maratoolOverhead Lat
How to do the overhead lat
- Sit upright on the floor with your partner behind you. Raise one arm straight up, and flex the elbow, attempting to touch your hand to your back. Your parner should hold your tricep and wrist. This will be your starting position.
- Attempt to pull your upper arm to your side as your partner prevents you from doing actually doing so.
- After 10-20 seconds, relax the arm and allow your partner to further stretch the lat by applying gentle pressure to the tricep. Hold for 10-20 seconds, and then switch sides.
Muscles worked
The muscle under tension is the latissimus dorsi, which pulls the upper arm down and back toward the ribcage.
A stretch loads it at the far end of the range it normally works in, so the position you hold is itself the resistance.
Nothing travels, but holding the position is not the target muscle’s job alone: the triceps straighten the elbow to finish the movement.
How this movement works
Nothing travels once you are in position. The muscle holds a length under tension instead of working through a range, so effort is measured in seconds rather than repetitions — and the honest progression is more time in a good position, not a deeper one forced early.
It is filed under stretching, so the target is range of motion rather than force — a position you can settle into and breathe in, held long enough for the tissue to give.
What you need
These train the lats too, using equipment this one does not:
- Overhead Slammedicine ball
- Pull Upsbarbell
- Pullupsbody only
- Rope Straight-Arm Pulldowncable
- Latissimus Dorsi-SMRfoam roll
Difficulty
Listed at expert level. It asks for range, stability or speed that takes time to build, and it punishes a rushed set-up much harder than an easier movement would.
Of the 45 lats exercises in this database, 1 are listed at expert level.
Photos: free-exercise-db — public domain (Unlicense) Full attribution →
ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.