Mind-Muscle Connection/Lat Activation

[KurtMiles]

Bros, gimme a hand here. Really the only muscle I feel like I have a hard time "activating" is the lats. I can almost feel my biceps pulling, or my chest pushing, or whatever, but I have never been good at activating the lats. Consequently, my lats kinda suck, and I feel like I use a lot of bicep in my movements. Any tips on how to get most out of movements like pull downs, pull ups, etc?

[Allstar118]

The lat originates along your mid-lower spine and inserts into your upper arm. For me, having a picture of what the muscle anatomically looks like helps me to imagine how it might be moving my body.

If you're looking for some cues, some people say to imagine you are pulling your elbows straight back. Also, getting connected with your shoulder blades and how those move can be helpful. For most back exercises, your shoulder blades should be pulled down and together at the very end of the ROM. Imagine the side of someones hand placed vertically against your back, and you are trying to pinch their hand between your shoulders.

Otherwise, just start slow, low weight on the back exercises and make sure you are doing complete ROM, and slowly raise the weight over a few weeks while maintaining full ROM and smooth form. Eventually, you'll hit a point where you find that your lats become sore the next day!

[almostgone]

A good friend taught me to.pretend In was trying to crack a walnut between my shoulder blades and really squeeze at contraction. Don't pull.with our arms.on rows and pulldowns, rather use your hands as hooks and let your lats do the work.

Also, here a few threads you may like:

The mental mind zone / are you trianing hard enough

Back training


Muscle Fibers & training

Drop setting: by marcus300

Developing a chiseled back


http://forums.steroid.com/workout-tr...ts#post7065190


Lower Lat Development

[almostgone]

struggling with back


Check out the DY videos in the thread linked above.

[Charlie67]

On lat pulls, people tend to pull to low, touching their chest. Pick a weight you can do 10 times and stop about 3 inches from your chest, hold it there for a 3 count, and pretend like you're doing a back pose on stage. Then return up and repeat. Adjust the "lean back" angle on each rep until you feel your lats. Eventually you'll get in the groove.

[600@50]

When you grip the lat bar use a thumbless grip. Thumb on top of the bar. When you pull with the thumb around the bar you automatically engage the biceps. Also try to use your hands as hooks only and "pull" with you elbows not your hands. It'll take some practice but you'll figure it out.

[KurtMiles]

Thanks fellas. I've struggled with lat activation forever, it's just become an issue as my lats have become less developed as time goes on relative to the rest of my body. My middle and lower back isn't as obvious because of the deadlifting and bent over rowing I do, but it's pretty obvious in my lats.

[numbere]

Bump

Are you training hard enough?

[Marsoc]

Bros, gimme a hand here. Really the only muscle I feel like I have a hard time "activating" is the lats. I can almost feel my biceps pulling, or my chest pushing, or whatever, but I have never been good at activating the lats. Consequently, my lats kinda suck, and I feel like I use a lot of bicep in my movements. Any tips on how to get most out of movements like pull downs, pull ups, etc?

Sometimes actually usually lol. In the mirror I practice flexing specific muscle and how they contract. When doing a lower lat (elbows tucked in close to the side ) I noticed that it's real easy and natural to use ur biceps a lot like your pulling. Rather it uses more lat isolation im pretty sure if you imagine your arms as hooks and rathe imagine pulling ur elbows back with your late. I.e try to focus on brining your elbows back and squeezing the let. That way your not doing a "sudo curl"
Ya know

[Marsoc]

Bump

Are you training hard enough?

And this is the ultimate question one must ask themselves ..then again. If one isn't aware of their lack of intensity I'm sure they will not recognize or scrutinize their own session enough as to actually be more intense. Since they have no idea what real intensity is lol and they assume normal sets etc are adiquate . That's why I try to stress that question...(is you intense adiquate and beyond lol)

[NACH3]

Also, a cue that people just get sometimes(like a light bulb went off)

Your lower back needs to be arched to activate your lats - at the point of contraction, where AG mentioned cracking the walnut, also pop your chest out as you arch that low back and you'll get it in due time(back is our only mucsle we can not see therefore mind muscle connection is key)!

also try to internally rotate your elbows in to engage the lats even moreso!

[Marsoc]

Also, a cue that people just get sometimes(like a light bulb went off)

Your lower back needs to be arched to activate your lats - at the point of contraction, where AG mentioned cracking the walnut, also pop your chest out as you arch that low back and you'll get it in due time(back is our only mucsle we can not see therefore mind muscle connection is key)!

also try to internally rotate your elbows in to engage the lats even moreso!

Here it is. I was looking for this. Just wanted to say Nach. Awesome tip about rotating elbows inward. Even though I may do that already without realizing it. It def activated the lats as soon as I turn then in. Anywhere in the row.

[hellomycognomen]

On the advice of the vets here I switched from using the lat pulldown bar to using the handle grips instead, really does give you a better stretch and tighter contraction. The ability to freely rotate the hands into the neutral position also has made a big difference.

I would add pullovers to your routine as well, I prefer to do them with a straight bar on the cable machine, insane lat activation. -Cheers

[Sehdee]

do some bent dumbbell lateral raises , and really really try to squeeze your lats also underhand barbell rows well do you good .

[InternalFire]

pardon my tired eye-sight, I read few lines at the top of the page, and Im gonna jump to conclusion:

Drop the weight to something comfortable, perfect your form to be 101%, and do it really controlled and slow, if its too easy , go slower. Especially on bent over rows - keep contraction active and constant, dont go over your face too far where you feel it becomes easy, find the zone where it remains constant under tension, then move real slow back down stretching to the max possible extent, pause there and move back up slowly.
Also, if you do any close grip rows - do the same, and pause at the contraction, keep perfect form and fight your way back extending arms forward stretching lats really well.

Hope this helps, it sure kills my lats.

[Marsoc]

On the advice of the vets here I switched from using the lat pulldown bar to using the handle grips instead, really does give you a better stretch and tighter contraction. The ability to freely rotate the hands into the neutral position also has made a big difference.

I would add pullovers to your routine as well, I prefer to do them with a straight bar on the cable machine, insane lat activation. -Cheers

Right all I have now is an independant strength grip bowflex similar to how dumbells build independant strength.
Just did some seated pull overs stoping at the point where your arms are angled similar to when you do a decline fly. So I don't activate my lats to much for chest day. Back day I def go all the way down to my body and squeeze it against me

I was trying to decide if wide grip was better or close grip. I feel that close activates more fibers since it's peaking more and contracted opposed to spread out wide.
I put a bar through the handle grips so I can have an orbital at to follow. But that independant grip would be cool because of the free rang of motion with independant grips.

[hellomycognomen]

Right all I have now is an independant strength grip bowflex similar to how dumbells build independant strength.
Just did some seated pull overs stoping at the point where your arms are angled similar to when you do a decline fly. So I don't activate my lats to much for chest day. Back day I def go all the way down to my body and squeeze it against me

I was trying to decide if wide grip was better or close grip. I feel that close activates more fibers since it's peaking more and contracted opposed to spread out wide.
I put a bar through the handle grips so I can have an orbital at to follow. But that independant grip would be cool because of the free rang of motion with independant grips.

Muscles always pull parallel to their fibers. The individual handle grips allow for the ideal angle from insertion to origin. The neutral grip is also far more comfortable on the wrist. And similar to using DB on chest press, the individual handles will also uncover any strength differences. Its a great tip that has served me very well. As far as wide vs close, I think a neutral distance would be more ideal, and provide greater ROM. The whole wide grip for wide back myth has already been debunked. And I know exactly what you mean about "going all the way down to my body and squeeze it against me" for pullovers, one of my fav lat exercises. -Cheers mate.

[Marsoc]

Muscles always pull parallel to their fibers. The individual handle grips allow for the ideal angle from insertion to origin. The neutral grip is also far more comfortable on the wrist. And similar to using DB on chest press, the individual handles will also uncover any strength differences. Its a great tip that has served me very well. As far as wide vs close, I think a neutral distance would be more ideal, and provide greater ROM. The whole wide grip for wide back myth has already been debunked. And I know exactly what you mean about "going all the way down to my body and squeeze it against me" for pullovers, one of my fav lat exercises. -Cheers mate.

Yeah I kept about shoulder width arms straight forward pretty much. For bench I like bringing the hands together pretty much and touching dumbbell s for that peak Contraction opposed to wide grip where u aren't contracting fully. Yeah I did away with the close by wide grip. I.e inner or outer chest shit. I go for full Contraction to work the full chest plate

[EndlessApex]

On lat pulls, people tend to pull to low, touching their chest. Pick a weight you can do 10 times and stop about 3 inches from your chest, hold it there for a 3 count, and pretend like you're doing a back pose on stage. Then return up and repeat. Adjust the "lean back" angle on each rep until you feel your lats. Eventually you'll get in the groove.

Are you talking about during pull-downs, or more bent-over row type movements?

[AR's King Silabolin]

Bros, gimme a hand here. Really the only muscle I feel like I have a hard time "activating" is the lats. I can almost feel my biceps pulling, or my chest pushing, or whatever, but I have never been good at activating the lats. Consequently, my lats kinda suck, and I feel like I use a lot of bicep in my movements. Any tips on how to get most out of movements like pull downs, pull ups, etc?

Yes. Its kind of difficult when im not seeing u do the movement but a few tips which i have seen work for others and myself:

1: Do the first 10 cm of the movement with straigth arms. Then u will pull the shoulders backwards and activate lats afterwards.

2: Ligth weigth in the beginning, 12-15 reps. Aim for 20 on the first one.

3: Use 1-2 months as learning months. Drop the weider prinsippials. Do those exercises 2-3 times a week. Dont think of growing, just the contact. Like learning everything in life. Once a week will not cut it.

4: learning by seeing. What worked best for me was seeing others. Just watch. Those PTvids where a voice was telling never did anything for me. The best instruction vid i ever saw was the one where there were no explanations. Just chil. Im talking abouth the one made by flex wheeler, charles glass and rico mcclinton( or wahtever his name is).
Seeing flex do his pulls was extremely educational. U saw how the muscles contracted and how he did it. Visualizing that many times a week and especially rigth before your set could really help a lot.

5: At the bathroom before u go to bed, turn and see your self contract the pulls in the mirror. (Without any weigths). 40 reps. Focus on contraction. This will help u find those signals and nerves witch are involved in the perfect lat pulldown suited for your body.

6: Nerdy i know but its difficult. Thats why 95% at your gym has narrow lats. They dont pay attention to nerdy things,

7: These princippials should work for all musclegroups but pick one at a time. When ur ok with the lats go on for your next problem area.