Importance of Lat Strength in the CrossFit Athlete

As a CrossFit athlete, having a well-rounded strength program is crucial to perform at your best. One area that is often overlooked is lat strength. Your latissimus dorsi muscles, or "lats," play a significant role in many CrossFit movements, including pull-ups, muscle-ups, and rowing. In this blog post, we will explore why lat strength is so important for CrossFit athletes and how to develop it.

First, let's talk about the role of the lats in CrossFit. Your lats are responsible for pulling your arms down and back towards your body. This movement is essential in kipping, pull-ups, muscle-ups, and toes to bar, all of which are common movements in CrossFit. Without strong lats, these movements become much more challenging, and you may struggle to perform them efficiently or worse, sustain an injury.

So, how do you develop strong lats for CrossFit? Here are some exercises to incorporate into your strength program:

1. Pull-ups and Chin-ups: Pull-ups and chin-ups are excellent exercises for building lat strength. Make sure to focus on pulling your elbows toward your hips, engaging your lats throughout the movement. I recommend starting with varying ways of assisted pull-ups.

   1. Toes on a box

   2. Banded pull-ups

   3. Eccentric or “negative” pull-ups

2. Rows: Rows are another great exercise to target your lats. Whether you're using dumbbells, barbells, or a cable machine, focus on pulling your elbows down and back towards your body

3. Lat Pulldowns: Lat pulldowns are an isolation exercise that specifically target your lats. Make sure to use a resistance or weight that allows you to maintain proper form and focus on pulling your elbows down and back towards your body. This can be done with a machine, a loadable pulley system on the rig, or bands around a rig

4. Deadlifts: Deadlifts work your entire posterior chain, including your lats. Focus on maintaining a strong, neutral spine throughout the movement and pulling the barbell toward your shins and hips throughout the entire motion to firmly engage your lats in this exercise.

Progressive overload is crucial for these exercises. This means gradually increasing the weight or resistance you're using over time to continually challenge your muscles and promote growth. Taking them through full ranges of motion will also maintain an appropriate length of your lats so that you can still move through full shoulder motion without limitation. Combined with full ROM and improving strength this will help to decrease your risk for a potential shoulder injury.

In conclusion, lat strength is pivotal for CrossFit athletes. It not only helps with performance in many of our overhead gymnastics movements but it also contributes to overall posture and shoulder stability. By incorporating exercises like pull-ups, rows, lat pulldowns, and deadlifts into your training program and gradually increasing the weight over time, you can develop strong, functional lats that will help you excel in the gym.