 Our next caller is Allie from Maryland. Hi Allie, how can we help you? Hi guys. Um, I really appreciate your time today. Uh, so I'm just getting into your book, but I, I use your info from the podcast. Um, when I talk into my nutrition clients, uh, when they ask about cardio for fat loss. So thanks for that insight. I appreciate it. I actually wrote it, but he keeps taking care of it for it. Yeah. Always. Um, my question is as a female body power lifter, what are some of the correctional exercises that I could use to better engage, uh, my lat muscles and not overused traps or lower back. Um, so a little history. I wear a belt. I practice with Boris deadlifts, rack pulls and stiff leg deadlifts. My accessories are typically rows and shoulder presses. Um, but I have issues feeling the connection to my lats on conventional deadlifts. So that's my question and thanks for your help with this one. Okay. What, what, what's a Boris deadlift? I'm, you got to school me here. Um, so Boris deadlift is, uh, deadlift to the knees and, uh, then you see you lift to the knees and then you go back down to the floor. Got it. Got it. All right. Boris style. Yeah. Obviously. Yeah. That's new to me. I've actually, I didn't know that. I've never heard of it before. Yeah. I've never heard term that. Okay. You know, something with, uh, power lifters that you sometimes see, not as common today, but, uh, you used to see this all the time is they don't do any direct lat work like pull downs, uh, because pull downs are considered a bodybuilding exercise. Um, so if you're not doing any pull downs, whether it's a supinated grip or even wide grip, I suggest adding those into routine. So you can do some direct lat work. Now, as far as maybe priming prone cobra is a great exercise to activate the lats. If you do it properly, when you do the prone cobra, you have to think about the action of the lats, which is to bring the humorous back and then also bring the, not only are you squeezing the shoulders back, but you're also squeezing them down. So you're avoiding that shrugging position. It's a good priming movement because that's exactly what you want to do before he dead left. If you want to feel the lats is you want to be able to pull them down and back to activate them to give you that, you know, that stability. Now, do you, do you have this problem Ali too? Even with the queue? Have you've heard the queue bend the bar before you lift? Yes. Yeah. So, um, I typically try like when I pull on the bar before I lift, um, I try to focus on that pinching, um, like I try to cue that pencil between the lats feeling. So like pinch the lats together, but then like on the lift itself, like I just missed that next. So are you depressing the shoulder blades down as well? So after you, you go ahead and like retract your shoulders, are you also then, you know, packing your shoulder blades down and turning like your hands out? Yeah. That's a good question. Justin's asking because it sounds, especially if you're filling it a lot in your traps and your wrong boys, what you might be doing is you might be kind of shrugging up when you, when you pinch the, if you're trying to pinch the pencil, you might be actually kind of squeezing the shoulder blades back versus more like tucking your, like I think about putting my elbows in my back pocket. Um, another thing that will help that. So Sal talked about the, the, um, Procobra. No, Procobra, I also would, I would take someone like this and actually do a dumbbell pullover right before they go into a deadlift. So I would do a pullover with you to get you to really feel and activate the lats. And, you know, I'd probably do five, five to eight reps of it with a moderately heavy weight, not too heavy to where I don't want to fatigue you, but I just want you to really feel those lats and then I would go right into the conventional deadlift. Yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to add something to that instead of a pullover, do a straight arm pulldown with a rope because you got to get the squeeze. Okay. The reason why I challenge that is because if she has a hard time engaging lats, the stand, gravity is working to her favor in the pullover and the activation will be in the stretch. I know, but the straight arm pull down. I know you liked that one. We've, we've debated this before. It's one of those exercises that people tend to have sometimes a hard time engaging the lats. They do tricep work and they push down on shoulders, the shoulders and triceps because they have a hard time engagement. Now, if you understand how to engage the lats, I feel like it's, Well, and that's the point. The point is in the deadlift, think of where the lats are engaged. It's not in the stretch position. It's in that shortened position where she'll need to connect to. You're right. But the stretch position is cues it mentally is why is so it forces you to cue it where cause you're in the stretch position. It's that rotation too of the pinky and the thumbs turning up. And so if you're doing that within your prone cobra, that's really what you're emulating on the bar. The bar just obviously doesn't move, but you have to kind of think in that, in those terms of, of rotation to, and then depression to get those shoulders. And by the way, no, we're arguing here, but none of these are wrong, Allie. I mean, all these things were thrown at you. Some are just more right than others. All joking. No, all joking aside. Here's the deal. The lats do nothing to the scapula. They don't bring the shoulder blades back. That's right. That's right. So when you think, I think she's pinching the pencil with her trap. That's not the lats, right? The lats are these big wide muscles that attach at the humorous, right? The upper arm and then they attach kind of near the spine and down the back. And what they do is they bring the humorous to the closer to the body. So you can pinch your shoulder blades back all you want. That's not activating the lats. What activates the lats is getting those arms back and squeezing them down and back. You got to do that down and back motion. So if you do the straight arm pull down, like I was suggesting, when you get to the bottom, you got to go real light, when you get to the bottom, pull the shoulders down and back, down and back is where you're going to start to activate the lats and squeeze them. And that's also what the deadlifts is going to look like. And we're going to try to be wider grip as well. Like a snatch grip. Like a snatch grip. I have not. No, there you go. Yeah, that's a great. It's a great call, Justin. Yeah, that that just see what that feels like because I know just like bringing my grip a little bit wider. It helps to kind of force me in that position too. And then if you add again, like we've been talking about like, you know, getting those shoulder blades to retract, but depress or bring them down in that wider position, you might have a little better chance of activation. But what Sal was saying is definitely correct. You're in the, because you already said it, like you're trying to pinch the pencil. You're, you're doing a row, you know, so you're, you're pinching with your, your traps. You're pinching with your traps and your rhomboids. You're not actually pinching with your lats. And so that cue is actually probably not helping you to think that way. And what Sal is trying to get you to do with the straight arm pull down is it gets you to think of your lats activating. The only thing I'm going to challenge him on is that in my experience, when I try and teach someone a straight arm pull down, it's a, it's a little more technical exercise because they have to engage the lats to do it. And if you just go through the movements, you might not feel it. And that's why I like the dumbbell pullover because in that stretch position, you are not going to do a dumbbell pull over your head and not fill your lats. You will be forced to because gravity is pulling against you in the stretch position. And that's what I would want to cue. And so maybe you combine them, right? So maybe you do the dumbbell pullover so you can feel those lats the way you're supposed to. And then you think about that when you go to the exercise. Sal is saying to really engage them even more and then go to your deadlifts. Do you have maps prime, by the way, Allie? I do have maps. I have like all of your programs except prime pro. That's the only one I don't have. Try the prone Cobra and really pay attention to the form and the technique. There's no resistance on it, but your own body weight and it might help you start to connect a little bit to the lats. Here's the beauty of this. Once you start to connect, it gets way easier. It's that initial connection part that can that could be real difficult. I really like what Justin said too with the snatch grip deadlifts, especially if you don't do them. I think it's a great movement for someone that's a powerlifter to just to add into your routine. So and it's really tough to do a snatch grip and not fill your lats. It kind of forces you in that position. If you if you if you stay in a rigid, rigid spine while you're in a snatch grip, I mean, those lats are going to fire for sure. OK, great. Thank you. I appreciate that. Thanks, Allie. All right. It's been a while since we had that argument. Yeah, it's you remember we had that one a long time ago. You know what? You know where I got that from? No, you're not wrong. You right. You are right. I just in my experience, straight arm pull downs were a little bit harder. There is a challenge there. Do you agree? Yeah, because I know you never fucking take a side. Do you agree? Well, the thing because it's both right. Yeah, it's stupid because it's hard to get people to not to get past the triceps when you are going, you know, you straight arm pull downs. So if you can get past that part of it and that portion you can really direct them to, you know, feel a connection there with the shoulder blades depressing, then you'll feel your lats. The triceps stabilize. They stabilize in both exercises. But here's what I got that from. I got that from a physical therapist that worked with me and she showed me that. Well, mechanically speaking, you are correct. I'll concede that mechanically speaking, you're correct. I'm talking behaviorally. And what I've seen in my past, when I tell somebody who doesn't know how to fire the lats to go into a movement and fire the lats, here's straight arm pull down because it's the best thing to fire the lats. I see the forward shoulder and the arms going forward and the pushing down of the shoulders and the triceps to do that movement. Whereas if I put a person and I could take an advanced age, never lifted weights before, put you in the stretch position, just hold the dumbbell. Can you feel those lats? They'll be, they'll, they'll force them to fire. I'm on team prone Cobra. Okay. I'm all for that. I mean, no matter what though, if you're this person, you really should experiment with almost everything we're saying and you do what works best for you to get them fired.