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9 Tips to Build a Bigger Back
By Ron Harris
The back doesn’t get the glory of body parts like the arms or chest but make no mistake – nothing sets you apart from the garden-variety gym rat the way a thick, rugged back does. When you spy a man from behind with tremendously built traps and lats, you instantly know this is no beginner, and this is no pump king who only hits the bench presses and curls. Yet the back is an area we rarely see with exceptional development. I for one am often disappointed at this state of affairs, which is why I’ve compiled nine tips that will go a long way toward helping you build a back that makes onlookers pause in disbelief.
1. Start Over, Much Lighter
Can I be real with you? Your form is probably much worse than you think it is, and your mind-muscle connection could be a whole lot better. Before you get defensive and tell me to shove it up my wazoo, I urge you to conduct an experiment the next time you train back. Go ahead and warm up, but instead of progressively adding weight for each work set, stick with the weight you used for your final warm-up and make a concerted effort at executing the most perfect form you possibly can, while striving to feel the lats stretch on every inch of the eccentric/negative stroke, then gradually squeeze the concentric portion of the rep into a full contraction. Slow the reps down. Without the pressure of completing X amount of reps with a heavy weight, you will be free to focus purely on how to tweak your form in order to feel the lats working to their utmost ability. Don’t worry, not for a minute am I suggesting you need to start using baby weights on back day. What I am proposing is that every once in a while, maybe every five to six weeks, you take a break from your customary heavy weights to check yourself and “relearn” proper form and mind-muscle connection. Over time, we all tend to fall into bad habits that are so subtle we would never catch them otherwise.
2. Add in Pullovers
Dorian Yates had what many people feel was the greatest back we have ever seen. He had a select core group of exercises that he relied on to craft those magnificent lats. They included the underhand barbell row he made famous, the narrow-grip underhand lat pulldown, and the Nautilus pullover. He strongly believed in using the pullover machine to pre-exhaust the lats and fatigue them somewhat before moving on to other exercises. This strategy was meant to do as much as possible to mitigate the “weak link” factor of the biceps in various vertical and horizontal pulling movements. Yates was adamant that the original Nautilus machine was superior to all that followed, which is up for debate. I have used several more modern versions, and I don’t feel much of a difference. As long as there is a roll bar with pads that allow you to push with your elbows, you’re in business. Many of you will not have access to such a machine. I don’t. This leaves you with two options, the dumbbell pullover and the cable pullover. To keep tension on the lats over the complete range of motion, the cable wins out. Set a straight bar attachment on the high pulley, and here’s where I have made my own variation you can all use. Perform your sets of the cable pullover in two stages. In stage 1, you will lean forward at the waist and begin each rep from a full stretch of the lats with arms nearly overhead. Do eight to 10 reps this way, pulling with pure lat power and being sure not to use your triceps. Maintaining a very slight bend of the arms will help in this regard. These reps take you from a full stretch to a little more than halfway toward a full contraction. Next, stand up straight and do only the final half of the ROM, taking the bar down so it hits your upper thighs and driving your lats into that full contracted state for a final eight to 10 reps. Your lats should be pumped and taxed after three to four sets, with the biceps still fresh and strong to assist you in the remainder of the workout.
3. Mix Up Angles, Width and Hand Positions
The back is an enormous, complex muscle structure that includes not only the latissimus dorsi but also the trapezius, rhomboid, teres major and minor, infraspinatus and the spinal erectors. You could build pretty good legs with just squats, but for the back you would need to do at least three to four exercises. Not only that, but it would greatly benefit you to switch up the hand spacing, hand position, and angles of pull. You should always include some type of vertical pulling movement, like chin-ups or lat pulldowns. Even with those, you should vary hand positions on the bar: closer or further apart from the middle, underhand or overhand, or even a neutral (hands facing) grip. A couple of horizontal pulling movements should also be in your routine, otherwise known as rows. You can do barbell rows, dumbbell rows, T-bar rows, cable rows, or use any of a multitude of rowing machines. It’s neither necessary nor desirable to attempt to include all those diverse exercises in a single workout. You should cycle them in and out of your routine every few weeks. For instance, do your lat pulldowns with a standard wide overhand grip for four to five workouts, then switch to underhand, shoulder width, and then move on to a close-grip double D-ring attachment. Focus on barbell rows for a few workouts or weeks, then switch to dumbbell or T-bar rows. You get the idea. Your back thrives on variety, especially if you’ve been training for years and it’s become accustomed to the same handful of exercises all the time.
4. Order Is Key
Many trainers follow a vague pattern when they train back. They start off with lat pulldowns, and then proceed to do two to three different types of rows before maybe throwing in some shrugs and call it a day. What they fail to recognize is that we all lose our ability to keep free weights balanced as our strength and energy reserves diminish over the course of a workout session. That’s why you should do the heavy compound movements like barbell rows and deadlifts earlier in the workout before moving on to machines and cables. You will still be able to handle respectable weights on those because the weight is already balanced for you and moving in a predetermined track. If you work the machines and cables heavy first and then proceed to the free weights, you run a high risk of getting injured as your form degrades. You will also have a much tougher time simply trying to maintain good form and a strong mind-muscle connection. So hit those barbells and dumbbells first!
5. Never Move Up in Weight if You Sacrifice Form
Even though bodybuilding is pretty much “all show and no go” in the sense that it doesn’t matter how much weight we lift, the progressive overload principle still applies. That is, we still need to get stronger and increase the weights we use over time, in the hypertrophy rep ranges, to see further muscle growth. But, and this is a very important but, you must never move up in weight on any exercise if you need to loosen up your form to do so. It becomes a slippery slope in which you get into the habit of continually piling more plates on the bar or creeping up the dumbbell rack while your form slowly turns to shit. Before you know it, you’ve become that doofus with nine plates on the T-bar row, standing almost upright and yanking three-inch ROM reps that just bounce off your body, not doing jack shit for your lats. One way to keep progressing while maintaining good form is to use those little 2.5-pound plates. If you get 12 reps with 225 on the barbell row today, don’t be an impatient fool and try 275 next time, like so many do. Slide that baby doughnut plate on each side to make it 230 pounds and get 12. If you can do that in good form while still keeping your mind-muscle connection with your pecs, wonderful! If not, don’t even think about going one ounce heaver until you can.
6. Flex and Stretch – a Lot
You can manage to build some body parts without ever mastering the mind-muscle connection to them, but back is not one of them. That’s why so many guys never really feel their backs working on back day, only their biceps and rear delts. Two ways to enhance this critical connection are to constantly flex and stretch the lats when you train them. I suggest flexing the lats after every single set. Crunch down into a rear double biceps. Pull the lats back hard and then spread them into a rear lat spread. Or just pull one arm back as in a rowing motion and hold the contraction for a few seconds. Save the stretching for the end of the workout. One highly effective stretch I stole from Dante Trudel of DC Training is to hang from a chin-up bar, preferably with added weight, for 90 to 120 seconds. With all this repeated emphasis on flexing and stretching your lats, the mind-muscle connection will improve, and this will carry over into more effective workouts where every rep brings you closer to the back you want.
7. Always Include Unilateral Movements
You’ve probably noticed by now how much stronger a contraction you get on some unilateral movements for other body parts, such as dumbbell preacher and machine curls and standing leg curls. The back is especially suited for being worked one arm at a time as it thrives on those intense contractions. Do one-arm dumbbell rows, cable rows, and work Hammer Strength rowing machines one arm at a time. You might find you are able to pull your elbow back a little further on them than if you did both arms at once. Due to the way our neurological system works, you will even be stronger. For example, let’s say the most you can get for 10 reps using both arms simultaneously are three 45-pound plates. You will find that if you pull with just one arm, you can get more like 12 to 15 reps, and could get those 10 reps with anywhere from 10 to 25 additional pounds. Working each side separately will also prevent you from unknowingly developing a strength imbalance. With barbells and machines where the movement arm is connected, it’s very easy for the stronger side to compensate for the weaker side. If you pulled 10 reps with your right arm, you know you need to get 10 with the left. You certainly wouldn’t move up in weight if a weaker side was behind the stronger side for any more than a rep or two.
8. Don’t Follow the Crowd
Though we are all similar in basic biology as humans, we do have a tremendous genetic diversity as well. That means you have your own bone structure with its own unique proportions and leverages, your own muscle belly lengths, joint size (thin or thick wrists and ankles, for example), and so on. Some exercises will be extremely productive for you while others will not, and this may or may not correlate to what works best for “most people.” Deadlifts are a fantastic tool to strengthen all the pulling muscles of the body and build a thick, dense back for many men. For others, they will only lead to lower back injuries. Barbell rows might deliver amazing gains for you, while your buddy is never able to master them. You get the picture. Try as many different exercises and techniques as you can. Keep what works and discard the rest. You have no obligation to do any particular exercise no matter how many others swear by it, just as you are free to do anything that you feel in your lats and are able to make progress with. Never concern yourself with whether your routine is conforming to what most others do for back, and this even includes the top pros. They figured out what gives them the best results, and so should you.
9. Enough With the Max-Rep Deadlifts!
I saved this one for last because it’s a major pet peeve of mine. For many years, deadlifts were the domain of only the hardcore trainers: powerlifters and serious bodybuilders. The powerlifters trained them for low reps and would take substantial rests between sets. Often you would see them taking nearly an hour just to get through all their warm-ups and work sets. The bodybuilders did them for higher reps in comparison and would not rest so long. They were using deads to add rugged thickness to their backs. The bodybuilders would still aim to get stronger as weeks and months went on, but again, for reps. Then along came social media, and suddenly everyone could post their daily lifts on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Snapchat. The gears were turning inside many heads of those desperate for compliments, attention, and validation. Many of them soon figured out that even if they couldn’t bench press or squat for shit, they could pull a decent amount of weight off the floor for one rep, even if often the form was cringeworthy, with rounded backs and herky-jerky asymmetry of their body mechanics. Soon, every gym had at least a few characters who would camp out for lengthy durations and do 10 or more “sets” of single reps, saving their top weight for the ‘Gram. Looking at most of these attention-seekers on my IG feed, the old question from the 1984 Wendy’s commercial posed by the elderly woman, “Where’s the beef?” comes to mind. Many of them hardly looked like they lifted, and even fewer had any degree of back thickness. If you don’t already know this, it’s entirely possibly to become substantially stronger without adding any more muscle mass. Olympic lifters and powerlifters understand this. They compete in weight classes, where the goal is to be stronger than any other man or woman at that weight limit of 114, 123, 148, 165, and so on up to unlimited for men over 319 pounds. If your goal is to build your back, forget about showing off and start doing some damn reps. Try sets in the range of 10 to 12, 8 to 10, and at the lowest, 6 to 8. Years ago when Branch Warren was recovering from one of his injuries, he lightened the load on his deadlifts and was doing sets of 20. Branch stated at the time that those were the most intense and demanding sets of deads he ever did, and his back grew from them. Once again, if you want to stimulate growth in your back and not just have more likes on IG from pulling maxes, do some real reps.
Ron Harris got his start in the bodybuilding industry during the eight years he worked in Los Angeles as Associate Producer for ESPN’s “American Muscle Magazine” show in the 1990s. Since 1992 he has published nearly 5,000 articles in bodybuilding and fitness magazines, making him the most prolific bodybuilding writer ever. Ron has been training since the age of 14 and competing as a bodybuilder since 1989. He lives with his wife and two children in the Boston area. Facebook Instagram
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