Upsize Your Lats – Zero In On Your Upper Lats & Develop A Broader Back By Choosing Your Pull-up Wisely

Thicken and widening your back
When back day comes around this week, you should have two goals in mind: thickness and width. Thickening your posterior is as simple as doing heavy rows with cables, dumbbells or a barbell. Getting wide is a little trickier. Pulldowns and pull-ups are the way to go, sure, but there are myriad ways to do them, some that promote width and some that don’t. We’ll focus on pull-ups this month, though the same knowledge applies to pulldowns. Choose the exercise below that will give you a bigger, badder and, of course, wider back.

Wide-grip pull-ups
You’ve heard it over and over again, and we’ll repeat it once more:

Go wide to get wide. Spacing your hands far apart (outside shoulder width) not only better recruits the upper latissimus dorsi fibers, it also hits the smaller teres major muscles, which sit just under the armpits and provide greater back width when fully developed. BULLSEYE

Chin-ups
There’s certainly nothing wrong with doing chins, but they target the lower lats more, as the narrower, underhand grip allows you to bring your elbows down and back farther at the end of the movement. Plus, your biceps are more involved when you use a narrow grip, which takes emphasis off the lats as a whole. MISS

Author JIM STOPPANI, PHD
COPYRIGHT 2004 Weider Publications
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group