Close Grip Pulldowns
This exercise primarily targets the lats with a vertical pulling movement. You'll take an underhand, close grip on the bar, which also involves the biceps in the exercise.
The back is a complex area that covers a huge variety of muscles and movement patterns. You'll find exercises that target the Latissimus Dorsi (the lats), the Teres Major, the Rhomboids, the Trapezius and the Erector Spinae.
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This exercise primarily targets the lats with a vertical pulling movement. You'll take an underhand, close grip on the bar, which also involves the biceps in the exercise.
Another version of the pulldown, this variation involves more of the muscles of the upper back (rhomboids and teres major) than the close grip version.
Learn proper form for one of the best back overall back exercises you can do. You'll discover a simple foot-position tweak that will allow you to use more weight and keep better balance.
This is a classic machine/cable exercise for the back. It's one of the first exercises beginners learn how to do....yet proper form is not always obvious. Learn the tricks of the trade for how to perform it better.
Chin-ups are a key exercise for strength and muscle development in the upper back. Learn how to perform them properly here.
Pull-ups are an excellent bodyweight exercise for targeting the upper back. Learn proper technique for getting the most out of them here.
This bodyweight back exercise takes up much of the load of your body by allowing you to train at an angle, with your feet on the ground. You can make it as hard or as easy as you want with a simple change in bar height.
One of the best overall exercises you can do...PERIOD. The deadlift is a key exercise for building total-body mass and strength.
Rowing is one of the basic exercises you need to learn to maximize your back development and improve back thickness and strength.
This is a home-gym variation of the pull-up that allows you to use a neutral grip for the exercise (palms facing in). You'll need an open ceiling and rafters to make this work.
This pull-up variation puts MASSIVE tension on the outer aspect of your lats just by changing WHERE you do the pull-ups and how you hold your hands.
You'll put a great stretch on the lats with this isolation-ish compound exercise for the back. It's a pulldown-style movement that works more like a pullover in terms of tension.
Hit both the vertical and horizontal movement patterns of your back with this one single exercise. It requires only a small adjustment in body position along the way.
This dynamic chin-up exercise variation will challenge your entire upper body, placing almost your entire bodyweight on one arm at a time during the movement for massive strength and muscle stimulation.
The traps don't work just straight up and down...you need to attack them from a variety of angles as well. This combination exercise uses cables to add a diagonal component to the shrug for maximum stimulation.
This is a challenging exercise for advanced trainers that puts most of the load of your bodyweight onto just ONE arm/lat at a time. The angle of the bar allows you to put this focused tension on the lower lat area, which is usually tough to hit.
This combination exercise works your back and your chest at the same time by working a chin-up with one arm and a dip with the other arm simultaneously. It's looks insane but it works incredibly well, and develops excellent neuromuscular coordination at the same time.
To target the small stabilizing muscles of the spine, you need to introduce lateral resistance...but without spinal rotation. This exercise accomplishes that with a simple cable or band.
This deadlift variation puts massive torque on the core and lower back by loading just one side of the bar. You'll work all the stabilizing muscles in your lower back as you lift this unbalanced weight.
This exercise uses a slight lean to target more of the middle traps, an area not hit by normal vertical shrugs. Middle traps are critical for back thickness and shoulder stabilization.
There are no true isolation exercises for the lats...however, this is one exercise that comes the closest. You'll use a high pulley a movement similar to a standing pullover to put tension almost exclusively on the lats.
This deadlift variation puts major single-sided tension on the core, in addition to strongly working the lower back and grip.
Be ready to get some strange looks with this one...you'll be using bands looped on your body to get help out of the bottom while keep the full load on you at the top. Strange but very effective.
This variation of the Inverted Row utilizes lateral body movement to cover a wider array of muscles and muscle fibers during the exercise.
Negatives are excellent for building strength and this version of the Seated Cable Row allows you to perform negative training very effectively on your own.
If you want to lift heavy weights in the deadlift, you need to learn how to properly brace your core. Because if your core folds with a heavy load, your lower back rounds over and you either fail the lift or you hurt your back.
This exercise will teach you how to properly brace your core for deadlifts using what basically amounts to a bar in the guts while you use another bar to load.
This simple trick will help you learn how to properly engage your lats so you get more out of every set of pulldowns you do.
When you're training your back, and with pulldowns in particular, if you breathe "normally," you'll actually put your body in a WORSE position to engage your lats.
This simple act of properly setting your shoulders will allow to you force the lats to achieve maximum contraction during the pulldown exercise.
By utilizing two different exercises for alternating reps, you'll challenge your lats and upper back with massive tension from multiple angles in one set...very effective for muscle growth.
This is a "normal" version of the superset, using the same two exercises as the previous method. With this, you'll be pre-fatiguing your back with the barbell rows, then moving straight into deadlifts for massive lat overload.
This small change in foot and body position will allow you to dramatically increase the stability and available power in the exercise. This is the BEST way to do one-arm rows.
Using a machine in this fashion is ideal for working the back with a very controlled movement that focuses on muscle tension and strong contraction.
This unique approach to upper back training will allow you to use FAR more weight than you normally could for a rowing exercise, resulting in greater strength and mass gains.
You'll focus on three different ranges of motion and three different rep ranges in the chin-up to target all three major muscle fiber types in one extended set.
If grip strength is an issue for you, this shrug exercise will eliminate that as a problem. This is a hands-free shrug exercise.
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