Tips for developing your back

There’s no doubt that a massive yet well-defined, thoroughly developed back is a powerful sight.

A back that fits that description has also been one of my goals for the past five years. As with achieving anything good, it all takes time and nothing happens overnight. But if you focus, commit, prioritize and act deliberately toward your goal, anything is possible.

In this article I’ll briefly lay out a few ideas I’ve applied to reach my current level of back development, and if anyone asked me how to improve their back, these are the principles I’d recommend to others as well.

When it comes to building an impressive back, I think two aspects matter – mass and detail. We’d probably all agree that no natural lifter can ever have “too much” mass on their back. It follows that back mass development should always be a priority, especially for lifters who don’t have much training experience. A beginner can do perfectly well by focusing only on heavy basic exercises during the first years of training. Basic exercises will always remain the cornerstone of a program aimed at a good back, but the more years of training you have behind you, the more important it becomes to start varying the basic exercises too. That is, if in the first years regular pull-ups and, for example, bent-over barbell rows do most of the work, you could then gradually start varying these basic pulling movements as well, because variations are what ensure detail. I’m not saying you can’t vary them right from the start, but at the beginning there’s perhaps no such pressing need.

Exercise selection

When choosing exercises for a back day, it’s definitely worth working from the concept of vertical and horizontal pulls. It isn’t always true that horizontal rows (rowing movements) always give thickness and vertical pulls (pull-ups and pulldowns) always give width. I’ve managed to add quite a lot of thickness to my back with a very high volume of vertical pulls. Still, these two movement directions do differ somewhat in how they develop the back. The training effect of an exercise choice also depends largely on your body type. In my own case, I have a relatively long torso, and I’ve still tried to do quite a lot of horizontal rows (rowing movements), which should make the back look thicker when viewed from the side. Unfortunately, though, I’ve seen that it’s actually the vertical pulls (pull-ups and pulldowns on machines) that have added noticeable thickness to my back. So the idea that rows make the back thicker and pulldowns make it wider is, in my opinion, not always a rule. But it’s definitely important to do both movements.

If a good back is the goal, your program should include one vertical basic pull and one horizontal basic row as the base exercises you’ll run through some kind of system. These are the cornerstones of your back training, and you should start progressing on them deliberately. Pull-ups and standing one-arm rows with the end of a barbell (between your two feet) have been my two main basic exercises for years now, and I’ve gone through various progressions with them.

Progression

In short and to the point, I recommend wave progression for all of the exercises you choose for your system.

This means that across different basic exercises, you progress simultaneously with several different set lengths. Here’s an example of a pull-up progression that I used for a very long time, and successfully:

Pull-ups with a narrow underhand grip – 4 x 8 (4 – 5 x 8)
Pull-ups with a wide overhand grip – 8 x 4 (8 x 3 – 5)
Pull-ups with a narrow underhand grip – 6 x 6 (5 – 6 x 6)
Pull-ups with a wide overhand grip – 4 x 8 (4 – 5 x 8)
Pull-ups with a narrow underhand grip – 8 x 4 (8 x 3 – 5)
Pull-ups with a wide overhand grip – 6 x 6 (5 – 6 x 6)

Frequency

As with prioritizing the development of any muscle, with the back too I’m convinced that there should be microcycles in which you train the muscle at a higher frequency but with less in each session, and where the training volume in sets per workout is clearly controlled. And there are microcycles in which you train at a low frequency, for example once a week, but then you really “demolish” it. Based on this belief, I’ve set up my back training so that in some weeks I definitely do two back workouts a week but don’t overdo the volume in a session – I do about 8 – 12 sets and that’s it. In other weeks I do only one back workout a week, but then 20 – 25 sets in one go. For the sake of progress, you should definitely play with frequency too.

Set lengths and training to failure

I’ve noticed that although the back is probably considered a body part that wants constant tension and longer sets – honestly, I don’t personally feel that’s the case. In general, across different back exercises I’m mostly roughly in the range of 4 – 12 repetitions.

Also, when I talk about pull-ups, for example, then moving forward systematically you don’t have to take your sets to failure in order to progress. Schemes such as 8 x 4 → 7 x 5 → 6 x 6 → 5 x 7 → 4 x 8 work very well, and you don’t necessarily need to go to failure on those repetitions to make progress. A large volume of work done with repetitions in reserve, simply as a scheme, already ensures quite sufficient progress. Of course, not all exercises can be done for volume and always with repetitions in reserve. In most exercises you do have to get quite close to failure within the set, but a large part of your progress through basic exercises can be secured without going to failure.

Although basic exercises carry great weight, people developing their back often forget that the back doesn’t mean only the lats. Basic exercises aimed at the lats naturally involve almost all the muscles of the back (with different emphasis), but still, once you’ve accumulated some training experience, it soon becomes apparent that even with basic exercises, not all regions of the back get as much training load as complete development would require. The shoulders as a whole, as well as the rear delts, traps and rhomboids, are the muscles that give the back its important look in the rear double biceps pose, but the training load coming from lat-focused basic exercises may not always be enough for them. A good back means wide lats, big, lean, round shoulders, and flat, powerful traps and rhomboids. Also, assess from photos whether you should put emphasis on the part of the lats near the armpit, or whether the lower regions of the lats on the back, near the waist, need separate, emphasized development.

What should you train your back with?

I can’t say there’s a final truth here, but two options work for me. First, a day devoted entirely to back. Second, training back together with chest or shoulders. I do it like this: in a week when I’m adding more volume, I train back once a week on its own, plus, for example, just traps/rear delts and abs. And when I train back two times a week, I do one session together with chest and the other together with shoulders, though of course with less volume then, for example 10 sets for shoulders, 10 sets for back and 4 – 5 sets for traps. I also use another option: when I train back twice a week, I do one back workout on its own and the other together with chest or shoulders.

Important

To grow, the back muscles definitely need a good mind-muscle connection. I think this is one of the reasons why many people don’t have much of a back: they do back exercises, but they don’t actually feel the back (the lats) working at all.

The lats also respond well when you let them go into a proper stretch during the exercise.

Why is the back underdeveloped in so many people?

1. The back is behind you, and people tend to train mostly, and with the most emphasis, what they can see in the mirror.
2. Poor feel for the back when performing back exercises.
3. A one-sided approach and too little training volume.
4. Focusing on the wrong exercises.
5. The training weights are often too heavy.

Although heavy training weights are often the “killers” of feel in back work, it is still important to give the back a fairly high, clearly felt training load quite often. Sets of 4 – 6 repetitions work well both for bent-over rows and for pull-ups, which means you need to use quite a lot of added weight too.

Author: Janar Rückenberg

Source:Turg.Fitness.ee

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