Need help for lats

[Matthew]

How can I make them grow? It seems to be my lagging bodypart.

[Mr.Freeze]

what your trainning?what do you do for back exercise?details..

[madeincanada]

im guessing you are talkin about lat spread and sweep.

i like to pre exhaust my lats with wide grip chins. then go through my deads and rows then back to pulldowns

[ergie]

Go as wide as you can and do heavy chins, nothing works better IMO

[Matthew]

Arggghh. I've been doing wide chins as suggested here and they've been helping. Damn hard to do though as I never did them before. Thanks guys.

[ergie]

If you've never done them thats why you dont have big lats........ keep doing them and you'll get big lats its that simple

[O-Train]

lol...if it were that simple I think a lot more people would cast a bigger shadow. Training lats is counter-intuitive in that the way you should train is not the way you think you should train. A narrow grip will actually help to increase width and a wide grip will increase thickness. If you've ever disected a humans back (its pretty cool) then you'll understand where Im coming from. Basically just do heavy compund movements like deads, bent rows and wide grip chins. Also vary the grip, squeeze as hard as you can and go slow on the eccentric contraction (muscle lengthening). That should help.

[ergie]

So you've disected a humans back? :eek:

Heavy chins have worked over the years for me but then again I've always done lotsa deadlifting and narrow grip pulldowns so maybe that had something to do with it.

[O-Train]

Yeah, we got into the abdomen today...intestines are pretty cool looking. Our doner had an aortic aneurysm (basically his aorta exploded) he probably died really fast. I find deadlifts really good also for putting size on the back.

[ergie]

You pre-med or something? Yeah....... when I started deadlifting I started to get a thick back thats for sure.

[O-Train]

Im in Human Kinetics which is similar to pre-med since I basically take the same classes.

[crazycharlie9090]

Pull ups and deadlifts.... nuff said.

Really focus on the contractions and squeeze the crap outta every rep, works pretty good for me and the guys I train.

[bigdaddydrew123]

pull overs & deadlifts #1 over looked exercises for back

[crazycharlie9090]

pull overs & deadlifts #1 over looked exercises for back

I actually just added pullovers to my routine and I must say they work great.
To really isolate the lats, try doing them on a decline bench with a straight bar or an EZ bar. Make sure you really focus on pulling with you lats. I do this at the very end and bang out as many reps as I can to really get a good burn, Lats was one of my weakest points and these have really helped.

[Houstonbc]

try starting your back workout with lat excercises before anything else, if your a fairly heavy person i dont do the chins due to shoulder pains try starting with wide grip pulldowns and follow it up with another set of a different type of pulldown

[bottleneckblooz]

How the heck does deadlifting work your lats? I always thought that was a lower back movement. Do you use an over/under grip?
I don't feel lats as much as other bodyparts, but it doesn't stop mine from growing. In fact it's one body part, along with chest, that I have to hold back on so it doesn't get out of proportion with the rest of me.

[mandarb11]

Any widegrip excersise for width, close grip for thickness. Deadlifts build overall thickness as it is a compound excersise but would do little for lat width.

[L.W.]

See my post on Charles glass pulldowns in this thread too:

http://www.canadabodybuilding.com/forums/showthread.php?t=333

Extrme streching helps. RObert Kennedy recently said lat stretches are the most imprtnat thing you can do for width gains. At T3 we do them between sets and then after the whole workout for some intense and killer stretch fascia work, often supersetted with pullovers.