How To Build Bigger Lats – Latissimus Dorsi Workout - bodybuilding110

Your back includes some of the largest muscles in the body, muscles that are used every day to support your spine and body. The back muscles also make up some of the muscles of the core, particularly the lats.

Developing these muscles will not only give your body great proportion, it will help you have a strong, sturdy base for all kinds of daily activities.

The lats, aka the latissimus dorsi, are the large muscles of the back. These muscles are located on either side of the back and travel from the back of the shoulder all the way down to the hips.

The lat muscles are involved in pulling motions, like pulling open a door or, in exercise, doing a pull-up.

Because of that movement, typical lat exercises involve a pulling or rowing motion. The following exercises show a variety of ways you can work the lat muscles using dumbbells and resistance bands.

Keep in mind these are large muscles so you can typically use a heavier weight, depending on the exercise.

CHIN-UPS will do a great job at this task. Find a pull-up bar, position your hands on it at shoulder width and start lifting all the way up until you reach your clavicle, just below your chin and above your breastbone. You don’t need any machines or equipment other than a pull-up bar, which you can buy online and attach to your door frame with relative ease.

LAT PULLDOWNS are also an awesome exercise to activate your lats. Take a supinated grip on a lat pulldown machine with a normal lat pulldown bar. Your arms should be positioned at shoulder width, which will let your shoulders stay safe in a position of external rotation. Also, make sure to keep your chest up – don’t let it fall while you’re doing the movement.

Your lat exercises should end with a shoulder adduction to get the optimal results. If you look at the angle of the muscle fibers, you can also figure out the angle at which you need to do your rowing movements to optimize their effectiveness as well. Isolation exercises will get this done, which is why I prefer the single arm row on a cable machine – it places a perpetual tension on the lats and boosts muscle gains. The cable should be at eye level and should be pulled into position below your sternum. You can do this on a bench for extra stability when you’re lifting a lot of weight. Since this is an exercise that targets only a few muscles, your body shouldn’t move to make sure that the lats are getting all the attention they need.

WORKOUT

For best effect, do two sets of chin-ups or pulldowns with a supinated grip for six to ten reps and one set of single arm rows on a cable machine for eight to twelve reps. Pay extra attention to the first exercise since you can focus more on your muscle contractions. Finally, make sure to add weight whenever you feel that the current one is too light and you can do the exercise with relative ease. Doing this will ensure that you keep your gains constant and your muscles as stressed as possible. Make sure to always practice proper form too.