The Bigger Back Solution!

Training your back is super important. Whether you want to improve your v-taper or even if you want to improve your bench press, you need a solid foundation and that foundation is your back. A back workout needs to be balanced, so we’re going to go over vertical pulling and horizontal pulling. Obviously both movement patterns target your back, but in different ways.

When you’re doing a pull-up or pulldown, you’re targeting mostly mid lats. Personally when I was doing my 100 pull-ups a day for 30 days, I neglected my horizontal pulling which led to an imbalance, so you don’t want that to happen!

Vertical Pulling

When you’re doing any kind of vertical pull, the same principles still hold true, which is that you need to get a stretch in your lats and do full range of motion to work them correctly. Half reps don’t keep tension in the area and half reps happen for a number of reasons, could be that you’re lifting too much weight, could be that you’re trying to get a sick pump at the end of your workout or even that you just don’t know what correct form is. At the end of the day, full range of motion will give you the most bang for your buck because remember you get the most muscle breakdown in the negative as well as the stretch.

Before you start your pull-ups, I want you to hang so that your body is basically limp. Once your body is like a dead weight, you’re going to feel a deep stretch through your lats. I personally did this and it really improved my mind-muscle connection. If you’re not strong enough to hang from the pull-up bar, you can always use a band or a cable.

You need to kneel down on the ground, stick your body out to the side and then just kind of lean further and further away and as you lean, you should feel a huge stretch through your lats. Hold that stretch for about 10 – 15 seconds and then do the other side and this should help you get as much as you can from your vertical pulling movements.

Horizontal Pulling

This method will work no matter what you’re doing, just make sure you go light. You never want to fall into spinal flexion when doing pulling movements because that is how you injure your back. However you will use a LITTLE bit of spinal flexion when doing this so go LIGHT. When doing a low row, usually you’ll pull back and retract your shoulder blades, then lean forward as you come back to maximize the stretch. 

For this method, keep your chest up, but as you slowly lean forward with the cable, I want you to slowly go into spinal flexion until you feel a nice tight pull on the lats. By this point the weight should be back on the stack anyway and you should be trying to push your back backwards to feel more of that stretch. You can then repeat this a few times. That should be enough to start to drive more mind-muscle connection to the area.

Conclusion

Your form might be great on these exercises, but if you’re not feeling that stretch when doing your back exercises, not fully locking out your arms and really feeling your muscles moving the weight, that’s probably why!