lat spread and genetics

[Bossman]

I have to disagree, but maybe your body responds better to rows and chins.

When you do deadlifts, so many muscles are recruited and used at once, much more so than doing chins and rows alone. I only recently have started doing shrugs, but even before, I've had huge traps simply because of all the deadlifting I've done.

What annoys me is, the first question people ask me when they see me is "what do you bench?". It's never "what do you squat/deadlift?", and I pride myself on those two exercises.

There's no doubt deads help. I used to do rack deads, deads from the floor kill my lower back every time. I think they've helped my overall thickness. But my lats were built from chins/pulldowns/rows. I had a decent lat spread at 15, built only from rows.