We'll show you the ten best exercises for your back muscles!

The foundation of a powerful body is a strong upper back and well-developed lats. Will your training make it happen? Here are 10 proven tips to build a strong back.

Article Content:

• Tip 1
• Tip 2
• Tip 3
• Tip 4
• Tip 5
• Type 6
• Type 7
• Type 8
• Type 9
• Type 10

Tip 1: Incorporate an isometric hold before sets

Isometric posture will dramatically improve the mind-muscle connection, optimize technique, and create a metabolic load that will make the exercise more effective. Here we will hold the weights in place, which is easier than isometric holds where you have to resist the load. It will also teach you maximum peak contraction, which will not have a major impact on your overall performance in that exercise.

• You will test this on 1-2 exercises. I prefer rowing or pulldowns on the pulley or chest support pull-ups.
• Choose a weight for 8-10 reps.
• Do 1 rep and hold the weight in place for 10-15 seconds after (in the transition between the positive and negative parts of the rep).
• Then do 8-10 regular reps.

Isometric exercises improve neuromuscular connectivity and help engage more muscle fibres, leading to higher growth potential. Additionally, they create an occlusion effect that flushes out more lactate and arranges more tension leading to volume.

Tip 2: Take a pause on your push-ups

You have to enjoy every inch of your reps, otherwise it will hurt. Most people pull themselves up and then come down into unprepared elbows and shoulders. That's not how you build muscle.

At the top, stop with your chest at the centerline and do the same at the bottom to knock out the stretch reflex.

Building muscle isn't so much about the weight as it is about squeezing the most out of each rep with a quality contraction. One small pause can completely change the muscular response of an exercise.

Tip 3: You need to feel how the battens work

If you don't, their growth will be a problem for you. And if you can't create tension in the lats with big exercises like deadlifts, you'll be limited in strength as well. Fortunately, the pullover on the pulley solves both of these problems.

• Your elbows will be extended and in the same position the entire time. If you bend them, it's a triceps extension.
• Clench your midsection, keep your spine neutral and tension in your lats. This is essential for optimal technique. Lowering will destroy the front of your mid-body, which will have to resist the extension.
• Squeeze the peak contraction. Imagine you want to crush oranges with your armpits and stretch your lats before moving into the lowering.

Tip 4: Change the pace from week to week

Most people manipulate sets and reps when modifying their workouts. However, your muscles don't know sets or reps. They only know time and tension. Usually, a set that is 40-60 seconds long is best.

Instead of sprinting through a series (say 10 reps in 30 seconds), try slowing down a bit. A 3 second trigger and a one second peak contraction are priceless for volume.

Try keeping the same weight and number of reps and only adjusting the tempo.

This is what it could look like:

Tip 5: Practice chest support pull-ups regularly

Back pain and stiffness are the biggest enemies of pull-ups. Chest support removes them. Plus, you basically can't use cheating with it. It's a great exercise for building lats, traps and rhomboids.

Practice them at least twice a week. In one workout, put 4-5 sets and 5-8 reps to engage more type II fibers. Choose an angle more focused on the lats, ideally 15-45°.

On the second day, give 3-4 sets and 10-15 reps, which will exercise more of the slow fibers. Choose an angle more focused on the mid-back, ideally 45-60°.

This combination exercises a variety of muscle fibers in different volume ranges of repetitions.

Tip 6: Try jackknife shrugs

Shifts are great if you have healthy elbows and shoulders, plenty of relative strength, and great overhead mobility. However, only about 5% of exercisers meet these criteria.

Without optimal technique, this vertical pulling exercise turns into a fancy arm exercise. Enough people whizz through a series to get to the required number of reps without once feeling a contraction in their back. This is useless for muscle growth.

The jackknife hunch solves these problems. It's a vertical deadlift with leg support. This design reduces the resistance of the exercise and increases control over the execution. If your shoulders or elbows are sore, or you can't do 10-12 controlled reps of the bend, this variation will be better for volume.

Incorporate this into your workout like any other deadlift exercise. Here's the execution.:

• Use a secured axle in a rack, multipress, or rings.
• Lift your legs up onto a bench or box.
• Bend your knees to 90%.
• Engage your shoulders by squeezing them together. This will make you pull more with your back.
• Pull yourself up and push your elbows down.

This variation has a number of options to modify the technique for optimal back engagement. You can vary the pace and body angle to make the exercise as comfortable as possible for you.

Tip 7: Incorporate progressive sets of pull-ups

The isometric portion of this exercise will provide constant tension and support your neuromuscular connection. Isodynamic pull-ups are best practiced using Nick Tumminell's progressive series, in a 5-4-3-2 system.

Here's the execution:

• Practice 5 dynamic reps with the right side while the left side is isometrically holding the weights.
• Reverse sides.
• Ease up to 4 dynamic reps while the other side is isometrically holding. Then 3.
• Finally, do 2 reps with both hands.
• The descending number of reps takes into account accumulated fatigue and gives the muscles a new shock.

Tip 8: Exercise at a high frequency

Increasing frequency is one of the most proven methods to improve any part. Here are the reasons.

• Increased frequency improves protein synthesis, which leads to faster gains.
• You learn motor skills faster. The more you practice a movement, the more obvious it is to you. People spend inhuman hours in front of a monitor in the internal rotation position. This blows out your shoulders, destroys mobility and posture. Back training, especially horizontal pulls, improves posture.
• It creates a volume shock to the muscles. If you've been doing a batch once a week, changing to 2-4 x's will be shocking. You will grow even if you keep the volume of training the same.

How to increase the frequency of training? The easiest thing to do is to include some stretching exercises in between each push exercise. For example, try incorporating a face pull or rubber band stretch into your push breaks for a month.

If you want something more intense, I recommend incorporating reverse pull-ups or rubber band pull-ups into your breaks.

You can also customize your training split to pressure/pull or primary muscle group/synergistic. With the pressure/pull split you can get to a frequency of 4-6 x per week. The muscles in the back of the body are usually responsible for the pulling exercises, while the front of the body is more likely to be responsible for the pushing exercises. The legs are paired into the deadlift workouts.

The second option is the primary muscle/synergist. Examples are back/biceps, chest/triceps. Here I would include at least two back workouts per week:

Tip 9: Practice 2-minute farmer's walks

Trapezius are large muscles with a small range of motion, and therefore benefit from extended periods of time under tension. For this reason, I encourage you to practice them for two minutes. Put it at the end of your back workout or deadlifts and rest 90 seconds between sets.

It will force you to improve your grip, learn to breathe under tension, and maintain optimal posture. You'll improve your stability from head to toe and put a huge strain on your traps.

Use this volume version for a month and alternate it with a heavier version with only 30s intervals.

Tip 10: Alternate the angle of your elbows

John Meadows places a lot of emphasis on this. The fibers of your lats are oriented differently, so you need to practice them from different angles. You can do this by changing the position of your elbows slightly.

You don't want to spend much time with your elbows completely away from your body (forming a T with your torso). It will work the traps and rhomboids a little better, but it's not the optimal position for your shoulders. The opposite extreme with your arms completely close to your body is also not good. Again, this position of the humerus is dangerous for the shoulder.

You want your elbows at a 15-75° angle from your body. Generally, the smaller the angle, the more the exercise will exercise your lats. With a minimal angle, you can essentially wrap your elbow around your rib cage and experience an incredible peak contraction.

An angle of about 45° is optimal for shoulder health and for training the lats, rhomboids and traps. An angle of 60-75° will train the trapezius and rhomboids far more than the lats.

Manipulating the angles in the elbows allows you to focus on the groin. With small adjustments like these, you can improve without dramatically changing your entire training program.

Source: www.t-nation.com - The Top 10 Back Workout Tips
Author: Eric Bach
Translated by Jaromír Uhlíř