Best Exercises to Strengthen Your Upper Back
The upper back is such an important area to train that many athletes dedicate a full two days a week to it—that’s what “pull day” actually means. With strong lats and other upper back muscles, you can do pull-up after pull-up if you feel like it. You can work on the inverted triangle shape made famous by bodybuilders. A stronger back may even help you have better posture (though I would argue that posture is less important than we tend to think ). So how do you work your upper back? Read on.
Upper back muscles and what they do
Sometimes when I write these articles, I can give a direct explanation of what muscles we are working. For example, the hamstrings are a group made up of three specific muscles. But the upper back is much more complex, and it is difficult to tell where the upper back ends and the lower back or shoulders begin.
Today I’ll focus on muscles that we didn’t cover in the other two articles. So today we don’t need trapezius or multifidus muscles. (If you really want to work out, you can refer to this review on Physiopedia for a full breakdown of the major muscles of the lower back.)
When people talk about training the upper back, they are probably talking about the latissimus dorsi . Known as the “latissimus”, they are the two broad muscles on the sides of the back . They are attached to the spine and pelvis, and their job is to pull the shoulder. If you pull your elbows down and back toward your hips, you are using your lats to do this.
The lats are huge muscles, and the way they connect to your arms sometimes reminds people of the “wings” of a flying squirrel. If you’re looking for a V-shape, the lats are a big part of what gives that visual effect. However, you will have to train hard for your lats to become noticeably larger, so let this fact inspire or reassure you.
Other upper back muscles include the rhomboids , which pull the shoulder blades together, the trapezius (the upper shrugs, the lower pulls the shoulder blades together, but in a different way), and maybe even the rear deltoids , which I talked about in this post. about shoulder exercises.
What these muscles have in common, both conceptually and from a training design standpoint, is that they are all involved in deadlifting in one way or another. Mnemonic: Any exercise that has the words “deadlift” or “rowing” in its name is likely to work your upper back.
Best Dumbbell Exercise: Kroc Row
I first encountered Kroc rows in Jen Sinclair’s pull-up training program , and they’ve been my favorite ever since. Her program was designed for people who didn’t yet know how to do a pull-up, and used the Kroc row as a way to build muscle mass in the lats. (I remember being puzzled by this: Do I need to add mass ?)
This is a great exercise for anyone, but especially for people who need to push the boundaries of their comfort zone in order to make progress. Of course, you can perform dumbbell rows with lighter weights and strict form. But there’s magic in picking up a dumbbell that’s too heavy for strict rows and still rowing it with English body language. Not only does this approach keep you from winning, but it also means you’re lifting the heaviest weight you can, thereby essentially giving your muscles more work than if you stuck to a smaller dumbbell.
In any case, quarrels with Krok benefited Yana Krok, me and many others. If you have big old dumbbells, give this a try.
Best cable exercise: One arm lat pulldown.
For the cable machine, I’m going to move away from my personal favorite (I love seated cable rows) and highlight the lat isolation that’s most popular these days: the one-arm lat row. You can do this one-arm at a time on a two-cable machine, as shown in the video above, or on a single-cable machine. If you’re using a single cable (this works great on those “functional machines” you see in hotel gyms), get down on the floor on one knee.
Best minimalist exercise: Pull-ups/pull-ups.
You don’t need dumbbells or machines to perform a classic upper back exercise: the pull-up. Each pull-up variation works the lats and a variety of other muscles in the upper back (and, as a bonus, the biceps).
If you can’t do a full pull-up, bench or jackknife pull-ups still count. And if pull-ups are too easy, do them with weights.
By the way, when I say pull-ups, I actually mean the pull-up family. Chinupas (palms facing you) are part of the family. Wide-grip pull-ups, neutral-grip pull-ups, hanging-handle pull-ups, and more are all encouraged. Although people argue all day long about what is “better” for the lats or some other back muscle, research shows that lat activation is the same from one variation to the next. As with nutrition, variety is good for us, so give everyone in the family a try.
The best exercise you can do on the go: Band stretches.
With all the attention on the lats, I wanted to highlight one more exercise that works some of the lesser known and less valuable muscles of the upper back. Your rhomboids, lower traps, and rear delts will get some attention from band rows.
To perform a band stretch, hold the band in front of you, arms straight, slightly above eye level. Then spread the tape with your straight arms so that the middle of the tape touches your chest. Other variations of pullaparts are also good: start with a ribbon above your head and pull it behind your head or make it at waist level.
The best part about this exercise is that you can do it anywhere. If you don’t have a pull-up bar but want to do some deadlift exercises at home, grab a band. You can also perform a light superset anywhere in the gym by taking the band with you to the bench press station or wherever you perform pushing exercises.