Back Training
I’ve been told that my back is my best bodypart. Tough to say for sure as I rarely get to see it, but I have seen pictures of it and I guess it looks aight. Sooooooooooo, I’m probably doing something right when it comes to back training.
Here are my tips on training back: #1, when training back it’s verrrrry important to focus on working your back muscles and not your arm/biceps. It’s very easy to have your biceps do most of the work, but you need to really focus and concentrate on pulling the weight using your back instead. I used to make the mistake of using mostly arms on my back exercises, so I could do really heavy weights. Believe it or not, I made that mistake for almost 20 years!!! When I finally made the adjustment to use my back more, my back really started developing! #2, you’re going to hear this a lot from me…do the exercises slowly, working the muscle you intend to work rather than using momentum and the rest of your body to do the exercise! So many times I see people doing their pulldowns or row waaay too fast with too much weight, swinging their whole body to get the weight moving. All this is doing is working the lower back more and working the lats less. Keep it slow and work those lats!
#3, hit your back from multiple angles and use multiple grips! I generally do 2 pulldown exercises and 2 rowing exercises per back workout, and I change these 4 exercises every month or so. You can use an overhand grip, underhand grip, close grip, wide grip, etc, but keep changing it to work all of the areas of your lats!
January 7, 2008 at 4:54 am
great tips Dave
I think deadlifts and pull ups are great for the back also!
January 7, 2008 at 6:14 am
Yesssssss, I totally agree, especially about pull-ups! A tip that I got from Arnold, well, not personall, but, I did read it at least….was to set a goal for each workout as far as how many pullups you’re going to do. For example, I’m currently doing 25 pullups per back workout - I do as many sets as it takes to achieve those 25, such as 8 then 7 then 6 and then 4.
For those of you who aren’t quite strong enough to do a decent # of pullups, you can start with the assisted pullup machine, gradually using less and less assist weight, until you’re able to do the pullups on your own.
And, even better, what I’ve been doing lately, as pullups have gotten pretty easy for me, I’ve been adding weight. I wear a weight belt with a chain, and chain a plate to it. I started with a 10-pound plate, now I’m using a 25-pound plate, and my goal is to do a good # of reps with a 45-pound plate or more.
Try it out and let me know how it goes. See those lat muscles start really popping!