Looking for Help with Lats

Feeling the lats is all about movement of scapulas, you should protract the scapula to stretch the lats and retract and depress the scapula when lats contracts. After that, my advices are:

  • unilateral cable pull-dow (do it with the pulley of a double pulley, you should seat on the ground)
  • isometric hold + eccentric 3’’
  • 12-15 reps / set

Doing meadows rows with like a T-bar setup has really helped me in that department

Keep in the heavy /5RM stuff for the first 2 excercises, then do MMC higher rep work others have mentioned

You are doing the vertical pulling motion with the latest pulldowns but you also need a horizontal one as well, like a bent row or some variation .

While MMC is huge in my opinion (while obviously trying to move heavy weights), I think the talk about movement of the scapula is over emphasized when people discuss targeting the lats vs the rest of the back muscles.

The best results I got to my lats were when I learned to keep my elbows in front of my torso, keep my body upright during the movement (none of that leaning crap), abreviated the ROM to about the top 2/3 (stopping and holding for a moment right in front of my chin), and let my total sets creep up while keeping my rep range fairly low.

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If your not feeling the lats work, you might be using too much weight and other muscles(arms )might be dominating. Also don’t let your arms straighten out fully in the stretched position, this will help keep tension on back rather than arms(I’m pretty sure that was in a recent daily feature, works great).
Pre exhausting with pullovers is a top idea too.

Post up a vid of your form on some of the staple back movements.

Do you pull the weight all the way to your chest as quickly as possible, or are you holding the contraction for a slight pause and only going the point in the range of motion where your back is fully contracted? For most, that means not bringing the bar all the way to your sternum on lat pulldowns, or bent rows. There’s a point beyond which bis take over. Are you bis getting sore after back day?

And for the hell of it, here’s a few movements that really helped me feel my lats and bring out some detail during my contest prep:

The first one was always good to start back workouts with. You can really go pretty heavy on these. I just ramped explosive sets of 6-8 until I felt slightly challenged and ready. I believe they are advantageous over straight arm pulldowns in that regard, because they prime MMC the way straight arm pulldowns do AND prime the lats, core, hips, etc. for moving heavier weights forcefully. You’ll surely feel your lats after you do straight arm pulldowns, but feeling them and getting them pumped doesn’t necessarily translate over to feeling them on db rows…which has a different plane of motion.

The second video is better towards the end of a back workout, as they will fatigue you. It’s hard to do these and not use your lats. They are tougher than they look, so except to use baby weight :slight_smile:

Any tips for working lats when you have no access to cables? At the moment all I am doing is weighted pull ups.

[quote]xXSeraphimXx wrote:
Any tips for working lats when you have no access to cables? At the moment all I am doing is weighted pull ups.[/quote]

Do dumbbell rows after pullups…

Thanks for all the knowledge everyone! Unfortunately my gym frowns on taking video so I’d rather not. Thankfully I just had a back day with a (much) more experienced lifter than myself and we killed it. One very surprising exercise was doing standard bent over barbell rows and then immediately switching to a narrow underhand grip and doing another set. Man did I feel my lats on that second set!

There’s no substitute for being shown moves in person. Something I’ve been stubborn about but am coming to terms with! Very excited to hit some of these cables moves next week. Thanks again!

There are three main mechanisms believed to cause hypertrophy: Mechanical Tension, Muscular Damage and Metabolic Stress.

Your current scheme is emphasizing mechanical tension and while that’s a good thing since it tends to promote sarcomere hypertrophy, there are some things you should think about.

  1. To keep increasing sarcomere hypertrophy you need to keep increasing the tension by raising the weight, both in absolute terms (raising your 1RM) and in relative terms (as a percentage of your 1RM) Beginners can make great gains at as little as 50% of 1RM while advanced trainees may need to go as high as 90% of 1RM to see any progress. (most of us are somewhere in between)

  2. By using the same protocol all the time you’re leaving out gains you could be getting from sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. In order to take advantage of that you need to focus on metabolic stress, essentially a combination of lactic acid, reduced oxygen and cellular swelling. In other words, training with increased volume. Consider alternating your more strength based workouts with a more volume based protocol like say 4x10s. For exercises where the end position is difficult to maintain, bent rows for example, you could accentuate the effect by holding the weight at full contraction for a bit before lowering it. (not necessary, but an interesting variant)

  3. Muscle damage tends to be greatest in the eccentric phase of the lift so some options to work on that include adjusting your lifting tempo on the down stroke or lowering weights that are greater than your max. (make sure you’ve got a spotter if you’re going to do that of course) This protocol is pretty hard on recovery so use it sparingly.

Of course some other issues could be that you just need to do some pre-exhaust work to take the other muscles out of the picture or change your grip/posture/form to emphasize your lats more.

Arch your back during back exercises. Dorian Yates style. Do underhand exercises, forces you to use your lats rather than upper back.

Also, do pullovers at the beginning of the workout.

Watch this whole thing. For real.

[quote]Aopocetx wrote:

[quote]xXSeraphimXx wrote:
Any tips for working lats when you have no access to cables? At the moment all I am doing is weighted pull ups.[/quote]

Do dumbbell rows after pullups…[/quote]

And after those, do straight-arm kickbacks with lighter weight DBs. Keep the action going (not resting at the bottom). Explode up, then slowly lower in a non-stop fashion. These burn my lats like nothing else.

I prefer do heavy straight arm pull overs, back extension bench rows with narrow supinated grip. Use every rep range.
gironda pull ups are very good but are notbeasy for most people, progression is hard.

I’m getting some pretty good lat pumps lately by doing this on chest/back day:

Single arm lat pulls to warm up - sitting sideways (good stretch at the top, try to squeeze your elbow into your back pocket at the bottom)
Lat pulls - 5x10-12, reverse pyramid (rest-pause on set 1)
T - bar rows - 4x12-15, reverse pyramid (good stretch at bottom)
Single arm lat pulls again - 4x12-15 use a strap. Between sets, let the weight pull your arm up while you lean toward the stack, stretching the lat for thirty seconds. Those last two sets suck. Your forearm, shoulder, and lat will be on fire.

Best last feel and pump I’ve had so far.

I would switch the wide grip pull ups for chins.

There are a lot of good suggestions here and a lot of bad ones, but even the good ones won’t help people build lats unless they know how to engage them. You need a crazy arch during back movements, crazy like you see when that 120lb guy in you gym goes for the 300 pound bench press.

Bruh… Click >