Back training: How to develop it?

The posterior is made up of a complex group of muscles, and, from this perspective, your back training should reflect this complexity.

To maximize muscle density and detail, you should not only focus on a back training program week after week, but also maximize variety by incorporating different approaches into your routine.

This month, we undertook a rather daunting task: compiling a list, ranked by popularity, of the bodybuilders with the best back development of all time.

Obviously, this list includes names like Ronnie Coleman and Dorian Yates at the top, along with professionals from more recent times; however, the idea is not to debate which back is better than another, but to bring together the routines that made them popular.

What did these 20 men undoubtedly have in common?

• Without a doubt, one factor was the combination of the equipment and free weights they used to forge their own path
• On the other hand, we see that they all relied on the basics when it came to planning each back workout; they used exercises that have stood the test of time and have been passed down through generations of iron.

All of this, along with variety, has played a vital role in the tremendous transformations they have undergone.

The following, then, are the comprehensive exercises for achieving a wider, thicker, and more defined back.

A good back workout develops the entire posterior muscle group, from top to bottom and from the inside out, from the trapezius down through the erector spinae, and from the peripheral edges of the latissimus dorsi through the teres major and minor, rhomboids, and posterior serratus.

The back and its muscles

Considering “the back” as one body part, as we do with the chest, is a misguided approach that fails to account for the complexity of its musculature.

To fine-tune the description of the back muscles, we will divide them into three basic regions: upper back, lats, and lower back.

The upper back includes the upper, middle, and lower trapezius, as well as the rhomboids, which lie “deep” to the middle trapezius. The upper back also includes the rear deltoids, the infraspinatus, and its little friend, the teres minor, which are located on the lateral aspect of the upper back.

As a brief review before explaining how to develop a back workout, the middle trapezius and rhomboids primarily function to retract the scapulae, or bring the shoulder blades toward the midline.

The upper trapezius elevates the shoulders, as when shrugging, while the lower trapezius depresses or lowers the scapulae and brings the lower parts of the scapulae closer together.

Visually, it is the upper portion that is primarily responsible for giving the back the thick, three-dimensional appearance needed to look good in a rear double-biceps pose.

The Lat Muscles

As you probably know, the lats are located primarily on the lateral side of the posterior torso, just below what we call the upper back… to complete the picture, the teres major would also fit into the latissimus dorsi or lat group…

The primary function of the lats is humeral adduction or abduction. In other words, the lats move the upper arm closer to or farther from the body, either in the frontal or sagittal plane.

Significant lat muscle development will obviously make your back look wider, especially when performing a rear lat spread.

The lats are also largely responsible for the overall shape of your physique; whether viewed from the front or back, your lats improve its appearance by adding width to your torso while visually narrowing your waist.

The Lower Back Muscles

When we refer to the lower back, we mainly mean the lumbar spinal erectors. However, we also include the lesser-known multifidus and quadratus lumborum.

In fact, the coveted “Christmas tree” appearance often seen in the lower back has much more to do with lat thickness and a lack of body fat than with spinal erector development.

As a general rule, performing deadlift variations, barbell squats, and some barbell rows will take care of your lower back in terms of strength and development; you should also protect it by taking the right supplements.

However, if pain and/or a lack of strength in your lower back prevent you from performing any of the movements mentioned above,

Back workout: main exercises

These main exercises should serve as fundamental movements in a back workout.

Once you can perform them with precision and proper technique, your goal should be to progressively increase your strength and endurance, gradually handling more weight while progressing in either volume or intensity.

• Barbell Row
• One-Arm Dumbbell Row
• Chin-Ups

The bent-over barbell row can be uncomfortable, difficult, and leave you a little disoriented, but skipping it is a big mistake, because whether you like it or not, nothing else can work the posterior muscles so completely and directly, stressing the entire length of your back with tremendous ferocity.

• Reps and eccentrics are not recommended with this exercise, but you could combine it with pull-ups or a machine exercise, where you sit and work with cables, for example.

Now, although the barbell row is the supreme king, the dumbbell row offers a greater range of motion and is also more stable because it allows you to place your hand on a bench or rack.

• Once you reach failure, you can use rest-pause, stopping for a couple of seconds in the bottom position to allow your energy reserves to recharge before performing a few final reps.

No back workout is complete without a chin-up, as it is versatile enough to work the entire posterior chain, including the arms.

• Arnold did not count sets; instead, he set a target number of reps and worked to reach it in as many—or as few—sets as necessary. So, if his goal was 50 total reps, his rep breakdown might have been 15, 12, 9, 8, and 6, or not.

Back workout: accessory exercises

Accessory movements should follow the lead of the main ones and serve as a high-impact challenge in an advanced back workout.

• Deadlift.
• Seated Machine Row.
• T-Bar Row.

Wait, isn’t the deadlift one of the best exercises of all time?… Well, YES, but truth be told, although it is excellent for the back, it also works the thighs and glutes.

From this perspective, you could use it in a higher rep range (10–15 per set) midway through or at the end of your back workout.

• In the deadlift, your goal is to use impeccable technique and, with it, move a significant load.
• You can also eliminate a “weak link” by using straps, without allowing your forearms to dictate how much weight your back and legs can handle.

The rowing machine does not consume a ton of your energy, but as an accessory exercise, it allows you to target muscles pre-fatigued by heavy, high-impact free-weight rows by reducing the stabilizing role of the muscles.

• A partner can help you perform a couple of forced reps at the end of the last set by lightly pressing the handles after you reach initial failure.

The T-bar row, however, looks like a primary muscle builder. You can use it halfway through your back workout. If you do it without a pad, you compromise your ability to breathe properly. If you use a pad, you can control the traps, eliminating the tendency to use your knees and torso to drive the weight.

• Finish your last exercise with partial repetitions or, with a partner’s help, perform one to three super-slow eccentric repetitions.

Back workout: finishing touches

For achieving that thing you like—a final pump—it’s hard to beat these cable-based exercises, which are designed to work your back in slightly different ways.

• Lat Pulldown (wide and close grip).
• Low Cable Seated Row.
• Straight-Arm Cable Pulldown.

You’ve probably noticed that the vast majority of back exercises come in two flavors: a row, where you pull a weight toward you from an extended-arm position, and an upward or downward pulling movement, where your arms are overhead and pulling against resistance.

By regularly using different grip widths on the lat pulldown in a back workout (wide, medium, and close) and styles (underhand, overhand, and neutral), you can continually work your back in different and highly effective ways.

Now, with the low cable seated row, you can keep your muscles under relatively constant tension throughout the range of motion, providing at least one benefit that free weights cannot match, making it an excellent accessory exercise for finishing your back days.

• As with lat pulldowns, drop sets are tailor-made for selectorized machines like the seated row, so use them.

The straight-arm pulldown isn’t a primary exercise, but for an intense burn in already-fatigued lats, the straight-arm pulldown is the answer.

• Once you reach initial failure on your final set, ask a partner to grab the cable and help you with the downward movement.
• Then perform slow, controlled eccentric repetitions on the way up.

Back workout: example, frequency 2

If you train twice a week, according to your body-part split training program, you could stimulate significant muscle growth by combining the exercises… we’ll discuss the variations later…

Back Workout 1:

• Barbell row: 5 sets of 15, 12, 10, 8, and 6 reps
• Seated machine row: 4 sets of 12, 10, 8, and 6 reps
• Deadlift: 4 sets of 8–10 reps
• Seated low-pulley row: 3 sets of 10–12 reps
• Wide-grip lat pulldown: 3 sets of 10–12 reps

Back Workout 2:

• One-arm dumbbell row: 5 sets of 15, 12, 10, 8, and 6 reps.
• Chin-ups: 50 total reps.
• T-bar row: 4 sets of 8–10 reps.
• Close-grip pulldown: 3 sets of 10–12 reps.
• Straight-arm pulldown: 3 sets of 12–15 reps.

It is a bit of an exaggeration to say that the back makes the bodybuilder, but consider this: powerlifters, rugby players, and wrestlers may have colossal legs, arms, and necks, but how many of them have backs that turn heads?-

To achieve V-shaped lats, you should not only combine the main exercises, accessory exercises, and those that provide the finishing touches, but also use some intensification techniques that are key to achieving maximum hypertrophy.

Now, if you want motivation, watch how Bradon Curry did it two weeks ago, just one month before the 2020 Mr. Olympia.

Training the Basics: The Old School

Let's start with the basics; one could argue that this is the opposite of a new approach, since the exercises we describe are part of the old school.

However, over the decades, as more and more rowing and pulldown machines made their way into gyms, bodybuilders began using free weights less often.

Nowadays, although you can do one or two non-machine exercises in each back workout, it is unlikely that you will develop your back using only free-weight exercises.

If you go back in time and use old-school routines, you can train, for example, with a deadlift and barbell row pyramid, along with three free-weight exercises and one bodyweight exercise, stimulating everything from your traps to your glutes without neglecting any muscles.

Do unilateral exercises

The main mistake most athletes make is focusing too much on moving the weight instead of feeling the work in the specific muscles (or muscle areas).

An excellent way to correct this is to work both sides of your back independently. Of the four exercises in our unilateral routine, you are undoubtedly familiar with dumbbell rows, as well as single-arm pulldowns.

You can also perform the low-pulley row with one straight arm, focusing your efforts on working your lats and inner serratus, and so on.

Remember that if you have lagging or underdeveloped muscles and want to improve your symmetry, simply seek guidance from the best—it is that simple.

Use pre-exhaustion

Deadlifts and barbell rows are usually the first exercises performed in a back workout.

If that is your style, you will be surprised by how much more you feel your back when you do them after lighter, more focused exercises.

We do not mean that a compound exercise (which emphasizes more than one part of the body) follows an isolation exercise (which emphasizes a single body part) because, technically, they are all compound lifts.

• Even so, if you do pulldowns before pullovers, you will feel the pullovers working your back more than if you reverse the order.
• Then, if you perform one-arm low-cable rows, followed by barbell rows and then deadlifts, things will vary.

By the time you reach those last two heavy, standard exercises, your upper back should be sufficiently fatigued for you to feel them more in your lats, traps, and rhomboids than usual.

Do high and low repetitions

When you train this way, you do all the higher-repetition sets of one exercise and all the lower-repetition sets of the next exercise.

If you alternate them this way in a back workout, you can do a light machine exercise, focusing on isolating your muscles and maintaining contractions, and then perform a heavy barbell exercise.

Repeating this pattern throughout your workout puts tension on the muscles in two different ways: first by varying the intensity, and second by building inner enthusiasm, which boosts motivation.

Vary your technique for each exercise

Because the upper back is a complex muscle group, there are many exercises that work it in different ways.

Varying the angles, grips, time under tension, or eccentric phase from time to time, whether with dumbbells, barbells, or cables, can provide the stimulus required for the principle of muscle adaptation, which enables you to build new muscle.

Obviously, all of this also requires extra motivation and an excellent mind-muscle connection, allowing you to always train at peak performance.

Legendary backs

Dorian “The Shadow” Yates’s lats hung low and stretched out as if to form a (huge) perfect square, and his lower inner curtain framed a prominent lower-back Christmas tree, but the quality that most distinguished his back was its unmatched thickness.

Enormous traps, spinal erectors resembling Doric columns, and lats so dense that their depth was such a major advantage that there was no doubt when compared with others. All were visual manifestations of Dorian’s high-intensity training.

When Ronnie Coleman appeared, his ridges and knots wandered while lines and crevices emerged, transforming his back into a new and spectacular landscape every time he moved his arms.

At his best, his back was like a great symphony orchestra—large and rumbling, sometimes overwhelming—and yet every finely tuned section played its part with precision, helping him win 8 Mr. Olympias and continually set a new standard in back musculature, displaying an unmatched combination of size and detail.

Another of the best backs in history belonged to Kenneth “Flex” Wheeler, who was probably never the widest man onstage, but was the one who demonstrated the best symmetry and detail, thanks to his distinct advantages in every back workout.

Even so, at his best, his back possessed a wealth of unique qualities, from the vascularity of his middle trapezius to his infraspinatus and the prominent “horizontal blind” striations in his lower lats.

Other great backs included Lee Haney’s, with his unique density and definition; Kai Greene’s, the ultimate muscular monster; and Phil Heath’s, with his high-level definition.

Final tips

If you are eating at an advanced level, then you know that food is more than just calories. Without a doubt, you think of a meal in terms of proteins, carbohydrates, and fats.

From now on, you should think about back training in a similar context, since it is not simply a matter of designing a program with basic vertical pulling exercises and rows.

To gain greater muscle volume, you should combine everything related to the muscles that make up the upper back, lats, and lower back, varying your routine from time to time and pumping when necessary, with weeks of loading (hard training), weeks of active rest, and others of deloading, to stimulate them properly and allow for complete recovery, which is the foundation of growth.

Approaching your back training with this paradigm will truly allow you to optimize and refine the development of your posterior. And if you train to compete, give yourself the pleasure of showing what you can do onstage as you strive to reach the position you deserve.

Remember also that this is a matter of continuous progress, progressive overload, and mental work, which is part of every bodybuilder’s psychology.