Grow your lats with baby weights?

The form the guy is using in the vid shows him clearly attempting to use an inefficient bar path to make the movement harder to perform. A more efficient bar path will allow for the use of more load and thus a better load progression over the course of a cycle. Will a more efficient bar path work the lats less? Not likely once the loads are up there. Heavier load being moved through good ROM and with good form (ie. not heaving a heavy db around using lots of body language) will mean more work being done by all the involved muscles, including lats.
 
Lol, the whole purpose of the lat spread he's doing is to attempt to isolate it more. Clearly when you pull more load in a convenient closer to the body path, lats, traps & delts share the loading, so it's not clearly obvious if his less load confers less stress on the lat. There are several other exercises better suited for traps & delts, but this exercise is meant to target your lat almost exclusively. As Haycock says, it's the plane of motion and load that hits the target muscle that is important, not necessarily weight being lifted in a compound movement.
 
What is the point in trying to isolate your lats from the rest of your back muscles? The only possible reason might be that your back was hugely well-developed everywhere but with the lats somehow lagging behind. I really doubt this would be a problem for the majority of people who regularly do some sort of row and chinning/pull-up movements.

I do think it is good to be aware of the muscles you are activating when performing any exercise. It is most definitely possible to be fully aware of lat involvement during any row or chin/pull-up variant. Developing that awareness might help you more if you believe you are struggling to develop your lats.
 
What about the mind-muscle connection? Keeping your lat strained at all times, feeling it? Those are all part of the equation. If he could build his muscle naturally by doing that kind of form, so can the rest of us.
 
I once read an article by Ellington Darden where he related how Arthur Jones was convinced he could make his biceps grow just by thinking about performing a set of curls. Maybe you should practice a similar thing for your lats? It's got to be even easier than using baby weights. Or maybe combine the two? :p
 
Ok, almost every discussion involving some unorthodox way of doing things ends up implying that their author is untrue and he could not have succeeded in it the way he proposes.
 
Probably because it's always something that is clearly retarded to anyone with half a brain.
 
Buddies looking jacked up but I don't care for his system of db rows. This whole notion of the dbs being too close to the body causing your lats to not get good enough training is nothing but rubbish. If that were true it would mean that t-bar row are worthless, yet the its a classic mass builder. It's no different than magazines talking about new ways to blasting this and hammering that with a new routine every week to put on mass etc etc. I'll pass.
 
Check out this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAyGzXfr0IQ

What do you think? I've never tried DB rows as part of my HST cycle. I'm going to try this form tomorrow, after 1 set of seated rows.

I suppose there could be value to the whole mind/muscle thing, but I think most bodybuilders tend to build their size in more obvious ways (e.g. heavy rows and the like). Dante Trudell of DC training fame made a point about this a while back, something to the effect of seeing a lot of advanced bodybuilders extoll the virtues of lighter weights and really feeling your muscles contract, but that the vast majority of them built their size in the first place the old-fashioned way, i.e. progressively heavier ass weights in the big, basic exercises (plus anabolics, obviously).
 
@mikeynov, I don't think he's trying to tell us we can't grow lats doing the conventional form & triple digit based weights, all he's saying is that they aren't necessary to adequately hit one's lats.
 
Rihad, saying is one thing, doing is another. Why not try a few cycles with "baby weights" and attempt to "connect" with your lats and then report back? Let us know how much progress you actually make.
 
@Lol, I've been doing just that for the past 2 w/os. I left seated rows alternated with pullups as they were, just added 2 more sets of bent over 1-arm DB rows done in Vic's way. Only 10 kg (22lb) x 10 so far, but I'm feeling it.
 
@manimal, ironically your sig supports his ideas fully.

Not necessarily. The signature is meant for meat heads that try lifting stupid amounts of weight with piss poor posture. You can't grow a big chest using 100lbs no matter how perfect your form is.


@mikeynov, I don't think he's trying to tell us we can't grow lats doing the conventional form & triple digit based weights, all he's saying is that they aren't necessary to adequately hit one's lats.

There are lots of other exercises that you can adequately hit and isolate the lats, but tried and true, standard rows and chins have always been the way to go. The way he's showing to do the db row is how you'd perform a bar row. Besides looking at the size and shape of his arms, you know he's doing more than 30 barbell curls and he's possibly on the juice. That's where I have an issue with when people give off the impression that lifting light weights is going to get you big. Eventually your body will stop growing because the progression of weight is not heavy enough. This approach may work for someone who's just starting out but I can't see any huge benefits for someone's who's got six years of training.
 
All good points. I'll be trying this stuff out for the time being. If nothing else, I'll be getting free extra volume on top of my seated rows / pullups ;)

BTW, I remember Bryan mentioning some occlusion studies which had people wrap bands around their arms/legs thus restricting blood/oxygen flow, and doing reps using small weights, resulting in considerable hypertrophy. So it isn't all black or white. The way Vic speaks of keeping your lats tense for the whole duration of a set, may be all part of the puzzle.
 
@Rihad - what the person in the video is doing is not really that different to WG BB or seated rows.

I'm not sure where the validation of this idea of sub-threshold load being enough to cause microdamage is meant to come from.

I tend to support mikey on this; most people forget what built their body when they find something else they like that gives maybe a bit more pump/similar.
 
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