There has never been a great physique without a great, full, wide back.

In fact, together with the shoulders and legs, the back has to be one of the most important muscle groups. Fully develop these three only, and your physique will probably be amazing!

(In the sense that the main aesthetic points will be taken care of)

However, it is also one of the most complex groups, with some of the widest variety of movements/functions, and is thus amongst the trickiest to train (partly due to the difficulty of the mind-muscle connection too, since you can’t see it!).

The easiest way to get around this is to first identify the main functions it has: overhead pulling, elbow adduction, spinal extension, and rowing.

Think about pull ups (for the lats), pullovers (lats and lower traps), Jefferson curls or deadlifts (lats, traps and spinal erectors), and, of course, rows (traps, rhomboids, lats, rear delts).

Developing a functional and big back consists of, like anything else, mastering the basics, and repeating them over and over.

Choose a couple of movements for each of the main purposes, and progressively overload them!

That’s it!

Getting massively stronger on all of the key functions is the best metric to measure back-growth progress.

Let me exemplify an implementation with my personal approach:

I train upper body twice a week, and include back movements in both instances.

I like to always start with chin ups for the overhead pulling, doing them heavy to failure, as always.

Then (depending on whether it is the first or second workout), I either do some single-hand pulldowns (day 1), or pullovers superset with machine rows (day 2) (pre-exhausting the lats for a full activation of the back).

Finally, I finish off with some erector work with simple weighted extensions.

I’m also doing Jefferson curls and RDL’s on leg day, which serves to round up the entire weekly activation, working on some rounded-back extension and static holding, respectively.

In this way, as you can see by the exercise selection, I get multiple instances of stimulation on each key movement pattern.

And what about volume, frequency and intensity?

The ideal rep ranges I’ve found thus far are 6-10 for rows, pullovers, chin ups/pull ups, since going heavy here feels natural, and 8-15 for extension (a bit lighter weights feel safer); going to failure and progressively overloading, as one must do.

The volume that has worked best for me is rather low, with 1 or 2 working sets per exercise, performed with ultra-high intensity.

And, save for extensions (which are lower in intensity), I keep the frequency at 1-2x a week, as I said.

2x for the lats, and one for the rest.

This way, I’ve managed to make constant progress everywhere for months, since this approach allows for great effort, and then sufficient rest.

Being such a big, complex muscle group, much like the legs in this sense, it too requires a more intense, less frequent training scheme, given its huge recovery and repair requirements.

Now, this all sounds nice in principle, but in practice, properly activating the back can be difficult, even more so taking it to failure, given how strong it can be.

Maybe feeling the traps in the rows is hard, or your grip gives out before you’re done, or your mind-muscle connection is insufficient (possibly the most common problems with back training).

Let me provide a solution for each in turn:

When doing an exercise in which so many muscles are involved, like the rows, an extremely helpful thing can be to pre-exhaust the strongest muscle first, so that all other muscles can work harder. This will have you doing, for example, as I do, pullovers before the rows so that the lats don’t dominate so much. Another point is to not be afraid to arch your upper back; the traps also serve as upper-spine erectors and to pull the scapulae back (they don’t only shrug the shoulders).

You could also do the same with the pullups/chin-ups if your arms get fatigued too quickly, doing the pullovers first.

Then, in terms of grip strength, the same as above applies: pre exhaust the muscles with isolation so that the pulling fails sooner than the gripping. Then, keep on applying this method and training without straps until your grip is no longer an issue.

And lastly, for the activation, you have a couple of options (you may apply them all the same time): have someone touch your back while you train, the particular area being worked; do a high-rep warm up set until you feel the muscle to be worked burning and thus make sure to properly feel it; or, as you may suspect, do an isolation exercise to failure first.

There is absolutely no way you won’t turn into a human Dorito applying the above split, and intensity and activation hacks.

Hope you enjoyed this post! Stay tuned for more every Sunday, and make sure to share and subscribe!