Why Your Lats are Important

The latissimus dorsi, aka "the lats.” This is an incredible muscle and, in my opinion, a very important one. The lats are so large and powerful, yet often neglected because they aren’t as “showy” as other muscles like the pecs, biceps, and triceps. The main anatomical function of the lats is extension, adduction, and internal/medial rotation. The lats originate from the spinous processes of the T7-L5 vertebrae, iliac crest, thoracolumbar fascia, lower 3 or 4 ribs, and inferior angle of the scapula. From there, the insertion/attachment is in the bicipital groove of the humerus. Simply put, the lat attaches to your lower vertebra, the crest of your hips (on the back side), the last few ribs, and then inserts into your arm bone up by the shoulder. This is quite an expansive muscle that spans a large area of your body. Since the lats attach in the low back region and travel the whole expanse of the trunk, they also act as a core stabilizer. There’s a reason one of the requirements of setting up for big lifts like the squat, bench, and deadlift is to contract your lats; this provides more stability to the trunk when performing these lifts. More trunk stability, equates to better force transfer. Two of the cues that I use to help engage the lats during these lifts are to “bend the bar,” when performing the bench and deadlift, and to think about “pulling your elbows into your back pockets” when squatting. Performing these actions gives more stability to the trunk, which will aid you in bigger and stronger lifts.

The lats also act as a “humeral propeller.” Because they are a medial/internal rotator of the shoulder, they function in ballistic movements, like throwing, and in activities such as swimming, which require you to propel yourself through the water. Just another reason besides trunk stability to have strong lats.

However, the lats can cause some problems as well. One potential problem is internally rotated-or rounded-shoulders. This issue is usually due to tight lats from sitting all day in a hunched-over posture. There are other muscles that contribute to this posture, but the lats are a large component as well. I’ve talked about this issue in a previous post, Don’t Be a Seated Chair Victim. If the lats are tight, they will contribute to this poor posture and can cause shoulder dysfunction. Some good ways to keep those late from getting tight include:

-Rolling the with a lacrosse ball or foam roller

-Free Hanging (like you were going to do a pullup but just hang there) or full range of motion pullups (with a hang at the bottom)

-Prayer stretch, with the elbows placed on a bench

So now that we’ve covered how the lats work and how they can cause some problems, how can you make them stronger? 

Using different variations of horizontal and vertical pulls is a good place to start. I touched on vertical pulling in How to Increase Your Pullups. Horizontal pulls are even more important, however, when it comes to posture. Horizontal pulling will keep those shoulders from rounding forward and counteract the seated posture that oh-so-many of us are stuck in all day. Just a short list of some of my favorite back/lat exercises include:

DB Rows

Pull Ups

T-Bar Rows

Inverted Rows with varying grips

Lat Pulldowns

And yes, there are many more lat/back exercises to choose from, with all their variations. These are just a few general exercises to give you an idea for the types of exercises to be doing. From there you can change tempos, add accommodating resistance, perform them unilaterally (one arm at a time) or bilaterally (both arms at the same time), and tweak many more variables in order to add some variety to the lifts. 

The lats are a very important muscle when it comes to performance and training. Keep them healthy and strong, and you’ll definitely see some benefit carry over to other aspects of your training.

Ryan Goodell, CSCS

For consultation/personal training/coaching inquiries email: ryangoodell@weightsandstuff.com

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6 Ways to Increase Your Push-Ups

Push-ups are a great upper body exercise. However, if you cannot perform many of them from the ground, they can be a self-defeating exercise. Here is a great push-up progression from easiest to hardest that will have you increasing the number of push-ups you can perform in no time.

Starting with the easiest, the incline barbell push up, performed on a squat rack. This one is easily adjustable by moving the bar lower on the rack, in order to slowly progress to the floor.

 

Progressing from the incline barbell push-up you have one of two options. If you have a band, you can perform a slingshot push-up, which is demonstrated bellow. If not, you can perform a push-up from your knees; this is also demonstrated bellow. The slingshot push-up is great because as you go towards the floor, the band will stretch. When pressing back up, the band will assist you from the hardest position of the push-up (the bottom). Using the push-up from the knees will make the movement easier by changing the leverages so they are more in your favor. 

Next in the progression comes the conventional push-up, the gold standard in the push-up progression. Adding the extra length of your body will make the movement harder, as compared with doing the push-up from your knees.

If you want to take your push-up game to the next level, these next two are for you. Now that you’ve mastered regular push-ups, how do you make them harder? If this sounds like something you are interested in, banded and chain weighted push-ups are for you. Using a harder push-up variation will make regular push-ups feel easier and allow you to do more of them. You can make either of these harder by using a stronger band or adding more chains.

Where do you fall on the spectrum of this push-up progression? The aforementioned push-up variations are great ways to increase the number you can do, to work your way to actually doing regular push-ups, and to make regular push-ups even harder. Leave a comment below and let me know what you think or other push-up variations that have worked for you. I hope this helps you on your journey to performing more push-ups.

Ryan Goodell, CSCS

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Increase Your Pull-Ups

The infamous pull-up that oh so many people struggle with: how does one go about doing more of them? There is the classic plan-just doing more pull-ups every workout. This attempt depends on the hope that by just doing more of them, the amount you can do in one set till failure will increase. This may work for a time, and get you from 5 to 7 pull-ups (figure 1), but is this the best way to go about this?

Figure 1: Little guy doing pull-ups.

In my experience, the answer to the above question is no. A way to increase the number of pull-ups you can do is to add variety to your pull-up programing. When I say “variety,” I’m talking about vertical pull variations, horizontal pull variations, super sets, weighted pulls, ultra-high repetition pulls, and varying grips with all the aforementioned ways to add variety.  

Another point to take into consideration is that pull-ups are a relative strength exercise because your body is the resistance, so the number you can do is relative to your weight. I’ve discussed this concept of relative strength in my other article, Strength is King.

I see most people in the gym attempting to increase how many pull-ups they can do, using only higher repetition/muscular endurance methods. If you only do higher repetition work, you are missing a huge piece of the puzzle. That piece is absolute strength. Back strength is possibly more important when it comes to increasing the amount of pull-ups you can do. 

For example, imagine a 200-pound male that can do 10 pull-ups. His body weight is a certain percentage, let’s say ~75%, of his maximum. If he does only muscular endurance exercise, his weight, relative to his absolute strength, stays at the same percentage. If that relative percentage of his maximal back strength decreases, the amount of effort that goes into completing each rep decreases as well. With the endurance exercises, your strength increase may be same or minimal, which is probably where the increase in the amount of pull-ups you can do comes from. The second possibility is that the endurance work has only taught you to grind through 1-2 more reps. If you increase your strength, however, your body weight relative to your maximal strength “feels lighter.” Then, your body weight is, for this example, 60% of your maximal strength. When your body weight is a lower percentage of your max, you will be able to do more pull-ups.

Simply put, do heavy weighted pull-ups in the 6-8 rep range, and switch up grips. You will be stronger-or weaker-with different grip variations. Heavy lat pulldowns following the heavy weighted pull-ups are beneficial, too. 

If you can’t get one pull-up, still work on increasing your strength. You will need to focus more on relatively heavy lat pulldowns and rows. 

This is just one of the major problems I notice when people are trying to increase the amount of pull-ups they can do. There are tons of pull variations and little things that you can change around, but I find that keeping it simple and using vertical (e.g, pull-up variations, lat pulldowns) and horizontal pulls (e.g. single arm rows, T-bar rows) are a good place to begin. Before you know it you’ll be doing pull-ups like a champ (figure 2).

Figure 2: Guy who has a strong back doing a lot of pull-ups.

Ryan Goodell, CSCS

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