The 13 Best Exercises for a Lat Workout

Why Do It: The lat pulldown is a great way to perform a vertical pulling motion without totally overloading it. Unless you can knock out multiple sets of 20 chin-ups, the intensity of the motion makes it hard to work in hypertrophy rep ranges.

How to Do It:

1. Take a grip on the cable machine attachment before you sit down.
2. Slowly work your way into place while holding the attachment.
3. Lean back slightly, but maintain a vertical pulling angle.
4. Think “wide” and try to move the weight stack without using your arms at all to put more focus on the lats³.
5. Pull the weight down to your upper chest area.

Why Do It: Very much in the opposite vein as the lat pulldown, pull-ups let you focus on movement and strength rather than targeted muscle activation. Pull-ups are not only great lat workouts, but a basic life saving skill.

Resistance bands can be looped over the pull-up bar to make the movement lighter, but the focus should be on progressing to full bodyweight.

How to Do It:

1. Find a pull-up bar, tree branch, I-beam, or roof ledge.
2. Start with a shoulder grip overhand grip and try to bring your chin over the bar.
3. Control yourself down completely until your arms are straight
4. Pause for a second before pulling back up. Doing these from a dead-stop with full range of motion is more effective and easier on the elbows.

Why Do It: The one-arm dumbbell row is maybe the most primal of the best lat exercises listed here. This is one motion you can really just wail away on with body English and “cheating.” Don’t be afraid to toss on straps and use something heavy. This hits your rhomboids hard in addition to your lats.

How to Do It:

1. Start with a dumbbell in one hand and your feet staggered with your opposite foot forward.
2. Place the hand not holding the dumbbells on a bench, dumbbell rack, or power rack. Put some of your weight on it.
3. You should be bent over with your torso somewhere between a 45-degree and 90-degree angle.
4. Hang the weight down and work on feeling the stretch at the bottom.
5. Squeeze your shoulder blade in and focus on pulling the weight up with the part of the muscle you felt in the stretch.

Why Do It: You get a great lat stretch with these (and therefore a nice range of motion). You can use these as a warm-up to your back workout, in between sets of barbell rows to help you really “feel” your lats, or as a finisher to toast your back after a bunch of pulling movements.

For a dumbbell pullover to work, you need to think of your lats as a fulcrum. Otherwise it turns into a really ugly skullcrusher.

How to Do It:

1. Grab a dumbbell and a bench.
2. Lie down on the bench.
3. Hold the dumbbell by one of the “bells” and extend your arms above your head.
4. The weight should pull your lats in a pleasant stretch.
5. Keeping your arms straight so as to not use your triceps, pendulum the weight up so it is straight above your head.

Why Do It: Fans of Lorenzo Lamas will love the renegade row. It may not give you flowing, feathered locks, or a good-hearted-bad-boy cliche vibe, but it is a heck of an upper-body conditioning workout.

You’ll really need to brace hard during the rowing section below to keep from falling over. Your triceps may fatigue before your lats, but that’s ok. 

How to Do It:

1. Take a pair of dumbbells and throw them on the ground. Seriously, you’re a renegade.
2. Set up in a push-up position with your hands on the dumbbells in a neutral position. Neutrality is so renegade.
3. Do one push-up.
4. Row the dumbbell in your right hand to your chest.
5. Row the dumbbell in your left hand to your chest.
6. Buy a Harley and travel the country helping people.

Why Do It: With the gorilla row, you get to alternate rowing and stabilizing each arm. Similar to the one-armed dumbbell bench press, this dumbbell lat workout forces you to brace hard with your abs and lower back to stabilize your torso.

How to Do It:

1. Set two kettlebells on the ground slightly in front of you and in between your legs.
2. Bend down like in a deadlift and grab both kettlebells.
3. Keeping your back angle, row one kettlebell up, squeezing your rear delt at the top.
4. Return that hand to the ground and repeat with the other.

Why Do It: Because you want to build muscle and get stronger. Seriously, the basic barbell bent-over row is the complete package⁴. The bent over row will work your lats, trapezius, rhomboids, rear deltoids, abs, and lower back. If you only ever did one row variation, it would have to be the BOR.

How to Do It:

1. Set up just like a deadlift with feet under the barbell about hip width.
2. Use an overhand grip for a convention bent-over row.
3. Deadlift the bar to your hips, then slow descend until the bar is knee height.
4. Keep your lower back straight. You should be as close to a 90-degree angle as possible.
5. Row the bar to your sternum (not bellybutton).

Why Do It: Named after weightlifting coach Glenn Pendlay, these rows are a “dirtier” version of the barbell bent-over row. They are kind of like a horizontal high-pull and can help with explosive strength as well as building muscle over the entire posterior chain.

How to Do It:

1. Set up the same way as with a bent-over row, but the starting position for this is with the bar on the ground.
2. Using some hip action, throw the bar off the ground explosively.
3. Row the bar to your sternum, continuing the motion starting with the hips.
4. Return the bar to the ground after every rep.

Why Do It: The king of all exercises, and therefore the king of back exercises, the deadlift is one of the best muscle building back exercises partially because of the amount of weight you can load onto the bar. If your workout routine doesn’t include some variety of deadlift, I’m pretty sure you’re doing it wrong. You can perform a deadlift with just about any weighted implement.

How to Do It:

1. Set a bar on the ground with 18” plates, or grab two dumbbells, or two kettlebells, or a sandbag … you get the picture.
2. Your starting position is with your feet under the bar; if you aren’t using a bar, take no wider a stance than with your feet shoulder-width apart.
3. Grab the weight and set your hips in roughly a half-squat position.
4. Push your hips back so your lower back stays neutral.
5. Squeeze your upper back hard and don’t let it round forward.
6. Keeping your arms straight, drive your legs into the ground to get the weight started moving.
7. Finish by using the hamstrings and driving the glutes forward to bring the weight to your hips.

Why Do It: Range of motion is one of the traits of exercises used to build muscle, and cable machines can offer huge range without spinal loading or taxing stabilizer muscles (like with the dumbbell lat movements). You can do single-arm or double arm versions of this, with the double arm version sometimes called a low row (described below).

How to Do It:

1. This is the part of the cable machine that looks like an ERG rowing machine.
2. Set up like you would on the ERG, but grab the handle and fully extend your legs.
3. Without bending your knees, allow the weight to pull your back forward into a horizontal lat stretch.
4. Squeeze your shoulder blades together and pull your rear deltoids back to row the attachment into your torso.

Why Do It: The unfortunately named attachment is particularly awesome for home gym owners without an abundance of space for machines. It can simulate a T-bar machine without a large footprint.

If you don’t have a landmine, you can just set a bar up in a corner.

How to Do It:

1. Use smaller diameter plates to get a bigger range of motion.
2. Straddle the bar and with a staggered stance.
3. You’re going to grab the collar or the bar with one hand and row that to your chest.
4. You can rest your free hand on your front knee for balance.

Why Do It: This is a great alternative to chin-ups for beginners who are still learning to master bodyweight movements. Along with the barbell row, it is one of the lat exercises that mimics the movement pattern of the bench press, which can both help balance out the body (if bench pressing is a thing you do too much of) and help stabilize your body to increase your bench press ( if bench pressing is a thing you care too much about).

This can be done with suspension straps, jungle gyms, or really any horizontal bar. Below are instructions for using a Smith machine.

How to Do It:

1. Pretend you are doing wide grip pull-ups and take that same grip.
2. The starting position is on the ground under the bar with your feet out in front of you and weight on your heels (or flat-footed if being on the heels is too hard).
3. Pretend (again) you are bench pressing, and bring your chest to the bar exactly where the bench press would hit.