reckonerCable pull-through
Face away from a low cable with the rope between your legs, hinge, then stand up against it. The load pulls you backwards rather than down, which means you can learn a hinge without a heavy spine load, and it means the hardest part is the top rather than the bottom.
Hinge at the hips, squeeze glutes to stand.
- Pattern
- Hinge
- Trains
- Hamstrings, glutes
- Kit
- Cable
- Loading
- A weight you choose
- Reckoner prescribes
- 3 sets of 8 to 12 reps at RPE 8
- Progression step
- 5 kg once the top of the range is clean
- Skill
- Some technique
- Recovery cost
- Low
- Not prescribed if you have declared
- Lower back
Muscles worked
How to do it
Set the cable at the lowest pulley
Rope attachment. Straddle the cable facing away from the machine, reach between your legs and take the rope in both hands.
Walk out until there is tension at the top
Two or three steps forward. You want the weight already lifted off the stack when you are standing upright, so there is something to resist for the whole rep.
Hinge at the hips, squeeze glutes to stand
That is the cue on your wrist. Push the hips straight back and let the rope travel between your legs. Knees softly bent and staying there, back flat.
Stand up by driving the hips forward
The rope comes forward because your hips did. Finish standing tall with the glutes squeezed and stop there, without leaning back.
What goes wrong
Pulling the rope with your arms
This is the fault that empties the exercise out. Your arms are ropes: they connect the handle to your hips and they do nothing else. If your elbows bend, the cable is being rowed rather than hinged and your hamstrings are barely involved.
Squatting it
Bending the knees and dropping down is easier than hinging and it looks similar from the front. Keep the knee angle fixed and think about your hips traveling backwards until they cannot go further.
Expecting the bottom to be the hard part
Unlike a Romanian deadlift, the resistance here is horizontal, so the top of the rep is where it is hardest and the bottom is where it is easiest. That is a reason to have it as well as a hinge with a barbell rather than instead of one.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, from 35 kg, run through the real engine. Nothing below was typed in: the prescription, the decision and the sentence beside it all come from the same code that writes your week.
| Week | Prescribed | What it did |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 x 8 at 35 kg | More reps 8 → 9 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 2 | 3 x 9 at 35 kg | More reps 9 → 10 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 3 | 3 x 10 at 35 kg | More reps 10 → 11 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 4 | 3 x 11 at 35 kg | More reps 11 → 12 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 5 | 3 x 12 at 35 kg | Deload 40% of sets offFive weeks of building, then one week lighter. About 40% of the sets come off. The load holds and your reps stay where you earned them, so you keep the strength and lose the fatigue. |
| 6 | 2 x 12 at 35 kg | Load up 35 kg → 40 kgYou hit the top of the range at RPE 7, so the bar goes up 5 kg to 40 kg and reps reset to eight. The lighter week is over, so this is back to three sets. |
Real engine output, not an illustration. Every row was produced by running the engine itself when this page was generated.
The full rule, and why the reps move before the load does, is in how Reckoner decides to add weight.
Questions people ask
What is a pull-through actually for?
Two things. It is a low risk way to learn what a hinge feels like, because a cable pulling you backwards cannot crush you the way a loaded bar can. And it loads the top of hip extension, which a Romanian deadlift barely touches.
Am I meant to feel this in my glutes or my hamstrings?
Both, and which one dominates varies by person and by how far you hinge. The library records hamstrings first and glutes second on this movement. Neither answer means you are doing it wrong.
Will Reckoner give me this with a lower back restriction?
No. Lower back is the one restriction recorded against it, and it is the only one. Declare it in setup and this comes out of your plan along with every other hinge.
Similar movements
Reckoner eases the load first when this lift stalls, and offers one of these only if it stalls again after that. A lift already as light as your kit goes has no load left to ease, so the offer comes straight away. Each of them has a page.