The latissimus dorsi can produce the most tension during shoulder extension, which is exactly the lat prayer movement. Muscles grow in response to high mechanical tension. The biomechanics: why lat prayers are the perfect lat exercise If you don’t get good peak contraction, lean more backwards during the descent, or step back a bit further from the cable tower. Kneeling down helps you get a good stretch too. If you don’t get a good stretch, lean over further forwards during the ascent.
Use your body movement to get a good stretch in the top position (torso more horizontal) and a good peak contraction in the bottom position (torso more vertical). In the bottom position, your elbows should be in line with your torso, effectively in anatomical position. With straight arms, pull the bar/rope into your lap while leaning backwards. Lean forward into the weight and let your arms almost but not fully extend (less than 180° ROM: aim for 120-170°): keep the tension on your lats, not your connective tissue. Position yourself on your knees or standing in front of a high cable pulley with a V- or W-grip or rope attachment. Whichever variation you do, these are the key technique considerations. You can also perform the exercise kayak style, semi-unilaterally, or with one arm using a single cable handle. With weights above about two thirds of bodyweight, you generally need to kneel down. You can use different handles and you can perform the exercise standing or kneeling. Here’s a short video in which I introduce lat prayers while Antoine Fombonne demonstrates the exercise (editing by Blandine the variations in technique. I called this exercise lat prayers, because the movement resembles a prayer, a prayer for bigger lats that’s bound to be fulfilled by the muscle gods. This allows you to achieve high muscle tension in the lats all the way from their fully shortened to their fully lengthened position. Lat prayers are a straight-arm cable pull-over with body movement to accommodate the exercise’s resistance curve to your strength curve. ROPE LAT PULLOVER ALTERNATIVE FULL
That leaves pull-overs, but those are often impractical to load heavily, they’re quite injurious for the shoulder and they still don’t train the lats through their full ROM.Įnter lat prayers. Vertical pulling is better, but at the very top there’s still no tension on the lats, as the lats are no longer working against the vertical angle of the resistance.
Rows, horizontal pulls and deadlifts don’t train the lats through nearly their full range of motion (ROM). People do isolation exercises for tiny muscles like the biceps, but what about the lats? Another common pitfall is not programming exercises that stimulate stretch-mediated hypertrophy.
One big problem already lies in thinking about ‘the back’ as if it’s a single muscle. Many programs fail to optimize their programming for the back muscles.
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