Lat exercises without equipment

What is actually on this list?

Three different groups. The first is stretching: on all fours, lying on your side, standing with a torso twist, and braced against a bench. The second is scapular control, meaning scapular push-ups, seated shoulder blade squeezes and shoulder circles - small-range movements where you learn where your shoulder blade is and what it can do without help from the arm. The third is extension work on the mat: both superman versions and push-ups done lying on your back.

Only one exercise in the set is named outright after the lats. In the kneeling stretch you reach one arm out in front of you, bend the other elbow and drop your chest toward the floor. The description adds a condition that is easy to skip past: the reaching arm has to be straight all the way, because only then does the stretch reach the lats instead of stopping at the shoulder.

The rest is about the back more broadly than this one muscle, and it shows up here because the lats take some part in it. That is more honest than pretending you are looking at a training plan.

What is it good for?

Three things. As a warm-up before you pull, because shoulder circles and scapular push-ups wake the shoulder joint up in the range it is about to work in. As something sensible on a day without equipment, when the alternative is nothing at all. And as help for people whose stiff lats limit reaching overhead - this is the muscle that closes the last few degrees of that movement.

For the stretches the catalog gives 15 to 30 seconds in position and calm breathing, and on the torso twist it adds not to force it and to rotate only as far as your flexibility allows. The supermans and the push-ups lying on your back are the only movements here where you lift anything at all, and even there the load is the weight of your own arms and legs.

If you want to go further than this, the cheapest step is not another set on the mat but a resistance band anchored overhead, or a pull-up bar in a doorway. Both give the lats resistance in the direction they actually work, and both have their own lists in the atlas.