Your workouts and training, like most parts of your life, should be based upon balance. Between hard training sessions and recovery days, upper body and lower body split, strength, and cardio, the path to a healthy, functional body are found by achieving some sort of equilibrium. That's especially true when it comes to the approach lots of guys make when they determine which muscles to target in their workouts. For many, their main aim is to build up their anteriorly positioned muscles—those on the front of your body, a.k.a. mirror muscles, like the chest, shoulders, biceps, and abs—while neglecting the muscles that aren't as immediately prominent on the posterior (back) side of their bodies. Key among those: the lats (scientific name: latissimus dorsi), the wide, fan-shaped muscle that makes up a large portion of your back.
When guys focus on their front, one of the most common goals is to develop a V-taper, a body type that starts broad at the shoulders and chest and narrows down to the chiseled abs and narrow waist. But if they only fixate on what's in front of them, they'll never achieve the physique they want—the key to the V-taper is the balance brought by a strong, broad back, with well-developed lats. Press, curl, and plank all you want. Your workout will be missing a key component without some dedicated lat action.
The key, then, is finding the best exercises to keep your lat workouts engaging so you don't succumb to the temptation to skip out on the muscle group. Here's how to stay on track to building up a big back. Make sure you’re hitting two or three of these moves at least once a week to round out your physique.
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