Workout for the Width & Thickness of the Lats

The lats, the abbreviated name of the latissimus dorsi muscle, is a large muscle located in the back. This muscle acts on your arms, allowing you to move your arms medially, or toward the midline of your body. It also helps you extend your shoulders, bringing your arms in the posterior direction. To increase the width and thickness of your lats, you must do a combination of these exercises using resistance. Do three to five exercises per workout. Each exercise should comprise of three sets of eight to 12 repetitions.

Body-weight Exercises

• The best two body-weight exercises for your lats are the pullup and the inverted barbell row. You've probably heard of pullups already and the exercise is pretty straightforward. You hang from a bar with your arms straight and then you pull your body up towards the bar until your upper chest is close to it. Don't confuse this exercise with chinups, which are a variation in which you use an underhand grip, as opposed to an overhand grip. This underhanded grip allows you to work your biceps to a greater degree, thus making the movement easier than the pullup. If you are a beginner, then you may to start with chinups before moving on to the more difficult pullups. As for inverted barbells rows, these are basically a variation of rows in which you place a barbell on a weight rack, hang from the bar and then pull your torso up toward the bar. This is exercise is excellent for increasing lat thickness.

Weighted Pulldowns

• If you are a beginner and find chinups to be too difficult, opt for weighted pulldowns using a resistance machine. This exercise is effective for increasing back width and will allow you to increase lat strength so you can eventually move on to doing pullups and chinups. To do pulldowns, sit on the machine seat with your knees under the roll pads, grasp the bar, and bring it down to your upper chest. This movement is called shoulder adduction and it is one of the main functions of the lats.

Free-weight Rows

• If you find inverted rows to be too easy, perform bent-over barbell and dumbbell rows. To perform these exercises, you hold either the barbell or dumbbell with your arms straight, you lean forward at the waist with your back straight and then you raise the resistance up towards your lower stomach. These two rowing exercises are by far the best exercises for really thickening up your back. Not only do they target your lats, but they also work your middle and lower traps and rhomboids to a large degree. Barbell rows allow you to use more weight, which is beneficial for increasing muscle mass, while dumbbell rows allow you to improve motor control of your back muscles so you can really focus on the muscles at work. Do both of these exercises as part of your lat widening and thickening regimen to gain the benefits of each.

Pullovers

• The pullover is another exercise that increases lat width and thickness. You can do this movement using free weights, such as a barbell or dumbbells. Basically, you first lie down on a flat bench and hold the resistance over your chest with your arms slightly bent. You then bring the resistance behind your head to stretch your lats and then back up over your chest as you contract your lats. In addition to working your lats, this movement targets the pectoral muscles of your chest.