What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
So do you have non-responding lats?
Meaning, no matter how hard you train them, or how much knowledge you apply to training
them, they just don’t really respond to what you're doing.
They don’t grow.
They certainly aren't getting wider, or giving you that V-shape taper.
I'm going to show you today how to attack that, to get even the most stubborn, non-responding
lats to respond to what it is that you do.
We're going to start by looking at one of the most important exercises because it's
going to underscore both the points that you want to make sure you're looking for in all
of your exercises, and most importantly when you're doing this one.
Because this is a staple exercise for your back workout, but you've got to get it right.
It’s the one armed dumbbell row.
Here, I like it because you can overload a single side – one versus the other – expose
any imbalances that you might have, and secondly, as I've said, you can overload.
You can grab a pretty damned heavy dumbbell here to apply this stress to your muscle to
actually make sure it is going to grow and respond.
But you've got to make sure you're doing it right.
The elbow position is the first thing you want to make sure you have nailed down.
If you're allowing your elbow to drift out to the side like I am here, guess what?
You're not really working your lats.
Again, if we're talking about non-responding lats – not a non-responding back – you
might have adequate thickness in your back and development, but you don’t have the
width.
If you want the width you're going to have to attack the lats.
So you can't allow your arms to drift out, which is going to attack more of the posterior
delt, the rhomboids, and the traps.
Instead, you want it to be pinned into your side, as I'm showing you here.
That is going to help you to start targeting the lats much more because you have the adduction.
The adduction right here at your upper arm into your side.
That's key.
Now, there's a second part of this problem, though, because I actually perform mine the
way you're seeing here and that gives me an adequate balance between lat development and
lat and mid-back thickness.
However, look at what's happening when I do this.
A lot of people do this.
I see this all the time.
They start pulling too much with their bicep because they're either trying to handle a
weight that they can handle – in which case they're looking for additional help form the
bicep – or they're just doing it wrong in the first place.
You want to minimize the bicep contribution if, again, you're trying to get that non-responding
lat to finally respond.
So you don’t want to pull up here.
As a matter of fact, you want to do what I'm showing you here.
This is specifically for those that really have a hard time getting those lats to grow.
You want to veer away from the standard way that you do this exercise, as I showed you
before, and start doing this.
Here, you're trying to get more of a pendulum arcing motion going with the row.
More importantly, look at the contribution of the bicep.
It's literally almost nothing because I'm not really bending at the elbow.
Instead, what I'm trying to mimic is – this should look very familiar to a lot of you,
especially those who know how much I like the next exercise.
It should mimic a straight arm push down.
The straight arm push down has the ability to get into extension behind the body, and
also has that adduction, that elbow pinned into the side.
So we can apply the same techniques to a one armed row, where now, we're really trying
to eliminate bicep contribution, keep the elbow out of it, and drive your arm back behind
your body while keeping it nice and tucked into your side.
This is going to hit those lats, and this is going to get those lats to finally grow.
If you have this stubborn problem, guys, believe me you're not alone.
It may not be limited to just the lats.
It might be your biceps, it might be your shoulders, it might be your legs, it might
be your calves; people struggle with all different muscle groups.
The key is, you've got to train them the right way, and then you can expect them to start
responding to what it is you're trying to get them to do in the first place.
If you've found this video helpful, guys, make sure you leave your comments and thumbs
up below.
Whatever other non-responder muscles you're struggling with, make sure you let me know
those too, and I'll try to cover theme in a future video.
For those of you that are looking for a complete workout to really target these non-responder
areas, we actually have down those.
We created the TNT series.
They're over at ATHLEANX.com.
The cool part is they integrate directly with the ATHLEANX training system.
So you follow the program and you plug in the things that actually you struggle the
most with to allow you to get more out of your specific needs.
Those are all over at ATHLEANX.com.
In the meantime, I'll see you guys back here in a few days.
Let me know what you want to see and I'll do my best to do that.
All right, guys.
I'll see you later.