Upper Back Workouts

When you put all the upper back muscles together they make up the largest muscle group of the body. These muscles include the Latismuss Dorsi muscles on the sides of the back as well as the rhomboids and other smaller middle back muscles. Not enough people focus on those muscles as much as other upper body muscles. This could be because you can't really see the back muscles working as well as those other muscles when you train them. However, the upper back is of the utmost importance to hit with intense weight training if you are a lifter.

The benefits of training the upper back include widening and thickening the upper body overall. The lats are going to contribute to the width of your upper body. You can also add thickness to the lats themselves and build the middle upper back muscles for much more thickness throughout your body. An added benefit is that this will help improve your posture. This is especially true if you slouch forward from too much muscle in your chest and shoulders.

Any back workout you do is going to have to include exercises to build width as well as exercises to build thickness. Pull-up and pull-down exercises are going to enable you to widen your lats. Rowing style exercises are the best upper back exercises to increase thickness throughout the upper back.

Pull-ups are an essential exercise to have as part of any upper back routine. No exercise is going to hit the lats like this one. The only issue for some people is that they may not be strong enough to get very many, or even any, repetitions on their own. This is due to a combination of body weight and strength. Of course, just about anyone can get to the point where they can do a decent number of pull-ups, so it's important to not only get stronger but even lose fat so you can do more of them. At some point, you may get so strong that you want to add more weight to pull-ups. When this happens, use a weighted dip belt to add more weight.

I like to do pull-ups with a v-bar grip that I put over the overhead bar and pull up to. The other version is the classic shoulder-width apart hand grip. I try to pull my elbows in as I pull up to really hit those lats. I will do 3 sets of both v-bar and normal grip pull-ups for a total of 6 sets.

Cable pulldowns are likely the most popular exercise for the upper back. Since so many people can't do a lot of pull-ups they opt for this exercise. This is just fine, but once you get to the level of strength necessary you want to do pull-ups. That being said, cable pulldowns should have definitely have a place in your routine. I like the same versions of this exercise I like to do while doing pull-ups. Sometimes I like to go with even a wider grip on these. I also do some underhand grip pulldowns, pulling the bar down to my chest.

One of my favorite things to do with cable lat pulldowns is to do a superset, starting with a wide grip and moving my grip in as I reach failure. The last set of my superset will be close grip. Doing this superset is also a great way to warm up your lats with lighter weight.

To build upper back thickness, the exercise to go with is the bent-over row done with a barbell. This is the bread and butter of any lifting routine for your upper back. I like to do both underhanded and overhanded versions as part of my upper back routine.

For the underhanded version, I feel like I can do more weight because I pull the weight into my lower belly. On my first set, I will try to be good as much weight as possible and may even cheat a little bit to pull that weight up to where I need to. On each subsequent set, I will decrease the weight and use proper form to really hit the upper back muscles.

For the overhanded version, I will keep my body more parallel to the floor and go the way to my upper belly/lower chest area. For this I'm not going to go with heavy cuz I'm trying to really hit those middle back muscles.

On both versions of the row, you want to go back as far as possible at the elbows focusing on using the back instead of the arms. I go for 3 sets of each version.

Another great one for building thickness to your upper back is the barbell corner row. This is the one where you put a the end of a barbell in a corner at the gym and load the opposing side of the barbell. You then use a v-bar put underneath the bar at the heavy end to row the weight to your chest. To make this a more efficient exercise, most gyms have an anchor where you can put the end of the barbell as opposed to actually putting it in a corner.

For this exercise I prefer the v-bar with a close-grip as it gives me a different way to do the exercise than bent over barbell rows or dumbbell rows. I don't use this close of a grip on either of those exercises so just feels different.

Another version of this exercise that I like to do is with one hand at a time. I will grab the very end of the barbell that's opposite the corner with one hand and pull the weight up to my side. This gives me a different feeling of the movement as it seems both row up and out to the side. You are gripping the much larger rounded part of a barbell so using wrist straps is very important on this one.

I do 3 sets of both versions of the corner row when they are in my workout. 90 to 120 seconds of rest is taken between each set.

The classic one arm dumbbell row is another favorite of mine for the upper back. I love to do this exercise, as it's possible get quite strong on it. Just either get your knee and hand on a bench and use the opposing arm to do the lift. You can also stand and bend forward with your hand on a bench or even a dumbbell rack. Either way, row the weight up as far as possible to your side.

Another tip for dumbbell rows is to start with your the side you believe is weaker. This will enable you to take care of any imbalances from one side of the body to the other.

For dumbbell rows I like to start with my heaviest weight then decrease the weight on each subsequent set getting more reps on each one. I like to do five sets of dumbbell rows with a little less than normal rest between each because I'm going from one arm to the other.

Straight arm cable pushdowns are a great exercise for isolating the lats. They allow you to use the upper back muscles in a different way for more training variety. You stand and bend forward a bit with the arms slightly bent. Then grip a cable bar and push downward toward your body. You need to avoid using too much weight as you want to feel this in your back and not as much in your arms. I always save cable pushdowns for the end of my workouts and do a drop set for a lot of reps to really finish off the upper back.