lats with other equipment
18 exercises for lats you can do with other equipment.
Latissimus dorsi is one of the body's largest muscles and creates the broad, powerful back that delivers stable shoulders and good posture. Yet it often gets overshadowed by bench press and biceps curls—trained at best halfheartedly on a cable machine.
With the right equipment—or rather a bit of everything—18 exercises open up that challenge lats from different angles, with varying load profiles and coordination demands. There's everything from beginner-friendly assisted pull-ups with bands to brutally hard movements like muscle ups and one-arm chins.
Choose the right level, build progression, and vary enough to avoid getting stuck in the same movement pattern week after week.
Hanging foundation—progress from bands to weighted
The hanging position is the most natural place to start for anyone wanting to train lats with bodyweight. Assisted pull-ups with bands remove some of your bodyweight and let you focus on movement quality before handling the full load. Once you can do solid sets without assistance, it's time to add a weight plate to a dip belt—weighted chins provide progressive overload just like barbell squats do for the legs.
Want to increase range of motion and hit the chest portion of lats harder? Gironda sternum chins lean the torso back and finish with the chest to the bar—an old bodybuilding technique that still works. London bridges and assisted one-arm pull-ups add lateral angles that regular chins never reach, forcing stabilizers to work much harder.
Explosive and technical—muscle ups and kipping
Muscle ups are one of the hardest movements you can perform in a gym—a pull-up that transitions seamlessly into a dip above the bar. They demand explosive pulling strength, coordination, and familiarity with keeping your body close to the bar through the entire movement. Not an exercise to rush into.
Kipping muscle ups use a swing from the hips to create upward momentum. This makes the movement more technical rather than easier—the load shifts and timing must be precise. Great for conditioning-focused training and CrossFit contexts, but requires solid foundational strength before you start swinging.
For those working toward one-arm variations, one-arm pull-ups and one-arm hangs serve as intermediate steps. One-arm hangs build grip, shoulder stability, and tendon adaptation—often the limiting factor rather than raw muscle strength.
Rows and rope—when the bar isn't enough
Not everyone has access to a pull-up bar daily, and sometimes varying movement patterns is worth more than repeating the same pull. Hanging rows and inverted rows with straps train lats in a more horizontal plane and engage mid-back and rear delts in ways vertical pulls don't.
Body-weighted rows offer similar angles with simple setup, while overhead lat pulldowns isolate the finishing portion of lats—that final stage of the pull where the muscle truly contracts.
Rope climbs are in a category of their own. They're heavy, they load lats throughout the entire range of motion, and they demand coordination between grip, pull, and leg drive. Build volume carefully—they stress forearms and connective tissue more than they appear to.
Functionally heavy—sled rows, sledgehammer swings, and Rocky chins
A few exercises on this list fall outside the category of "classic back movements" but belong here for good reason. Sled rows—pulling a sled toward you with a rope—load lats in a pull with constant resistance and no eccentric phase, creating a different type of fatigue than regular chins. Great for conditioning work or as supplemental training when joints need a break from hanging loads.
Sledgehammer swings train rotational power and lats' role in stabilizing and accelerating movement from the shoulder down to the ground. Requires technique and respect for the spine, but delivers extremely functional strength.
Rocky chins/ground-to-bar drags and mixed-grip pull-ups add grip variation and balance strength between pronated and supinated grips. Mixed grip reduces lockout failure on heavy sets and trains arms asymmetrically—worth including regularly to avoid one-sided weaknesses.