell bench press: 3 sets
• Seated cable row: 3 sets
• Lat pulldown: 3 sets
• Face pull: 2 sets

Session B

• Standing overhead dumbbell press: 3 sets
• Single-arm dumbbell row: 3 sets
• Push-up: 2 sets
• Rear delt fly: 2 sets

That is 11 sets of pull to 8 sets of push, a ratio of about 1.4:1. It is achievable with a cable station, a lat pulldown, a seated row and dumbbells, which is the kit we use in the studio.

Getting more from your pulling

The ratio only helps if the pulling is done well.

• Start the rep with the shoulder blade. Draw it back or down slightly before the elbow bends.
• Pause at the end. A one-second squeeze on rows teaches the upper back to work.
• Control the return. Let the shoulder blade move forward fully under control. Stretch matters as much as squeeze.
• Do not shrug. If your shoulders creep towards your ears, the weight is too heavy.
• Use face pulls. Small, cheap, and good for the rear shoulder. Our guide to the face pull covers the setup.

This is where a coach is useful. Rows and pulldowns done with momentum look identical to the untrained eye but train very different things. In a private personal training session I will usually cue the pulling movements far more than the presses.

Does this apply to legs too?

A similar idea exists for the lower body, balancing knee-dominant movements like squats with hip-dominant movements like deadlifts and hip thrusts. The logic is the same: train both sides of the joint so that neither falls well behind.

Questions we get asked

Is 2:1 pulling to pushing too much?

For a short period, to correct an obvious imbalance, it can be useful. Long term, many people settle somewhere between 1:1 and 1.5:1. Your goals and history decide.

Do push-ups count if I already do bench press?

Yes. Every hard pressing set counts towards your push total, whatever the equipment.

Will more pulling fix rounded shoulders?

It can help your upper back become stronger and more able to hold a position, but posture is also habit. Our article on exercises for rounded shoulders covers a fuller approach.

Do I need a trainer to balance my programme?

Not to count sets. Where a trainer helps is making the pulling actually work. Details and prices for 1-1 training with Artem are on our training page.

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