You can’t see your back muscle but all you can do just feel it, this does not mean that you should not exercise for your back muscle. The group of the muscle of your back not only gives you a perfect posture to your whole body but also protects your spinal cord, making you a man with a spine.
Exercising and strengthening back muscles helps you to sculpt out a greek god alike muscular back which apparently is admired by the people who really follow you including your girlfriend and close friends. You can speculate your wide back muscle as you pass by anyone, the physique with strong back gives you all win-win situations to get noticed.
A weak and fragile back can lead to a hyperlordosis, a medical condition in which patients have an excessive spine curvature in the lower back.
It is a usual sight in the gyms that majorly people concentrate on beefing up their chest and other front parts of the body without giving care to the rear side of the body. This creates an irregularity in the muscles group’s symmetrical balance causing a round-up shoulder towards front giving an ‘ape’ like a slouchy look to the people when they stand.
In order to avoid such bad posture of the body, you need to train your back muscles simultaneously with your upper front body muscles. While exercising, you can train your major back muscles including upper back, traps, rear deltoids which happens to be somewhat part of your shoulder muscle and also helps a lot while doing back exercise.
Before we start explaining major back, exercises, let’s learn a little about these large group of muscle that you will love to know:
The Lats
The Lats which is an acronym of its scientific name Latissimus Dorsi is the largest back muscle that you have. The Lats joints your upper arm bone and stretch up to lower back through the midback area. The Lats are your main group of muscles, that help you to perform horizontal pulls (Rows) and Vertical Pulls (pullups).
Teres Major and Teres Minor
Despite smaller in size, these two back muscle groups help a lot in various physical activities. In the fitness world, Teres major is known as lats little helper a term which is given due to its characteristic copying lats muscle while pulling weights. The teres minor helps rotator cuff to rotate externally your shoulder. The teres minor plays a major role in stabilizing your shoulder.
The Rhomboids
Located in the middle of your upper back, Rhomboids are a thick band of muscles that borders your shoulder blades. The Rhomboids help to retract your shoulder blades, a pivotal role for all back exercises and an important way to shield your shoulders. You can supercharge your ability by improving rhomboids exercise.
The Traps
The Traps which stands for ‘Trapezius’ is one of the widest back muscles. A triangular-shaped muscle group traps muscle is broad and flat. They cover the upper back o the shoulders and neck. It links to the dorsal vertebrae of the spine, scapulae, clavicles, and ribs. Divided into major three sections: Upper, middle, and lower. The Triangular shaped back group of muscle plays a major role in shrugging your shoulder, pulling your shoulder backward and pushing your shoulders downward.
Here in this article, we strive to bring forth top 5 back exercises that you can to do flaunt a greek god kind of back:-
Barbell Bent Over Row
If you want to get some effective back exercises, barbell bent-over row is one of the major exercises that you can do having a barbell in a specific bent position. A barbell bentover row is a perfect exercise for your back if you are running short of time.
In this set of exercise, you can do two different rows depending upon your body, strength, and range of motion.
A compound strength and hypertrophy exercise designed for the back, barbell row is often used in weight and strengthening programs, Barbell Bentover Row can engage your multiple back muscles including your legs and core which is quite essential to protect your spine.
How to do
- Hold a barbell with palms facing down keeping your wrist elbows and shoulders straight
- Keeping your back straight with a slight bend in your knees, lift the bar from the rack off the floor and bend forward at the hips
- Lower the bar towards the floor until you strengthen your elbows completely, then pull it towards your sternum keeping a flat back.
- Now, slowly lower the bar to its initial position
- And continue doing the same
Deadlift
It might sound like some leg exercise as it hammers your hamstring and glutes, but in reality those groups of muscle ain’t only get hit while doing a deadlift.
In order to perform the exercise, you need to engage your back and shoulder blades to lift the weight off the ground. In this exercise, you basically use your back muscle and engage your entire torso in a straight line to lift the weight.
How to do:
- Stand behind a barbell having your feet shoulder-width apart
- Begin the exercise with an uplifted chest, make a hinged hip and slowly bending your knee lift the weighted barbell.
- Grip the bar with both hands facing towards you keeping a straight back
- With back Flat, Chest up, and hips slightly above the Knee level pull up the weight up to your mid-body with straight shoulder upward
- Lock everything before you pull up the weight off the ground keeping your chest and shoulders upward as it continues
- Try to do 10-12 reps of three different sets to get visible results
Single-arm dumbbell row
A great workout for the back with a dumbbell in hand, One arm Dumbbell row. The back exercise targets the upper and lower back, shoulders, biceps and hips while improving core stability. To complete this back exercise with more effective results, balance yourself on a bench taking a relatively heavier each set.
How to do:
- Position yourself on a bench as shown in the image ( an image will be there) keeping your left knee and shin resting on it, including your left hand- left hand will support you in doing exercise.
- Now, keeping your right foot straight and grip the floor
- Lift up a dumbbell with your right hand and start rowing
- Try to maintain a straight torso
- Row the dumbbell up, pulling your elbow up towards your yourself
- Squeeze your upper back as you pull your elbow up
- Release and lower the dumbbell to its original place
- This will be counted as one rep, try to do at least 3 sets of 12 reps on either side left and right
Lat Pulldown
This is another back exercise that hit your lats muscle of your back.
In this exercise you will need a cable machine that you can find in any gym, all you need to do is to perform the back exercise in a correct form so that it can reflect quite frequent results.
How to do
- Set the weight (that you can weigh)
- grab the handle and sit on the bench attached to the machine
- Inserting your legs in the attached pads, lean backward staring towards the ceiling at an angle.
- Now pull the bar towards your chest
- Keeping the famous saying slow and steady wins the race, you need to perform the exercise slowly without jerking the weight while going to its original site
- Well, If you see in the gym, there are many people who would be doing the same but behind their neck which is big nono here if you want top concentrate back don’t do this. This will only give sprain to your fragile shoulders.
Decline and parallel bench Pullover
The back exercise can be done in either of these benches inclined or parallel. Just a fact, the decline bench pullover puts your lats under much tension for a considerable amount of time than using a flat bench. Just try to clear dumbbell off your head, and safely drop it when you are done.
How to do
In this exercise, you need to position your body on the decline bench and clamp your legs at the supporting pads to the bench. Go for a heavier dumbbell as (beginners can do with 5 kg or 7.5 kg) however, experts and pro should start with 15kg and can go up. It starts as you lift the weight from the back of the head and take it all the way up till you get an extended chest and then lowers it down as its original place. This completes one set and you are advised to do three different sets of 12 repetitions.
So these top 5 back exercises that you can add to your back day in the gym.
Disclaimer:
The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a health advice. We would ask you to consult a qualified professional or medical expert to gain additional knowledge before you choose to consume any product or perform any exercise.
