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The ONLY 2 Exercises You Need For A Wide Back

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Rating: 4.0; Vote: 1

Building a V-taper during your back workout is the best way to look jacked and create the illusion of a smaller waist, with and without a shirt. But the lats are one of the toughest muscles to target. For years, I did the usual back exercises during my lats workout: heavy rows and pulldowns. My strength went up, my upper back and arms got bigger, but my lats Nonexistent. But everything changed when I started using the 2 best lat exercises I’m going to share. And the same transformation can happen for you if you do the 3 things I did as part of my wide back workout I’ll reveal here. Get 2 weeks of free workouts below: Click below to subscribe for more videos: For this wide back workout article, I couldn’t rely heavily on studies like I usually do because there are barely any reliable, conclusive studies on how to actually grow the lats. So, to get real answers, I teamed up with some experts. The first of whom is biomechanics expert Kassem Hanson. The first exercise he showed me was for the lower lats. Kassem explained that because the fibers in this area run downward, you’re going to want to do some kind of lat pulldown, but pulling narrow. The different grip options you have depending on what you have available are overhand narrow grip, underhand narrow grip, and neutral grip. You could also go with my current favourite, the single-arm pulldown. But regardless of what grip you use, here's the real game-changer for your lats workout. For the deepest lat stretch, lean your body back about 10-15 degrees. Then, as you pull, think about shoving your shoulder down rather than just moving your arms. But to make sure you’re not just using your biceps, don’t pull the grip towards your chest. Keep your elbow in front of you and pull your elbow down towards your hips. Now, unfortunately, without cables, there’s no good way to work the lower lats during your back workout with dumbbells. But you can still do this on a pull-up bar and see good results. All you do is, rather than using a wide overhand grip, either use a narrow overhand grip, an underhand grip, or the best option, a neutral grip. Lean back slightly, keeping your elbows in front, and pull them down towards your hips while pushing your shoulders down and away from your ears. If you want the kind of wide back that’ll make Greg Doucette want to run a natty or not video on you, then you’ll need the second of our best lat exercises to light up your mid and upper lats as well. To target them, you’ll still want an exercise where your elbows can pull narrow, close to your body. But unlike the lower lats, where the muscle fibers all run downward, the upper lats' fibers run more horizontally, with some fibers traveling just slightly downward. That means we need a rowing exercise where the arm can pull at a slight angle downwards. For the dumbbell version, use either an incline bench or elevate the back of a flat bench so that it angles downward. Then, set up just how you would with a single-arm dumbbell row, but the downward angle will now set your arm up so it’s pulling at a high-to-low angle. Then, simply pull your elbow down and back towards your hips, keeping it tight to your sides. Now if you don’t find that as comfortable, doing this on a flat bench can still work. A crucial mistake you need to avoid if you want a wide back: Keep your chest level with the ground, and then simply focus on pulling your elbow down and back towards your hips, keeping it tight against your sides. But for the best results for a wide back, I prefer using cables. instead of sitting fully upright, lean slightly forward while keeping your core and back stable. I made sure that my arm angle is now pulling from high to low, which mimics the same effect as if the cable were positioned higher up. Kassem also mentioned putting your feet a bit lower on the plates can make this more comfortable. When it comes to grip, shoulder-width neutral grip is once again ideal, but a V-bar can also work. But just like with the pulldown exercise, all of this setup will be for nothing if you don’t pull the right way. Think about pulling your elbows down and back towards your hips. One last bonus technique to share with you that you can apply not just to your back exercises but your other muscle groups as well. Don’t end your sets once you can’t pull the weight. Instead, keep it going and go to true failure by trying to get about 3-5 half reps until the weight just won’t budge. On pulldowns, you can take this even further after your half-reps by switching to keeping your arm straight and raising and lowering your shoulder to take your lower lats even past failure. Doing these 2 lats exercises for 3 - 4 sets of 10 - 15 reps, with the half reps after every set, is more than enough to grow your lats. And that's the secret to building a wide back.
Date: 2025-04-20

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Comments and reviews: 13

neildobbs7278
I like the arm pit down cue. The standing lat pull down on a lat pull station is also a great way to learn lat engagement, emphasise the stretch and brace like crazy to get it right. I always opted for bent over db rows. A tip I learned was to use a mirror to the opposite side you are pulling and remain as horizontal as possible. When you pull, you should be able to see your arm raise above but perpindular to your spine. It's more of a ski movement than an arm pull. your arm only flexes as a natural by product of your lat flexion, although you can learn to get assistance from the biceps
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bobdarrick2628
Hey Jeremy, what if I’m happy with my current back gains and I’m not trying to get that big Is it fine to just do a few sets of bodyweight pull ups or pulldowns a week without progressing Is that still fine for health reasons
I’m not fussed about back hypertrophy anymore. I’m trying to work on my upper chest since it’s lagging behind and I like training chest strength for fun. So obviously I have to train back for health reasons to balance it out.
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freddyarce1421
Well, what I think you're doing wrong is that the lat pulldown pulley is too far forward. I've tried several of those machines and the ones that caused the most lat activation were those whose pulley was just above where you were sitting, something that can help is to try to sit closer to the lat pulldown pulley
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JeremyEthier
Don't miss 8: 11 in the video for the REAL key to growing your lats; ). And if you want me to take care of all your workout AND nutrition programming for you, you can get 2 weeks free of my fitness app over at builtwithscience. com. Cheers!
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Fsh7486
If you want lats, just do wheel abs. No choice: if tou have weak lats, you crash on the ground and break your lower back. Joke but truth is, you can't miss lats with wheel abs because they HAVE TO work hard. Not possible otherwise.
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dcampion589
I have the app but it needs to add far more exercises. I've requested a few exercises and still not added, and these are common ones like ez bicep curl, straight bar lat pulldown
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chuckbre5961
Weighted pull up, deadlift, bent over row with relentless progress overload. Don’t over think it with these fancy exercises you don’t need them, and they plateau easier.
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vladvlad8749
What I found most useful was to alter my nutrition specifically for the lats. Add in chicken wings and redbull in your post workout meal and watch your lats blow up!
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jeremy_ethier
He’s not kidding about lowering the weight - I added single arm pull-ups on an assisted pull-up machine and had to use almost the entire stack. Great tips!
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jeremy_ethier
I think for the Lower Lats it is a lot better to do the pull ups with your feets in front of you, like an L-Sit Pullup. What do you think about this
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TonyBabarino
Technically, the best way to build your lats is with rest, nutrition, and time to recover after effective training stimulation. :)
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anishr28
Watching this while sipping on a gin and tonic. But i respect the exercise will try it after burning off the weekend eating/drinking
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dahlinvesek
I swear by the single arm lat pulldown. Recently figured out my shoulder and good lord do my lats scream at me by the end. 10/10
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