Did you watch the physical 100 in Netflix? It was a bizarre Korean show where people from all walks of life but supposedly at the peak of fitness were challenged, either individually or in teams, to perform tasks. A but like Squid Games only for real and not so terminal.
I don’t know how real the voice overs were that we got in the UK, there seemed to be a lot of people with very similar voices saying the same things, but one of the over whelming comments was ‘Oh, look at those back muscles’.
There aren’t many sports where you do actually get to see back muscles. A trip a long time ago to a swimming competition sticks in my mind, but fully developed back muscles can be amazing. We tend to ignore the back and yet we lose a lot of working days to back problems and people tend to just accept back ache as part of life. People will tell you how many crunches they can do but when you ask if they ever do back elevations they look at you as if you have lost it.
We have an ongoing project looking at the spine and so back muscles have been on my mind lately and so I was amused when I was introduced to a new syndrome last week – ILS.
The L stands for Lats – short for latissimus dorsi. These muscles, one on each side, stretch from the lower thoracic vertebrae, the top of the back of the pelvis and some of the ribs across to the top of the humerus in the arm, catching the lower point of the shoulder blade on the way. It’s responsible for movement of the arm and has a role to play in respiration (because it’s attached to the ribs). It is the muscle that you work when you do a lat pull down in the gym.
The S could stand for Spread (although it stands for syndrome). The best example of this is Bruce Lee – The lat spread was one of his signature moves. It is a body building competition move although Bruce Lee does it the best (in my opinion).
Here is a picture of Bruce Lee – the famous martial artist. This is him just standing their normally, not much definition – looks fairly normal.
This is the same man spreading his lats. Now the six pack is obvious and look at the extra width that it has added to his body. (just remember this when you see another before and after picture – there could just be seconds between these two pictures). This is a common technique throughout many species. When threatened you make yourself appear as big as possible. Notice the arms are away from the body. The lats connect to the humerus and so any movement of the arms would affect the lats and so the arms are held still. To walk like this you would need to twist from your waist – a sort of swagger.
This then leads us to ILS, Invisible Lat Syndrome. Someone, usually in a gym, that walks as though they have spread their lats and so doesn’t move their arms and has a swagger. It’s only three letters but you can see exactly what it looks like.
Author: Anatomy Fundamentals
Janet Philp has spent a lifetime exploring fitness and wellbeing. Starting in group exercise, travelling through rugby to representing the UK at martial arts before including Yoga, meditation, Budokon and personal instruction. Her passion is anatomical function and educating people to use their bodies to their full potential.
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