Start with a simple overhead stretch to loosen yourself up. When your physical conditioning increases, use an exercise ball or wall to get a deeper stretch. Finally, you can turn your stretching routine into a workout by doing pelvic raises. Mix these routines up to fully loosen your lats.

So next time you go to stretch out your lats, apply these 3 simple tweaks. Make sure to step one foot at a time behind, externally rotate the shoulder, and practice 3D breathing. Your lats will get a more effective stretch, and the increased mobility should help ease shoulder tension and improve your posture!

Thus, to stretch the lats, you want to move the lat’s origins as far away from the insertion as possible! So to optimally stretch the lats, you need to: Abduct the shoulder Flex the shoulder (get the arm overhead !) Externally rotate the shoulder Posteriorly pelvic tilt the pelvis Side bend to the opposite side

Static stretching of the lats is helpful, but to get a complete stretch and improve your shoulder range of motion and mobility, there are a additional things to do beyond static stretching. In this post you will learn a 3 step routine to stretch your lats: Foam rolling Active lat stretching Eccentric loading