I recently came across a post on Facebook that shared that latissimus dorsi are the strongest muscles in your body. Like everything on Facebook, I took it with a grain of salt, but it got me thinking a little bit about the correlation between this muscle and one of our most used techniques in martial arts: the pulling hand.
In the style I practice, tang soo do, almost all our moves have an equal and opposite reaction happening at the same time. As our technique extends, usually one of our other limbs will create a counter-motion to help with power, alignment, and control. When we punch out, our other hand pulls back at the same time to allow the whole body to be involved in the skill, almost creating a whipping motion in your spine to allow for extra pop in the punch.
It was for this reason, I remember in one of my earliest lessons our instructor asked us which hand is more important when we do our punches, the punching hand or the pulling hand? As a novice, I assumed the punching hand was more important since it’s the one to make contact. But the harder you pull on your chamber hand, it will make your actual punch that much more powerful. Application wise, it’s also used in a variety of partner techniques where we utilize the pulling hand to quite literally pull your opponent into your strike. Plenty of other styles use this strategy as well in their practices; in Shotokan karate they have a specific word for this, Hikite, or the pulling hand. This pulling motion is created by your arms and shoulders, but most importantly, your lats!
It makes sense that this pulling sensation is so strong; your lats may not be the strongest muscle overall, but they are the biggest muscle in your upper body. They are the V-shaped muscle on either side of your back, or your “wing” muscles. They’re directly responsible for pulling motions, therefore we use them all the time while training!
