Strength Training

The Ultimate 7 Exercises for a Strong Back

When I started in the gym, the main focus was on the muscles on the front of the body; these were easiest to see in the mirror. But now, we’re living in the age of the strong back.

Training for well-rounded back strength should encompass the following areas:

  • The back of the legs (hamstrings);
  • The bottom muscles (glutes);
  • Lower back muscles (the erector spinae, among others)
  • A wide range of upper back muscles.

Why a Strong Back is Important

  • Strong hamstrings are often recommended for building knee resilience and hamstring injury prevention;
  • A strong lower back and glutes will prepare you for daily lifting tasks and reinforce many of your compound exercises;
  • Upper back strength can help with posture and support the lower back.
  • It’s just really satisfying to be strong in these areas!

The muscles of the back comprise a variety of movements, angles, and functions, so your back training has to be well-rounded. A lot of back exercises will also take a toll on your grip, so pepper your back training exercises across multiple workouts and cycle them between training programmes.

The Best Exercises for a Strong Back

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Quick Exercise Formats That Will Make You Strong

It’s frustrating when you do everything you can to get to the gym but there still just isn’t enough time to complete every aspect of your brand-new gym programme. In these moments it’s important that you don’t give up, and it can be useful to have a back-up plan for when you only have 20-30 minutes to train. Social media sites are drowning in HIIT workouts designed to exhaust you in 30 minutes or less, so let’s focus on how to perform a quick strength workout instead.

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6 Things You Need to Know Before You Start Strength Training

If there’s one training service that I’ve provided the most (besides trying to convince people to stop worrying about getting “bulky”), it’s introducing novice gym-goers to strength training. And when I say strength training, I am referring to dedicated strength training as I described previously.

What is strength training

There is an unfortunate stigma that this is “meathead” training, which discourages many people from trying this training style, and in turn missing out on a huge number of benefits. Because of this barrier, most people don’t know where to start with strength training.

If you can relate, please don’t be discouraged. I spent the first two years of my life as a PT oblivious to the benefits of true strength training, and only changed my ways when I went to University to get my strength and conditioning degree. In the years since, I have identified the key lessons people need when they start strength training.

1. In Strength Training, Technique is King

This is an adage that has been repeated so often that it mostly falls on deaf ears now, but if you want to get stronger, you can’t just focus on what you lift – you need to focus on how you lift it.

Strength training is often seen as a physical process; we get less soreness and more muscle, then we can lift more weight. But strength is a skill – a lot of improvements occur because the nervous system gets more efficient at managing our muscle contractions. That means lifting weights is practice, and good, mindful practice makes perfect.

When I was a strength and conditioning intern, I shadowed a coach who told his athletes that starting a set should be like stepping onto the stage in a theatre. You need to be dedicated to your performance – your setup, your bracing, your tempo, everything. Finding this focus will elevate your strength training to new heights.

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5 More Great Reasons You Should Try Strength Training

Spotting Bench Press

The benefits of strength training for women and men have been listed a million times by a million different coaches. I’m going to list them again – hopefully, with a new twist.

There’s two reasons I’ve decided to rehash this post:

  1. No matter how many times it has been said, it always needs to be said again.
  2. Strength training has been mislabelled in common gym parlance.

If you have ever performed a challenging resistance workout that made you stronger over time, then technically you have engaged in strength training. However, in my opinion dedicated strength training is more than just lifting weights – it’s a completely different workout to the ones you’ll usually see in your local gym. This distinction can cause you to miss out on some of the benefits of a committed strength training period.

So What is Strength Training, Really?

Dedicated strength training is characterised by the following features:

  • Increasing the weight you can lift at low (1-8) reps;
  • Exercises that use multiple joints and muscle groups through a long range of motion;
  • Fundamental movement patterns such as squatting, hinging, pushing, pulling, single leg work and carrying;
  • An emphasis on free weights or bodyweight (although this can be tweaked for the individual);
  • A strong focus on your technique, tweaking exercises to suit your leverages;
  • Long rest periods (usually 2-5 minutes).

Unfortunately, strength training is usually confused with:

  • Lifting the heaviest weight you can every session;
  • Spontaneously maxing out without strategy;
  • Chasing failure/soreness;
  • One resistance exercise in the middle of a circuit;
  • Going so heavy that you only move the weight a couple of inches;
  • An overreliance on machines.
Strength Training Benefits
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