You’ve probably heard me cue you to engage your lats in one of our workouts, right? Of course you have! We will always cue your lat engagement! Engaging your lats makes you more stable, which means you’re able to generate more strength and power, have better balance, and more control of your body. How this happens is the question you might be asking and WHY do you need to do this? I can quote my mom who would say, “Because I said so, that’s why”, but I’m certain you’d like a better explanation. Here goes . . .
There are sling systems in the body that connect your upper and lower body in order to control and resist movement. The main sling system (posterior oblique) that I’m referring to here connects from your lats, through your low back, and attaches to the opposite hip. This is why we harp on engaging your lats. If you can adequately and properly engage your lats you can seriously improve your performance. Not just athletic performance, but everyday performance. Consider having better balance, more stable hips, a stronger core, glute muscles that actually work, and no back pain as the most beneficial outcomes of properly connecting the body through functionally based training. (This is what we do in our 30 Minutes of Everything® program.) This means that daily tasks like lifting something up, bending over, turning, getting in and out of your car, emptying the dishwasher, loading the clothes dryer, making your bed, sweeping, or vacuuming – these all become easier and decrease your risk for back pain and injury.
We engage our lats so we can get the full benefit of the posterior oblique sling. Look at the picture on the right – your posterior oblique sling goes to the opposite glute! Don’t you think that’s important for hip stability, which ties into everything you do in a day! The sling systems are trained with cross-body patterns. When we walk, we are using a cross-body pattern. Your opposite arm and leg is forward. Try it. Walk across the room and pay attention to what your arms and legs are doing. They are working opposite each other so that you can move. The intricate system responsible for that is the myofascial sling system I just mentioned. All slings work together while we move even though they’re different slings. This is why we train movements rather than individual muscles. Muscles never work in isolation in the real world. Many of them work together at the same time to get something done.
You will hear me talk about the cross-body pattern when I’m demonstrating a movement. Think about a dead bug where you rotate the sandbag towards the opposite shoulder, the lift and chop with the sandbag, or the bird dog bag drag. All of those are cross-body pattern movements. Even when we have you do a front-loaded sandbag squat and tell you to push your hands into the bag to break it apart so you can engage your lats – you are doing a cross-body pattern while you are squatting! This is so important! (Watch VIDEO here)
QUESTION: Why engage your lats?
ANSWER: So you can activate that posterior oblique sling and significantly improve pelvic stability and functional performance.