Training your lats is very important, whether your goal is to become a Pro bodybuilder or to just burn a few extra calories each week. The most common lat exercises often involve resistance machines such as the lat pulldown or barbells.
This article will take you through a number of bodyweight lat exercises that you can add to your routine.
What are the Lats?
Lats is a shortened term for the latissimus dorsi muscles. These are situated across the middle and lower parts of your back. The lats are often described as climbing muscles, allowing you to reach up and pull yourself upwards, but they are also important for rowing and pulling things towards you.
Most of the exercises that target the lats involve either pulling or rowing. Pull-ups, chin-ups, lat pulldowns, low-rows, bent-over rows, and dumbbell rows are all common lat exercises. The lats are often worked alongside the biceps, the trapezius, and the muscles that surround your shoulders.
8 Bodyweight Lat Exercises
In this section, we will be taking a look at eight of the best bodyweight lat exercises. These are exercises that you can perform without using any free weights or machines.
Pull Ups
Pull-Ups are the ultimate upper back exercise and one of the most impressive exercises that you can perform in the gym. All you require is a sturdy pull-up bar that can support your weight. The pull-up targets the lats, as well as the trapezius and the muscles of the shoulder. Pull-ups also target the biceps.
How to Perform Pull-Ups:
- Hang from a pull-up bar with your palms facing away from you and your arms fully extended.
- Bend your knees and cross your ankles so that you are hanging from the bar and not supporting your weight with your feet.
- Lean back ever-so-slightly and push your chest out. Take a deep breath, and then pull yourself up until your collarbone is in line with the pull-up bar.
- Pause, and then slowly lower yourself back down to the starting position.
There are numerous variations on the pull-up. You can hang a (strong) towel over the bar to improve your grip strength, or you can use resistance bands to make the exercise easier. A weighted belt can make the exercise more difficult, as can performing variations such as eccentric pull-ups that focus entirely on the lowering part of a pull-up.
Personal trainer tip: If you can’t yet perform a pull-up, grab a box to stand on, and put all of your efforts into lowering yourself back down as slowly as possible. Fight every second against gravity. These are called eccentric pull-ups, and they are an amazing way to build your lat strength.
Chin Ups
Chin-ups are almost identical to pull-ups, but instead of having your hands face away from you, chin-ups require you to have your hands facing towards you. They also tend to require a narrower grip, and as a result, your elbows stay closer to your body.
This makes the exercise a lot easier, and it also places more emphasis on your bicep muscles. Chin-ups are a great lat exercise but are also seen as one of the best bodyweight bicep exercises out there.
How to Perform Chin-Ups:
- Hang from a pull-up bar with palms facing towards you and arms fully extended.
- Bend your knees and cross your ankles so that you are hanging from the bar and not supporting your weight with your feet.
- Lean back ever-so-slightly and push your chest out. Take a deep breath, and then pull yourself up until your collarbone is in line with the pull-up bar.
- Pause, and then slowly lower yourself back down to the starting position.
You can perform chin-ups with a wide or narrow grip, but the narrow grip is slightly easier. Sometimes you will see people performing chin-ups with their hands right next to each other. But slightly closer than shoulder-width apart is best.
Personal trainer tip: Use lifting straps for the final set if you are training for hypertrophy, and your grip is letting you down. But don’t overuse them, or your grip will never improve.
Inverted Rows
The inverted row is one of the best exercises for beginners or anyone who struggles with pull-ups or chin-ups. It’s also a great exercise for higher rep sets or as a finisher exercise after a tough set of pull-ups.
For this exercise, you will need either a Smith Machine or a squat rack. This is so that you can securely place your bar at around hip height to hang off.
How to Perform Inverted Rows:
- Set the bar to hip height (or thereabouts) and make sure it is secure
- Hang from an overhead bar using a shoulder-width grip.
- Keep your legs straight and have your heels resting on the floor so that your body is at an angle
- Pull your body up until your chest touches the bar.
- Lower yourself back to the starting position.
Personal trainer tip: Inverted rows can be performed with an overhand or an underhand grip. You can make them easier by bringing your feet closer to the bar and bending your knees.
Pulse Rows
Pulse rows target both the rear delt muscles and the lats. They are great for stretching your lats and can be used as part of a warm-up or cool down. Unlike pull-ups, chin-ups, and inverted rows, they require zero equipment and can be performed pretty much anywhere.
How to Perform Pulse Rows:
- Lie on your front with arms at a 45-degree angle from your side and legs straight
- Raise your shoulders and arms off the floor, shrugging your shoulder blades together
- Lower your arms and shoulders back down to the floor
Personal trainer tip: This exercise is not only a great warm-up or cool-down but also perfect as a postural exercise. If your job involves a lot of sitting at a desk, then pulse rows can help to strengthen the muscles in your upper back and fix your posture.
Isometric Pull-Up
The isometric pull-up is a great way to build strength in your lats and is a cool variation on the traditional pull-up. Isometric pull-ups can also be combined with eccentric pull-ups (see below).
How to Perform Isometric Pull-Ups:
- Either use a box to climb to the “top” part of a pull-up or pull yourself up (use the Pull-up technique)
- Hold the bar tight and hold yourself as still as possible for as long as possible
- When you can no longer hold the position, lower yourself down and let go of the bar
Personal trainer tip: You can lower yourself to different positions and hold to create different tensions on your lats.
Eccentric Pull Ups
The eccentric part of a deadlift is where you are lowering yourself back down towards the starting position. This is often seen as the easy part, with the concentric part (pulling yourself up) being more difficult.
Eccentric lifting involves avoiding the concentric part (pull-up) completely and putting all of your effort into the eccentric part (stretching of the muscles).
The idea is to slow the eccentric part as much as possible. You start to lower yourself down from the bar, but you should fight that process the whole way down. The more you fight, the harder and more effective the exercise becomes.
How to Perform Eccentric Pull-Ups:
- Place your hands on a pull-up bar as normal, but use a box or chair to climb up to the top position
- Begin to lower yourself; once you start, fight this the whole way down
- When you reach the bottom of the pull-up, let go of the bar and drop to the floor
- Climb back onto the box or chair and reset yourself for another rep
Personal trainer tip: You can combine this with the isometric pull-up (exercise 5). Hold the isometric pull-up for as long as possible, and then instead of just dropping down, keep fighting gravity as you slowly lower yourself back to the ground.
Incline Bench Y Raises
This is very similar to the pulse row we looked at earlier (exercise 4). This will also work your rear delts and your lats simultaneously. You can perform this flat on the ground or on an incline bench. If you perform it flat on the ground, you will have a shorter range of motion.
How to Perform Incline Bench Y Raises:
- Set a bench to a 30-degree angle and lie on it (chest down) so that your head is just hanging off the end.
- Place your hands down in front of you.
- Raise your arms up simultaneously until they are in a Y position (think YMCA dance style)
- Pause, and then slowly lower them back down to the starting position
Personal trainer tip: Unlike the pulse rows, the trick with this exercise is to keep your shoulders in line with your body. So, don’t shrug your shoulder blades together.
Superman Raises
The final exercise on this list is the Superman raise, which is similar to both the pulse row and the incline bench Y raise. This exercise requires no equipment, and it is fantastic for working the lats as well as the lower back muscles.
How to Perform Superman Raises:
- Lie on your front with your arms straight and legs straight so that you look like Superman flying
- Raise your chest, arms, and legs up off the floor simultaneously
- Hold this momentarily, and then return to the starting position
Personal trainer tip: Bring your arms out wider to engage your lats a little bit more.
Conclusion
This article has provided you with eight bodyweight lat exercises. You don’t need to add all eight into your next workout, but sprinkling in one or two could really enhance your training experience. The variety of pull-up exercises can make a huge difference to your training results, particularly if you have struggled to perform pull-ups in the past.
The remaining exercises (pulse rows, Y raises, and Superman raises) are best used separately and would make a perfect off-day training routine. This is known as active rest, and it can really help with posture, core strength, and lat flexibility.
