Strength Training - Pro Athlete Lat Pull Downs

Kenny Carrington: Hi! I am Kenny Carrington, the Director of Velocity Sports Performance in Alexandria. Here we are training with the Pro Donna The Animal Wilkinson.

What we are going to do with this segment is still working on upper body strength. We are working on lat pull-downs, front lat pull-downs. So, what she is going to do is she is going to grab the bar right outside the arch of the bar. She is going to sit down having her feet flat on the ground; knees underneath the pads, leaning back about 45 degrees.

The first thing she is going to do is squeeze her shoulder blades together working on that scaption and then she is going to pull the bar down to the bottom of her neck and then come up slowly, squeeze then pull, ten times.

As I mentioned before I was talking about the back being built up of smaller muscles, right in between the shoulder blades, one of the weakest parts for females, its really important to make sure that we keep that scaption and strengthen up those muscles and pull the shoulder blades together, so this way it assists with posture.

So, it is not only good for sports athletically, it is also good for everyday life, and with this what we will do is we normally do about three sets, maybe a four set, but we dont want to go any below eight reps and then stay below 15 reps at most.

So, we go 8 to 15 reps three to four sets.

Second set, make sure you squeeze shoulder blades leaning back a little bit, coming down. It is really important to come up nice and slow and controlled, do not have the weight just jerk up.

With these we are working the front lats, working the rhomboids in the middle trap, posterior deltoids and get a little bit of a bicep and forearm grip at the same time.

That concludes our segment for back upper body strength.