exercises for lats: 7 Best Exercises for Lats To Sculpt Your Back

Strong and well-built lats are the hallmark of a great physique. Big, wide lats can give the illusion of a tight and thin waist and can make you look massive, accentuating the V-taper in your physique.

No wonder every bodybuilder spends hours building huge lats. They're aesthetic and complement your shoulders, arms, chest and legs. If you want to build the perfect lats and sculpt your back, here are seven exercises to do so:

Best Exercises to Sculpt Perfect Lats

While there are only a few movements that fully target your lats, there are several variations of popular exercises for lats you can do to add as much load on your lats as you can and build muscle.

1) Wide-Grip Lat Pull-Downs

Wide-grip lat pulldowns. (Image credits: Freepik)

The Wide-grip Lat Pull-down is one of the most efficient exercises for lats. As the name suggests, it employs your lats to pull weight down towards your chest.

Lat pull-downs aren't too taxing on the rest of your back and are a great option for beginners. You can build substantial muscle in your lats with lat pull-downs and a simple training regime.

A wide grip will allow you to stretch your lats as much as possible, giving you a deep range of motion and maximum contraction. For lat pull-downs, prevent your back from arching too much. Try to maintain a neutral posture and proper range of motion. Lock your arms, and stay in control of the weight. Do not hyper-extend your arms.

2) Pull-Ups

Pull-ups. (Image credits: Pexels/ Mike Gonzalez)

Pull-ups are considered to be the hardest bodyweight exercise out there. However, it's not as intimidating as you think. Wide grip pull-ups offer a variety of benefits and can boost upper body strength and stability. However, they require tons of practice and upper body strength.

Pull-ups can be used to isolate your lats with just one quick trick. Instead of performing a normal pull-up, where you lift yourself at 90 degrees, simply lean back to around 45 degrees.

That will bring your lats to the forefront and lock them. Forty-five degrees is the optimal positioning for your body to use your lats as the primary muscle to perform a pull-up. If you want to jazz things up, add some negatives to the mix.

Negative pull-ups focus on the downward motion of your pull-up rather than the primary upward pulling motion. Simply lower yourself as slowly as possible, trying to extend the negative for about 8-12 seconds. That will get your lats burning and give you an incredible pump.

3) Barbell Rows

Barbell rows involve your entire back when lifting weights, but you can optimise this exercise to target your lats and use them as the primary muscle for the pulling motion.

By simply fixing your form, you'll be able to see massive changes in your rows and how they impact your back. Most people tend to grip the barbell wider than they need to.

However, grip the bar just a little wider than shoulder distance. A wider grip will employ your traps, delts and your entire back to help pull the barbell close to you. A narrower grip will allow you to hit your lats.

4) Single-Arm Bent-Over Dumbbell Rows

Single-arm rows. (Image credits: Freepik)

Bent over dumbbell rows target your entire back, just like their barbell counterpart.

Single-arm rows are a unilateral movement that allow you to target every part of your lats with precision and ease. Single-arm dumbbell rows tend to target the lower lat region and can give you an evened-out, well-defined lat structure.

Single-arm rows offer a better range of motion, allowing you to fully contract your lat for a full squeeze, resulting in high-quality repetitions.

5) Underhand-Grip Lat Pull-Downs

Underhand lat pulldowns. (Image credits: Pexels/ Rdne Stock Project)

Underhand-grip or Reverse-grip lat pull-downs are an incredible exercise to blow up your lats. Using an underhand grip on the lat pull-down machine, you can tuck your elbows in next to your lats, allowing you to target the lower lat region more.

The narrow grip enables you to squeeze and create more muscle contraction, while an extended negative rep, much like negative pull-ups, allows for slower, controlled movements, resulting in wider lats.

6) Landmine Rows/T-Bar Rows

Landmine Rows are another great exercise for targeting your lats. They make use of just a barbell, but if that's too light for you, feel free to add some plates.

Landmine rows allow you to tense up your lats while working on each side one at a time. While landmine rows require you to stand at the side of the barbell and use one arm at a time, you can perform another variation of this exercise with one small difference, for the sake of convenience.

T-Bar Rows are more popular than landmine rows and can fire up your lats. Instead of standing adjacent to the barbell, it requires you to stand above it, using both your arms to pull the barbell up to your chest. As you'll be using both your arms, you can go heavier and control the reps more efficiently.

7) Swimming

Swimming. (Image credits: Pexels/ Jim de Ramos)

While all the exercises on this list so far are gym exercises, this one's a little different. Yes, the benefits of swimming have a proven track record of helping build strong muscles, which is why competitive swimmers spend hours on the pull-down machine.

Lats in swimming is a two-way alley. Better lats enable you to swim better, and the more you swim, the more your lats grow. Every swimming stroke, especially the freestyle one, requires strong lats, as they are the focal point of each movement in the pool.

Lats are an invaluable asset to your physique. They can elevate your body from decent to incredible, all while being relatively simple to train.

Isolating your lats is something you should do alongside compound lifts, like deadlifts, etc. to build a thick, well-rounded back.