A strong muscular upper back is definitely an attention magnet. We’re talking V-taper as well as thickness. If your upper back is a weak point I encourage you to apply the 5 mass building tips below in addition to the killer upper back workout.
5 Mass Building Tips For An Impressive Upper Back
1) Deadlifts… lots and lots of deadlifts. Ever since I began incorporating deadlifts on back training day I have experienced great improvement in muscle thickness in my lats, traps, and spinal erectors. Some muscle building coaches recommend only heavy weight low rep deadlifts for building upper back thickness, but I found that a combination of both low rep and high rep deadlifts worked best for a hardgainer like me.
2) Check your ego at the door and reduce the weight. When you lift too heavy on your rows, pullups, and pulldowns, their is a much greater chance that you will be relying on supporting muscles to pull the load. In many cases your biceps will get more of a workout than your back will. It may seem counter-intuitive that lowering the weight will help you grow, but that lighter weight will help enhance your mind-muscle connection, creating greater tension where it should be… your lats!
Focus on driving with your elbows. So if you are doing pullups or pulldowns, focus on driving your elbows down rather than pulling yourself up or pulling the weight down with your arms. When you are rowing, focus on driving your elbows back rather than pulling with your arms.
3) Add more volume per workout. Increase the number of exercises that you perform or the sets that you perform for the exercises already in your upper back workout program.
4) Increase the frequency. If you typically perform a body part split routine where you dedicate an entire workout to back training, try adding in a couple upper back exercises on an off day or at the end of another workout later in the week. Use that extra back training session to really focus on form. Go light and control the movement. We’re looking for constant tension. Dumbbell Rows and Wide Grip Pulldowns are great for this bonus session. You can even finish off the bonus session with 10 minutes on the rowing machine to get some extra blood pumping to your lats.
5) Practice Posing. Even if you never plan on stepping on stage to compete in a bodybuilding contest, you have a lot to gain by practicing some of the mandatory poses such as the relaxed pose, lat spread, and double biceps poses.
Practicing your bodybuilding poses is a great way to enhance your mind-muscle connection. It’s amazing how most of us really don’t know how to control our lats. When I first attempted a front relaxed pose I felt like an uncoordinated fool. I thought that I was very “in-tune” with my body, but practicing these bodybuilding poses made me realize that I still had a lot to learn.
I noticed a direct correlation between the muscle gains in my upper back and improvement in my back poses. The more comfortable I became with my back poses and the more control I was able to command over my lats, the more focused I became during my back workouts and could place the greatest emphasis on where the exercise should be felt.
Bonus Tip: Apply Pre-exhaust strategies to your upper back workout. There are several methods for pre-exhausting your back muscle. One of them is to superset an isolation exercise with a compound exercise. This is very helpful if you ever find that your arms fatigue before your back does. The isolation exercise places more emphasis on your back muscles, with less biceps involvement. So when you get to the compound exercise your back is already pre-fatigued and should burn out at the same time or before your biceps do.
Now it’s time to move onto a killer back workout that applies these strategies…
Killer Upper Back Workout
Superset #1
Straight Arm Pulldown
Close Grip Pulldown
…8 reps, 3 sets. No rest between exercises, 60 seconds rest between sets.
Superset #2
Dumbbell Pullovers
Seated Row
…8 reps, 3 sets. No rest between exercises, 60 seconds rest between sets.
Dropset
T-Bar Row
…8 to 12 reps. 3 drops for a total of 4 sets. No rest between sets.
If you select a weight that you can control and maintain constant tension, this will be one heck of an upper back workout for you. Focus on really feeling the stretch and contraction. Do not rush through the exercises. Work on enhancing that mind-muscle connection.
The supersets, beginning with an isolation exercise is a great way to pre-exhaust your back muscles. The dropsets at the end is a great way to post-exhaust your back muscles to really hit those deep down muscle fibers that are often neglected.
Go for it and let me know how you feel at the end of the workout.
Sculpt a Masterpiece,
Scott Tousignant
PS I’ll be sharing some more behind the scenes workout strategies as I prepare to win the first bodybuilding contest I’ve ever entered. Be on the lookout.
About The Author
Scott Tousignant, BHK, is a Certified Fitness Consultant with a passion for transforming fitness enthusiasts goal driven, dedicated, and voracious physique artists who take pride in their body, fitness, health, and lifestyle. Embraced by physique artists around the world, his Metabolic Masterpiece Body Sculpting Programs will guide you through the process of sculpting your body into a work of art, by applying what Scott has coined, The A.T.T.R.A.C.T. Formula.
With his synergistic, boredom busting body sculpting workouts you will melt stubborn fat and gain muscle while skyrocketing your metabolism!
The art of molding and chiseling an aesthetically pleasing physique with ideal proportions and spectacular symmetry is one of life’s most rewarding and fulfilling experiences. It’s an opportunity for self growth and self discovery that will impact every area of your life.