Looking to Build Your Back - Try These 5 Exercises

When it comes to building an impressive, rugged muscular back, you have to work every area. That means targeting the latissimus dorsi, trapezius, and erector spinae muscles. In this article, we’ll lay out the five best exercises to work these muscles most effectively.

Best Lat Exercise: Lat Pull-In

1. Place a bench about two feet in front of a double pulley machine. Set the pulleys at theory highest setting and as wide as they will go,

2. Grab the handle in your right hand and sit on the bench. 

3. In this starting position, your right arm should be fully extended up at a 70-degree angle.

4. Pull down and in toward your hip.

5. Slowly return and repeat.

2nd Best Lat Exercise: Pull Ups

1. Hang from a pull-up bar with a palms facing away from your grip and hands just wider than shoulder-width apart. 

2. Depress your shoulders and engage your lats. 

3. Pull yourself up to the bar, maintaining a slight lower back arch so that your chest is uppermost. 

4. Touch the bar with your chin and then slowly lower to the start position so that you are again in a dead hang position. 

Best Upper Trapezius Exercise: Cable Shrugs

1. Set the pulley on a double pulley machine at its lowest setting and shoulder width apart.

2. Stand about a foot in front of the machine, facing it and grabbing the handles at arm's length, keeping your arms by your sides.

3. Without bending your elbows, shrug your shoulders up toward your ears. 

4. Reverse the movement to depress your shoulders. Do not move your shoulders in a rounding movement.

Best Mid Trapezius Exercise: Scapular Retraction

1. Set the pulleys on a double pulley machine at waist height and set them as wide as possible. 

2. Place a bench about six feet from the machine so that it sits in the middle of the pulleys.

3. Grab the handles and sit on the bench with your arms extended out and slightly forward. Maintain a slight elbow bend throughout the movement.

4. Pull your shoulder blades together to bring the elbows back. The movement is only a few inches and your elbows should not come back beyond your torso.

5. Reverse and repeat. 

Best Erector Spinae Exercise

1. Stand against a wall with your back against the wall and your feet about two feet in front of it, shoulder-width apart. 

2. Hold your hands across your chest.

3. Arch your back into an extension position so that your hips and shoulder blades are against the wall. 

4. Now crunch forward from the mid spine to rounding down to a full extension of the erector spinae muscles.

5. From the bottom position, pull your lower back in and your chest up and move into back extension as you return to the start position.

Wrap Up

Combine these 5 exercises into a complete back workout. Do 4 sets of each exercise with the following rep scheme:

• Set One - 30 reps

• Set Two: 20 reps

• Set Three: 15 reps

• Set Four: 10 reps

Add weight on each succeeding set. When it comes to pull-ups, I recommend going to fissure on every rep. Good luck!