How to Get a WIDER Back (V-TAPER!)

The fastest way to get a wider v-taper back is to focus your attention on the muscles in the back that contribute the most to width. In this video, I’m going to show you the best back exercises you can do to build up your lats, teres major and teres minor in order to get the widest back possible. We

what’s up guys jeff cavaliere athleanx. com today I want to talk to you about how to build a wider back now let’s face it the back as you can see here has a lot of different muscles but when we’re talking about with we’re really talking about the ones that run east to west and are on the outside of the body we know that the rhomboids also do that but they’re more on the inside of the scapula we want to talk about the ones that gonna actually create the width from the outer torso and there’s actually three main ones again you could take a look here we’re talking about the lats the teres major and the teres minor and actually even though they sound the same the last two that should have two very different functions the best way to do it is for me to just walk you around the gym here and show you how you can make these tweaks to the exercises you’re already doing to hit those different areas all right so first of all on a lat pulldown machine if we wanted to hit the last understand the anatomy here we know that the lats are a huge muscle that attached to the spine and also down to the pelvis and they come up and around to the arm so if we want to get them and get them through a full range of motion you’re gonna get that arm up and away from you as much as you can you can see them actually put on stretch when you do that well the best way to do that is with an underhand grip on a pull down because you can see right away it puts us in this position where our arms are out in front of us up high into flexion at the shoulder and now when I come down and back I want to really try to squeeze my elbows into my sides which is called adduction because that’s going to maximally activate the last into a fully contracted state that being said let’s say you get to bicep dominant when you get in this position here you tend to pull too much with your biceps you can go overhand but keep it narrow you can see why in a second and when you go narrow you actually have another option here to you take your arms they’re still out in front of your body I pull down and as I get to about this position here I drop down and back with one side alright we call this the rocking pull down down back and around and what we’re getting from this is an even more intense contraction because we get that adduction and extension behind the body adduction and extension back behind the body which will really light up the last but what about the teres major it’s no less important when we wanted to develop that full thickness well what you have to do there is you got to get that the arms away from the body try to take the lats a little bit out of it by getting less adduction here and get more abduction get the arm away from the body so you could do that by going wide all right if we’re an arrow they’re gonna stay narrow if we go wide they’re gonna be wide and this tends to put us in a little bit internal rotation which is a better way to activate the teres major it’s not dangerous internal rotation because as you’ll see right here my arms are positioned at 45 degrees in front of my body you can see that they’re not way back here they’re out in front which puts our shoulder in a safe position but instantly when I pull down from there now you can see the teres major is definitely popping and doing more of the work than it was doing before that’s how you would do that okay now for what I get teres minor I mentioned they sound similar but they have very different functions you got to go from internal rotation to external rotation this is a rotator cuff muscle so if you want to get this you need to figure out a way externally rotate like with all external rotation exercise or rotator cuff exercises and we could do that what we call a face pulldown I’ll go just a little bit lighter here we grab underhand like this and as we go down to the pull down a little bit remember these are weaker muscles but they still have to be trained I go underhand and now when I pull down I pulled this way here here here here so I’m going into external rotation at the shoulder I’m still pulling down I still pulling the arm back down and behind me here but you can see that it’s that carries my time here that’s actually doing the work now let me quickly run you through a few other options because I like to give guys more options especially if they don’t have a pulldown machine and those same positions by the way can be transferred right over to a to a pull-up bar you have but you can still do the same variations of the hand positions but here if you want to get that Terry’s major overhand grip arm away from your side it’s called the meadows row right here grab up and down get less adduction less tight to your side more away from your side you can see again that Terry’s major it’s doing a lot of the work if I wanted to get more lat change my body I come over here I get tight to the bar change my positioning no well I allow myself to do is grab here sit back so I get my arm up in front of my body a little bit right here we’ll put my arm on greater stretch with a lat so I sit back up in a row down and back row sit your ass back remember create more distance between your arm and your pelvis so by sitting back that’s what I do and then I get my lat fully engaged lastly I come over here I want to grab my rope and I need this over here I come over here hold this for a second I do a one-arm lat pulldown with the cable the best way to hit your lat you can drop your pelvis down and back and get your arm up and away from you here to create great separation and actually as you can see great activation here of the last great stretch all right just like that but finally you know I wouldn’t end a single video mine without talking about the Facebook as the face ball happens to be one of the absolute best exercises you can do that teres minor remember external rotation attached to ropes so you have more room to move here I get in position right here set myself up I’m going to pull my hands and elbows back let the hands beat the elbows you want extra rotation at the shoulder if you do it like this your elbows are winning that race you’re instantly rotated don’t do it that way come back with the hands win and if you come around the back you can see the muscles there in the teres minor a lot of muscles in the back working here but they’re doing a lot of the work because of that external rotation at the shoulder and he’ll why not one more exercise while we’re at it if I just had dumbbells and I wanted to get external rotation we have a W raised which is basically forming a W with the dumbbells like this except bent over so if I’m in this position I’m gonna row up and create that W row create the W row in the W ok just like that so it’s a lot of options but if you understand the principles and the anatomy and why we’re doing what we’re doing and how we tweak it you understand that it really does matter it will change significantly the muscles that you’re targeting it ultimately gives you this best chance to make the widest back possible because you’re developing all the muscles that make that back as Y as possible if you’re looking for step-by-step programs where we never overlook the science because it all matters and we build it in step by step you can find them all over at athleanx. com the meantime you found the video helpful leave your comments and thumbs up below let me know what else we want to cover and I’ll do my best to do that for you and if you have already done so guys click Subscribe and turn your notifications so you never miss a video when we put one out hi guys see you soon [Music] you