Joseph Horrigan, a certified chiropractor, says that, the prime and secondary movers in the pullover exercise are the shoulder extensors, which include the teres major (upper lat), latissimus dorsi (lat), posterior deltoid (rear delt) and the long head of the triceps. Jones called the pullover machine as the “upper body squat”.
The actual movement which happens during the pullover is called the shoulder extension. In fact, it was seen that the main muscle been worked out during the pullover movement was the latissimus dorsi or the back muscle and the upper head of the triceps. Later, Arthur Jones took this movement to another level altogether, and called it the primary exercise for massive lat development and build the famous pullover machine at “Nautilus” which was used successfully by various world class athletes like Mike Mentzer, Casey Viator, Dorion Yates etc. This was said to extend the size of the rib cage. This program advised performing 20 reps of heavy squats, followed by a light weight pullover set of generally 15 reps or so. However, it was back in the 1920s & 30s when the movement caught the attention of people, as it was being propagated as a go-to movement for a bigger chest and rib-cage development, when done along with the brutal 20-rep squats. This exercise was primarily made famous initially by Arnold and his buddy athletes who used dumbbells and barbells heavily for pullover variations and had very impressive rib cage sizes. It was somewhere in 1911, when Alan Calvert, the founder of the famous Milo Barbell Company and Strength magazine, wrote that, “ barbell pull overs is the best exercise for developing a deep chest”, though he was not entirely right.
This helped in building the thickness in the upper torso, like that commonly seen in various yesteryear bodybuilders who had phenomenal pectoral development specially when they used to hit the side chest pose where the rib cage used to expand beautifully giving their chest a massive appearance. chest, back, triceps, abdominals, shoulders etc. Apart from that it worked the supporting muscles along the way i.e. However, in their own words, strongmen and bodybuilders performed this exercise mainly to expand the rib cage. Not a lot of research is done on this movement and its benefits. Even if it is done it is generally the last movement in the exercise spectrum which involves some substandard dumbbell as weight just to log the exercise as “done”.
“Pull overs” is a brilliant old school exercise movement which over the years has lost its sheen in this new era of high tech fitness.
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