The ONLY 2 Lat Exercises You Need (NO, SERIOUSLY!)

What would you say if I told you that there were only two lat exercises you need to do? In this video, I am going to show you the two lat exercises that should make up the bare minimum of your lat workouts. Not are these two exercises great for building big lats, but they will also make your back lo

when it comes to lat exercises there are no shortage of options however which lat exercises do you focus on if you’re struggling to build a bigger wider back right now you’re going to want to watch the end of this video because I’m going to give you the two lat exercises that you need to focus on if you want to start seeing your best results now Others May want you to believe that there are only two exercises that you need not all other lat exercises just don’t provide any additional benefit that’s not what I’m saying but if you don’t have these two boxes checked in combination with each other you’re going to struggle to build your best lats possible with this bare minimum approach you can be as short of the fact that you’re going to have an effective combination of light exercises to use and more so be able to focus on fewer things so you can get to where you want to be faster what’s up guys Jeff Cavalier athletenext. com so you might be surprised to hear me say only two because if you follow me for any length of time you know we got a lot of back building content on this channel but that might be the problem because when I say lats you think back but what you should think of is just one thing the latissimus dorsi and it’s that muscle right there there’s all always the case if you let the anatomy tell you what to do it’s going to actually guide you to the exact two exercises that you should focus on now as I said before it’s not the only two exercises that you should ever do but if you only can do two these should be the ones and the first thing you have to do is follow the fibers and also follow the science because we know that applying a stretch to a muscle gives us a chance to create hypertrophy if there’s load applied as well well the attachments are going to be up here on the arm and down here at the hip so if you could just figure out an exercise that does that and does it really well you’ll be on the right track and my first line exercise of choice is going to be the kneeling single arm pull down now maybe you’re doing pull Downs already and you think you got that box checked but I’m talking specifically about the kneeling single arm pull down and here’s why remember in order to apply that stretch that can mediate New Growth we have to do this in a way that’s going to create maximum stretch and allow for the last to go through their full range of motion so by kneeling I’m able to get my arm not just up overhead but also it’s taking the attachment point specifically of the upper arm and the hip as far away from each other as I possibly can now when you’re trying to build the upper outer portion of the lats the vertical pulling exercises are going to be your best bet but by doing this exercise this way you’re going to be able to get the best effect of it and what I’m doing is first grabbing this handle with a pronated grip and the reason why I’m doing that is I want to try to decrease the bicep contribution to the exercise because I could easily turn it this way and turn it into some variation of a curl which is just going to take away some of the effect on your lats if I can pronate my handle at the top I can decrease some of that contribution at that point I want to make sure that I’m almost fixing my elbow in place right so it’s going along for the ride and at that point you’re also trying to shift your focus to the Elbow because it’s almost like a pointer like an arrow and that Arrow should point right down at that hip so if I can bring it down and get it as far as I can keeping it tight to my side I’m going to hit the lap but if I could just lean a little bit more and point it right into my hip I’m going to get the biggest contraction I could possibly get on the last again taking them through their full range of motion big giant stretch arm out in front of us down locking that angle and drive it right down into your hip the point here guys is the first exercise has to be one that takes advantage of the stretch this one does exactly that and it does it very specifically but then we got to go back to the board to look at the anatomy again to get exercise number two because this is where I think people kind of mess things up because they think that only the vertical pulling exercises are best at building bigger lats but that’s just not true because if you look at how big the labs actually are and you focus on this portion and the attachments all over the spine up and down the thoracic Lumbar and even into your sacrum you realize that somehow you have to get these fibers to do their job and that is to pull the arm towards the center or midline of your back well the best way to do this is going to be with a row but again a very specific type of row because if you were to do this with a wide arm position like this what’s going to happen the fibers that are best positioned to pull this arm this way are going to be the muscles that are up in this area and we’re talking about different muscles in the lats like the rhomboids or the middle traps that’s not how we do it we got to get this elbow back down tight and then pull back behind our body like you see me doing here this is a properly performed row if you want to overload the latch and again that’s key because the lat muscles are overloaded with heavier weight just like any other muscle and a great stimulus by hypertrophy and growth is going to be the use of heavier weights I don’t know of many exercises that do a better job on building the lats than a row now the one limitation is that you don’t have the same full range of motion you did on the kneeling one arm pull down but again these are meant to complement each other perfectly what you are getting is that all-important secondary function of the lats and you’re doing a really good job of applying weight to it now let’s say your back isn’t so great and every time you do a row it doesn’t feel so good well it doesn’t mean that you can’t do all rows you could do a chest supported row because this is going to take that factor out of the equation and still allow you to get the benefits of this exercise and a chest supported position all the focus should be on your ability to simply pull with these lats and get your elbows back behind you without having to worry about stabilizing with your lower back now I’m not saying that’s the best way to Forever perform your rows obviously you like to transition yourself to a point where you can do it on your feet but it gives you the chance to reap the benefits of the exercise without having to sacrifice one of the only two exercises that you need to do and so now with the word lats hopefully no longer triggering the entire back for you you’ve got a one-two combination to effectively not just build the width of your back but also the thickness if you’re looking for the only two exercises you need for your biceps I’m going to link that one for you here and also for your shoulders I’ll put that one for you here if you’re looking for a complete program guys you can find it over at athenx. com make sure you click subscribe and turn your notifications so you never miss a video when we put one out see you soon foreign