A major shortcoming of most known bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) is that they lack sufficient ductility, or toughness, when fabricated under conditions resulting in bulk glass formation. To address this, processing techniques to improve ductility that mechanically affect the glass have been developed, however it remains unclear for which BMG formers they work, and by how much. We show here that, instead of manipulating the glass state, an applied strain rate can excite the liquid, and simultaneous cooling results in freezing of the excited liquid into a glass with a higher fictive temperature. Microscopically, straining causes the structure to dilate, hence “pulling” the structure energetically up the potential energy landscape. Upon further cooling, the resulting excited liquid freezes into an excited glass that exhibits enhanced ductility. We use Zr44Ti11Cu10Ni10Be25 to demonstrate how pulling BMGs through this excited liquid cooling methods can lead to a tripling of the bending ductility.