True 'dat. It was never really an issue for me, as I always naturally paused and took a breath in the bottom position.
[quote]inthego wrote:
Damici wrote:
I’ll keep it simple for you: Yates row, Yates row, Yates row. (Named for Dorian Yates).
It’s a version of a bent-over barbell row in which you use an underhand grip (palms up), bend over only about 60 or 70 degrees (do NOT bend all the way over until your torso is parallel to the floor – that’s NOT the position for this), keep your chest OUT and your back arched throughout, and pull the bar into your WAIST.
Nothing, and I mean nothing, has added size, width, thickness and strength to my back like the Yates row. It’s a heavy-ass compound movement that allows you to get much stronger and add more weight very quickly over time. I can handle pretty ridiculous weight on it now. Truth by told, over many years approximately 70 or 80% of my back workouts have consisted of ONLY the Yates row, and my back has progressed in size, thickness and overall “completeness” beyond that of most whom I’ve trained with over the years.
Forget fancy set and rep schemes. Do a few heavy-ass sets of these, and do them well.
Great one for building mass,
however remember to not bounce the weight. Pause at the bottom of the movement… Yates got a nasty bicep injury from this, and has sense modified it with the pause…
If you think you can grow lats faster, maybe you could try to look for tips on technique, rather than just looking around for exercises.
If your technique for stimulation of the lats is subpar, adding exercises will not solve anything.
Do you let your shoulders come a bit up to stretch the lats before initiating every rep?
Do you try to pull focusing on bringing the elbows down and contracting the lats?
Other than that i second closer grips, and deads, if they work for you.
DISCLAIMER : I know nothing, this post is for entertainment purposes only. Use this post with the posts of more advanced members in mind.
[quote]Damici wrote:
I’ll keep it simple for you: Yates row, Yates row, Yates row. (Named for Dorian Yates).
It’s a version of a bent-over barbell row in which you use an underhand grip (palms up), bend over only about 60 or 70 degrees (do NOT bend all the way over until your torso is parallel to the floor – that’s NOT the position for this), keep your chest OUT and your back arched throughout, and pull the bar into your WAIST.
Nothing, and I mean nothing, has added size, width, thickness and strength to my back like the Yates row. It’s a heavy-ass compound movement that allows you to get much stronger and add more weight very quickly over time. I can handle pretty ridiculous weight on it now. Truth by told, over many years approximately 70 or 80% of my back workouts have consisted of ONLY the Yates row, and my back has progressed in size, thickness and overall “completeness” beyond that of most whom I’ve trained with over the years.
Forget fancy set and rep schemes. Do a few heavy-ass sets of these, and do them well.[/quote]
Great tip - they shall be making their way into my life sometime soon for quite some time. I have recently moved to 45 degree BB rows from parallel rows and all i need to do is supinate now.
I’m a guy that’s struggled forever with torso development issues (further exacerbated by powerlifting). I’m very arm/shoulder dominant.
The only things that have worked for me:
Perfoming the negative portion slow and controlled. i.e. 4-6+ seconds on the negative.
Pre and post exhaustion. Example: strict lat pulldowns followed by rope straight arm lat pushdowns.
Obviously perform lat work first or early in your workout.
Focus on driving with the elbows and consciously think about your moving your scapulae rather than simple arm movement. Possibly try utilizing straps or a thumbless grip.
As far as exercises, we all know how individualistic that is, but I’d personally suggest the following movements, esp. those with the asterisk:
Rack chins*
Strict pulldowns*
One-arm pulldowns
Straight-arm pulldowns
Dumbell or nautilus pullovers
Yates row*
“corner row”–olympic bar in a corner with v-handle
T-bar row
Any Hammer Strength row or pulldown
“Dante” rows, similar to Gironda’s “diver rows”
I’d say your volume looks a little low. I always get good results with a basic 8 x 3 workout. Something like:
8 x 3 Chins
8 x 3 Barbell Row
8 x 3 Dumbell Row
When I do workouts like this I’m sore everywhere in my back, biceps and forearms for a few days.
Also, I don’t see you mention how much weight you are lifting. You might just need to get stronger. If you were doing 8 x 3 on Chins with 90lbs additional weight, then I’d bet you’d have pretty impressive lats.
My lats didn’t start growing until I was doing chins with additional weight.
Man, I must be the lowest volume training guy I’ve ever known!
Believe it or not, I usually do 1 (sometimes 2) exercise per bodypart in a given workout, and usually only for 3 to 5 sets! (And on the occasions when I do a second exercise for that bodypart it’ll be for only 1 or 2 sets).
I really think a lot of people go overboard. Sounds like some people spend 45 minutes to an hour just training back alone!
[quote]bushidobadboy wrote:
Anyway, regarding back width/lat growth, I am starting to incorporate (did my first today actually) Dante/Doggcrapp hanging bodyweight lat stretches to facilitate muscle fascia expansion.
I did 60 seconds today and will do 90 seconds at least once in every training session for a while.[/quote]
Bushy
This is a great recommendation. I’ve posted a sort of wacky story in another thread, but I’ll post it here too, because it relates to the great benefit of stretching:
“As a teen, I was very very skinny with a straight-up-and-down shape. I got into weights gradually after a year of push-ups only. During this time, I began hanging on a beam in my basement. But this “hang” was different in that I intentionally tried to protract my scapulae (outward away from the spine). I could literally get myself into a hang position, and force the scapulae to pop out laterally! It was like instant width. It was slightly painful, but tolerable as most stretches can be. As soon as I dropped from the beam, the scapulae would “go back in” and I’d look normal again. Well over the summer, I continued doing this special stretch daily, holding it for as long as I could, constantly trying to force the scapulae even more outward. By Fall, even though I had not been heavily into the weights, I had a wonderful v-taper. In the coming years of adding mass, it was always easy for me to look wide and thus bigger than my actual weight/size.”
[quote]AngryVader wrote:
I’d say your volume looks a little low. I always get good results with a basic 8 x 3 workout. Something like:
8 x 3 Chins
8 x 3 Barbell Row
8 x 3 Dumbell Row
When I do workouts like this I’m sore everywhere in my back, biceps and forearms for a few days.
Also, I don’t see you mention how much weight you are lifting. You might just need to get stronger. If you were doing 8 x 3 on Chins with 90lbs additional weight, then I’d bet you’d have pretty impressive lats.
My lats didn’t start growing until I was doing chins with additional weight.[/quote]
I think you are correct. I might need to step it up on the weight department with some weighted pullups. It seems like trying to lift increasingly heavy weight is the only thing that helps me in terms of growth. I don’t normally do weighted pullups but I think I’ll start. I can do 250lbs 6 times on the cable pulldown machine but I don’t think that’s that great considering I’m 205 lbs. TIme to step it up is all I’m saying. Thanks for the advice.