How to Activate Your Lats for Better Back Workouts
Want to Supercharge Your Back Training & Finally Grow Your Lats? Read This
If you want to be strong — and look the part — you’ve got to work on your lats. Let’s talk about why, and then how.
The lats, or latissimus dorsi, are the widest muscles in the body. When seen from behind, they create the classic V-taper as they spread across mid and lower-back. Your lats are essential for everything from pull-ups to powerful hugs. From a movement perspective, they help you swim, climb, pull, and chop.
If you want to really train your lats effectively, though, you need to go beyond how they create movement and master how they create stability. Here, your lats are essential in squatting, cleaning, deadlifting, and bench-pressing — even though they are not the prime movers. Or not moving at all! Isometrically tensing (without shortening or lengthening) your lats creates strong, efficient movement by preventing energy leaks and supporting your spine, preparing your body to lift heavy weights more safely and efficiently.
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Unfortunately, a lot of beginner lifters have trouble "finding their lats," or getting them to activate during exercise. What follows is a crash course in everything lats, from how they function in various movements to how to train them properly for strength and size.
How to Activate Your Lats
Your lats insert into your upper arm. Specifically, the floor of the inter-tubercular groove on the front of your upper arm. When they contract, they pull each arm inward, down and behind you, and rotate the front of the humerus toward your center. You’ll feel that squeeze most deeply just under the back of the armpit – and you can use that sensation as a green-light cue before every pull, press, hinge, or squat.
Lat Function in Inverted Rows and Pull-ups
To improve your lat function in pulling motions, push the bar, handle, or dumbbell down toward your feet before you start. This is especially helpful for exercisers who tend to be upper trap-dominant. Once you feel your lats engage, maintain that tension throughout the movement.
Lat Function in Deadlifts
If it’s heavy, you want it close to your center of mass. That’s biomechanics for you. Deadlifters and Olympic weightlifters are instructed to keep the barbell tight to their shins; some hold it tightly enough to scrape up their skin. So, if there’s space between the bar and your shins (when the bar is below your knees), you can be sure that your lats aren't engaged enough.
Deadlift Drill
To fire up your lats for deadlifts, take a dowel (or unloaded bar) and anchor it to a post via a medium-thickness exercise band. Here, you’ll perform slow Romanian deadlifts minor knee-bend only). Move away from the post until the band has some real tension at the top of the movement. It should be challenging, but you should still be able to keep great contact throughout the movement.
Lat Integration With Core Work
We've talked about stability in relation to your lats. But as you might expect, your core is also key for real stability. You create 360º stability via isometric contraction of your abs, including rectus abdominis, your obliques (internal and external), and your lats — as well as your deeper core muscles.
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360º Core Drill
Laying back on the floor, pull yourself into a partial crunch (flexing your trunk only as far as the bottom of your shoulder blades). You may also opt to do this on a bench or stability ball for greater range. Hold a dumbbell in both hands and extend it over your center until your arms are straight. Bring the dumbbell as far behind you as possible without bending your elbows or changing your trunk angle.
Start light and find the heaviest weight you can move through a full range of motion.
Do Wide-Grip Pulldowns Build Wider Lats?
Paying attention to your sensations, known as the mind-muscle connection in bodybuilding, is important. But what are you feeling during wide-grip pulldowns and pull-ups?
It’s possible that it’s the smaller muscles of the back (including teres major and minor, the rhomboids, and the upper fibers of the traps). Since a full range of motion is best practice for muscle growth, a narrower hand position and neutral grip (with the palms facing each other) is a good default. Find a choice that allows your elbows to get to your sides and creates a big stretch at the top of the movement.
Is More Tension Better?
Beginning exercisers typically need a lot of practice when it comes to creating true tightness. It’s estimated that advanced exercisers can contract their muscles to near 100% of their true capacity but beginners clock in at 70-90%. Powerlifters and bodybuilders spend years — maybe decades — developing the ability to fully contract muscles. So, if you’re newer to getting tight (I mean really tight), you might need to practice this skill with high frequency.
For intermediate and advanced exercisers, the challenge is different. Here, you will need to create enough tension to complete each task without too much stiffness. Balance is important — especially when it comes to more athletic movements and general back health.
Exercises like passive hangs from the bar and overhead pull-downs can help maintain a more complete range of motion and lower-intensity exercises will help you explore it in greater depth.
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