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
1. Romanian Deadlifts
Regular readers of this blog will have already seen a great many recommendations to use RDL’s. They are the ultimate hinging exercise, with an emphasis on minimising knee involvement. This will force the hamstrings to work through a long range of motion, which is crucial for increasing strength and mobility in a muscle group that can commonly be lacking in both.
Coupled with this, the lower and upper back have to maintain a static contraction throughout the exercise to resist flexing forward. Resisting rounding forces on the back is a great skill to build the foundations of a strong back upon.
You can learn more about all kinds of deadlifting in my deadlift guide.
2. Floating Deadlifts
When it comes to building back strength, floating deadlifts don’t get enough love.
Floating deadlifts challenge all the major deadlift muscles, which are pretty much all the major back muscles. By forcing you to stop before the barbell touches the floor, you have to spend a lot of time under tension. You have to produce force to decelerate the bar before it comes to rest, then you have to start lifting the bar back up; all whilst maintaining a strong lifting position. Don’t underestimate this great back strengthening exercise!
3. Nordic Curl Exercises
This series of hamstring and glute exercises are incredibly challenging and rewarding. Use your hamstrings and glutes to stop yourself from falling forwards, and then pull yourself back to the top. The emphasis on decelerating the lengthening of the hamstrings (known as the eccentric phase) is part of the reason while this exercise is often lauded as a great hamstring-protector, although this also means they can cause a lot of fatigue and soreness. For this reason, the key is to start with a very low volume.
For most people, Nordic curl variations start as a supramaximal exercise. This means it is so difficult that you may not be able to lift yourself back up from the lowest position properly. This means your reps will be focussed on slowly performing the downward (eccentric) component only, with assistance on the way back up. This can make these very fatiguing and induce a lot of soreness in the early stages of doing them, but this type of training pays dividends in the long term.
4. Jefferson Curl
We’ve talked about the importance of resisting flexion in the spine during the section on RDL’s. This is important for maintaining a stable, aligned lift, however this doesn’t mean the back should be locked in one place forever.
A strong back is only truly strong if it can comfortably move through all the positions you would logically expect it to without fear of injury. That includes folding the spine forwards; this is where Jefferson curls come into their own.
By loading a flexed back position, you train the mobility of the back muscles and also the strength you have in this lengthened position. This can be scary if you’ve injured your back before and have been told that rounding your back is a training sin, but the only way to truly injury-proof yourself is to build some resilience in the positions where you feel you are most at risk. I talk about this more in this blog about managing a sore or weak lower back.
If you’re wary of performing a Jefferson curl, you can start moving this area with a cat-cow pose.
5. Bent Over Rows
Bent over rows are often a bit of an after-thought when training the upper back. They won’t isolate the upper back muscles to the same degree as something like a Pulldown machine, because the hamstrings, glutes and lower back muscles have to stay “on” to maintain the bent-over position. This extra muscle activity can limit your ability to focus on the upper back muscles enough to thoroughly overload them.
Despite all this, I think the bent over row is a fantastic exercise when taking a broader approach to building a strong back. The bent over row is a horizontal pulling movement (pulling towards the chest as opposed to pulling down), and it also works the hamstrings and lower back. This makes it a great bang-for-buck exercise, as well as a good challenge to round out your gym skills. It’s a good way to build tolerance in the whole system of back muscles, making it a great precursor or accessory to deadlifting.
Also, because the upper back muscles are not completely fried by the end of a set of bent over rows, it can be a good exercise to superset with another exercise – for example bicep or shoulder work. However, you’ll probably need to add in some other upper back exercises if you’re looking to increase your muscle mass. That’s where the last few exercises on this list come in.
6. Bench Row
A similar horizontal pulling motion for the upper back, but with no work required by the hamstrings and lower back because the chest is supported by the bench. The emphasis should be on moving the shoulder blades through a full range of motion, both in reaching forwards and squeezing back.
A way to accentuate this is the flexed bench row, which encourages a little more flexion and extension in the upper back as well as movement through the shoulder blades. To do this, simply move your chest higher up the bench.
The pressure of your weight on the bench may make this exercise uncomfortable for some, so another great supported row variation is the single arm row.
7. Pullups
A pullup is a great gym milestone, and a staple of a strong back. It extends beyond the realm of simply producing a certain amount of force, and instead comprises a complete movement skill. Being able to do a pullup opens up a whole range of additional exercises you can add to your arsenal.
If you can’t do a pullup, then the process of training for it will introduce a realm of new specific exercises and skills for you to learn. Whether it’s negative pullups, hanging exercises, or band pullups, there’s enough variety in pullup training to add some serious variety to your back workouts. You’ll also have to pay attention to your pullup training programme design.
Don’t Look Back
All the exercises on this list can be altered to match your current level, so don’t be put off from building up your back strength. It will be well worth the effort
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