I can't do a lat spread, please help - 9 days out!!!

OK so I am 9 days out from my contest. My front lat spread sucks, the only way I can get my lats to flare is to start from a front double biceps. Otherwise they stay narrow, any pointers?! If I do it from a front double biceps I look like a bat and it looks awesome....so i know i have good lats and ppl have told me!!! i have a posing class on saturday so that should help but there will be a lot of others in there requiring the teacher's attention as well..

I'm by no means a great, or even good poser. But one thing I've noticed with lats is that when I've done a good lat spread I feel like I'm sticking my chest way up and out compared to what seems "right". Hopefully someone else with more experience and...... skilz..... will respond.

Stand in attention pose (hands to the sides, arms in a slight "C", elbows pointed straight out at your sides, chest/heart open, shoulders down, have the feeling of a string attached to the top of head pulling you upward - now mentally check all these points).

Now, let me see. How do I do it?

Chest comes forward (offer your heart to the judges ^.^) - or take a big breath and fill up your chest and hold it in this position as you exhale slowly.

Shoulder blades push the heart from the back, and this is where you should feel the lats holding the shoulder blades inward.

Now look in the mirror, isometrically push your elbows out to the side (move them slightly out). Look in the mirror, do you see the lats?

Push the shoulders down more if not.

You can also "backtrack" the movement starting with the front double biceps pose, too.

Basically, get into that position where you can feel the proper lat flare - now, keep the lats tensed, and let your arms straighten out to your sides in a "t" position (arms will likely need to be angled forward slightly to keep lat tightness, maybe about 10-20 degrees angled forward instead of perfectly straight).

Once you have gotten used to having your lats flared and tight without the biceps being a part via having your arms in the position mentioned above, you can tighten up more and likely increase the flare slightly by pulling your elbows back an inch or two (can be done into the lats or slightly out and away, it seems to work better than a straight pull back) as if you're doing an angled row of the elbows into or slightly away from the lats against imaginary weight. Once you get into that spot and feel it, you can let the elbow swivel and have forearms drop, and you'll be in a decent front lat spread position. It can be hard to get them to fire on command easily, but just think like you're doing a near isometric pull against an object that can't be moved to keep tight and you'll get the hang of it with practice

The thing is i dont know what the flare feels like, i think im doing it but when i open my eyes im not! thank you for responding, im all over posing this weekend. thank goodness for one more posing class...do u think id be disqualified if i did my lat spread from a double biceps during prejudging?!

I learnt to flare mine from ohp, lats should be used as a shelf/base for everything on ohp. Worked for me, I can get mine out quite far now.

So, did your posing class on Saturday offer some beneficial tips?