The latissimus dorsi, commonly called the lats, responds best to a combination of vertical pulls (like pulldowns and pull-ups) and horizontal pulls (rows). These are the largest muscles in your back, spanning from your mid-spine and pelvis all the way up to your upper arm bone, and they’re responsible for pulling your arms down and back. Training them well requires the right exercise selection, proper form cues, and enough weekly volume to drive growth.
What Your Lats Actually Do
Your lats attach along your lower six thoracic vertebrae, extend through the thoracolumbar fascia down to your sacrum, connect to the back of your pelvis, and wrap around to insert on the front of your upper arm bone near the shoulder. That broad attachment is why the muscle looks like a fan stretching across your entire back.
Functionally, the lats do three things: they pull your arm down toward your body (think pull-ups), they pull your arm behind you (think rows), and they rotate your arm inward. Any effective lat program needs to load all three of these movement patterns, but the pulling motions are where you’ll get the most training stimulus.
Best Exercises for Lat Growth
Vertical Pulls
Pull-ups and lat pulldowns are the foundation of lat training. Both involve pulling your arms down from overhead against resistance, which loads the lats through a long range of motion. If you can do bodyweight pull-ups for sets of 6 or more, they should be your primary vertical pull. If not, the lat pulldown machine lets you scale the weight to your strength level.
A pronated grip (palms facing away from you) produces greater lat activation than a supinated grip (palms facing you), regardless of grip width. Research comparing wide and narrow grips at 70% of maximum strength found that grip width itself didn’t significantly change lat recruitment. What mattered was palm orientation. So whether you grip wide or at shoulder width, keep your palms facing away for the best lat stimulus. A supinated grip shifts more work to your biceps.
Horizontal Pulls (Rows)
Rows are essential and may actually outperform pulldowns for raw lat activation. Electromyography data shows that the seated cable row produced higher lat muscle activity (30-37% of maximum voluntary contraction) compared to both pronated and supinated grip pulldowns (22-26%). This held true whether the shoulder blades were allowed to protract forward between reps or were held retracted throughout.
Your best rowing options include bent-over barbell rows, single-arm dumbbell rows, chest-supported dumbbell rows, and cable rows. Chest-supported rows are particularly useful because they remove lower back fatigue from the equation, letting you focus entirely on pulling with your lats. Single-arm cable rows allow you to work each side independently and address imbalances.
Straight-Arm Pulldowns
The straight-arm pulldown is the closest thing to a lat isolation exercise. Because your elbows stay locked, your biceps can’t take over the movement. You stand in front of a cable machine, grip a bar or rope attachment with straight arms, and pull it down to your thighs in an arc. This puts the lats through a large range of motion and builds the mind-muscle connection that carries over to your other pulling work. It works well as either a warm-up to “wake up” the lats before heavier lifts or as a finishing exercise at the end of a back session.
Form Cues That Shift Work to Your Lats
The most common mistake in lat training is letting your biceps and upper traps dominate the movement. A few simple adjustments fix this.
First, think “elbows back and down” rather than “pull the bar to your chest.” Focusing on driving your elbows behind you forces the lats to initiate the pull instead of your arms. Second, keep your chest up and your sternum raised during both rows and pulldowns. If your head drops forward, your upper traps take over and your shoulder blades ride up toward your ears, exactly the opposite of what you want.
For rows specifically, cue your shoulder blades to move “back and down” as you pull. Avoid retracting your shoulder blades before your arm starts moving. The arm pull and the shoulder blade movement should happen together in a coordinated rhythm. Pulling your shoulder blades back first actually disrupts the natural movement pattern and can reduce lat involvement.
On pulldowns, start each rep by depressing your shoulders (pulling them away from your ears) before bending your elbows. This small initial movement, sometimes called “setting” your shoulders, engages the lats from the very beginning of the rep and prevents the movement from turning into a bicep curl.
Sets, Reps, and Weekly Volume
For building lat size, aim for 10 to 15 sets per week dedicated to your lats, spread across at least two training sessions. A meta-analysis found that 10 or more weekly sets per muscle group produced greater increases in muscle mass compared to fewer sets. However, pushing beyond 15 sets per week may impair recovery and actually reduce your results.
A practical split might look like this: one session with 3 sets of pulldowns and 3 sets of barbell rows, and a second session with 3 sets of pull-ups and 3 sets of single-arm dumbbell rows, plus 2 sets of straight-arm pulldowns. That puts you at 14 total sets across the week.
Keep most of your sets in the 6 to 12 rep range with 60 to 90 seconds of rest between sets. This range balances mechanical tension and metabolic stress, the two primary drivers of muscle growth. If you’re more advanced, you can push total weekly volume slightly higher (up to about 20 sets), but only if you’re recovering well between sessions. Signs you’ve exceeded your recovery capacity include declining strength from session to session, persistent joint soreness, and poor sleep.
Sample Lat Workout
- Straight-arm pulldown: 2 sets of 15 reps (warm-up and activation)
- Pull-ups or lat pulldown (pronated grip): 3 sets of 6 to 10 reps
- Chest-supported dumbbell row: 3 sets of 8 to 12 reps
- Single-arm cable row: 3 sets of 10 to 12 reps per side
Perform this twice per week, adjusting exercises on the second day to provide variety. For example, swap pull-ups for close-grip pulldowns and replace the chest-supported row with a bent-over barbell row.
Stretching Tight Lats
Because the lats attach to both the spine and the upper arm, tightness in this muscle directly restricts your ability to raise your arms overhead. Tight lats limit the shoulder’s ability to fully rotate and the shoulder blade’s ability to tilt upward, both of which are necessary for full overhead reach. Swimmers, climbers, and anyone who does a lot of pulling work tend to develop short, stiff lats over time, which can predispose the shoulder to injury.
The simplest stretch is a passive hang from a pull-up bar for 20 to 30 seconds, letting gravity lengthen the muscle. You can also use a doorway or foam roller: kneel next to a bench or elevated surface, place your elbow on it with your thumb pointing up, and sink your chest toward the floor. Hold for 30 seconds per side. Incorporating one or two minutes of lat stretching after each back session helps maintain the overhead mobility that heavy pulling work can erode.