Avoiding Mistakes When Working Your Upper Back

The upper back is one area where we see a lot of attempted heroics. With pulldowns and rows, people tend to pile on more weight than they can handle and end up trying to throw their entire body weight into the exercise to move the weight. This sort of behavior won’t train your back muscles and may result in injury.
Follow these tips to avoid injury when training your upper back:

• Don’t rock back and forth or wiggle around. In an effort to pull the weight toward them, many people squirm around to build up momentum, but that’s the last thing you want; instead, rely on your own muscle power. If you find yourself shifting around in order to lift and lower the weight, drop down a few plates.
• Don’t lean too far back. You may be able to lift more weight when you lean way back, but that’s because you have better leverage and you’re using your body weight to cheat, not because your back muscles get a better workout. A more upright posture ensures that your back muscles are in the prime position to do maximum work. Any time you pull something toward you, slide your shoulders down, squeeze your shoulder blades together, and sit up tall. With pulldowns, you can lean back ever so slightly, but for rows you need to be sitting as tall as you do when your flight attendant demands that you return your seat back to its full upright position with your seat belt fastened and tray table locked.

• Don’t pull a bar down behind your neck. There are endless variations of the pulldown exercise, but one now frowned on by many exercise experts is the behind-the-neck pulldown. Critics of this exercise say that your arms twist so far back that your upper arm bones get jammed into your shoulder sockets, which could overstretch your ligaments and strain those delicate rotator cuff muscles. Unless you’re a rock climber, an avid rower, or a swimmer who favors the butterfly stroke, front pulldowns will suffice.

Getting an Upper Back Workout

Upper back exercises fall into three general categories: pulldowns and pullups, rows, and pullovers. Later in this chapter, you discover a variety of exercises in each category. For the most complete upper back workout, perform at least one exercise from each category, although you needn’t do all these exercises in the same workout.

• Pulldowns and pull-ups: With a pulldown, you grab a bar attached to an overhead pulley and pull it down; with a pull-up, you grasp a bar above you and pull yourself up. If you exercise at home, use an exercise band to mimic the pulley machine and do the band lat pulldown. Pulldowns and pull-ups are grouped in one category because they work your back in the same way. Both types of exercises involve your lats, traps, and rhomboids, but they also rely heavily on your biceps, shoulders, and chest muscles. If you’re looking to develop a broader back and improve your posture, emphasize pulldowns and pull-ups. For example, you can do a pulldown with a band.
• Rows: What I am about to tell you may be shocking, but rowing exercises are similar to the motion of rowing a boat. (I know. You’re amazed.) You may perform rows with a barbell or dumbbell, a set of machine handles, a bar attached to a low cable pulley, or an exercise band. Rowing exercises use the same muscles as pulldowns and pull-ups except that they don’t involve your chest. Rows are particularly helpful if you want to find out how to sit up straighter (to perform a row correctly on a machine, you have to sit up tall).
• Pullovers: When you do a pullover, your arms move up and down in an arc, like when you pull an ax overhead to chop wood. Pullovers rely mainly on your lats, but they also call upon your chest, shoulder, and abdominal muscles. Like the other upper back exercises, pullovers help with posture. A pullover is an ideal transition exercise from a back workout to a chest workout. In other words, use a pullover as the last exercise of your back workout and as a prelude to your chest exercises because your chest will be warmed up.

Whether you’re performing pulldowns, pull-ups, rows, or pullovers, remind yourself that these exercises first and foremost strengthen your back muscles, not your arms. Think of your arms merely as a link between the bar and your back muscles, which should do the bulk of the work. Concentrate on originating each exercise from the outer edges of your back. This bit of advice may be difficult to relate to at first, but as you get stronger and more sophisticated, your body awareness improves and you know exactly where you should feel each exercise.
Most of the upper back exercises in this chapter involve weight machines or cable pulleys. If you work out at home and you don’t have a multigym (a home version of health club machinery), use a rubber exercise band to mimic the pulley machine.

Strengthening your back muscles has important advantages

• Real-life benefits: With a strong upper back, you’ll find it easier to drag your kids into the dentist’s office or lug your suitcases through endless airport terminals. You’ll say goodbye to slouching as your posture improves and get rid of tension in your neck and shoulders.
• Injury prevention: Strong upper back muscles play a significant role in keeping your shoulders healthy. Your lats handle most of the work in pulling movements, so you don’t overstress your shoulders. For example, well-developed upper back muscles could save you from injury when unfolding the sofa bed for a houseguest.
• The confidence or the “feel good” factor: Upper back exercises make your back more broad, which, in turn, slenderizes your lower body. These exercises also improve your posture by helping you stand straighter and taller, open up your chest, and give up slumping as a pastime.

Understanding Upper Back Muscle Basics

Pull up a chair and let’s talk about your upper back muscles. There. You just used ’em. No, that wasn’t a trick. In fact, you use your upper back muscles whenever you pull anything toward you, whether it’s a piece of furniture, a stubborn golden retriever on a leash, or the mountain of chips you won at your Thursday night poker game.
Your upper back consists of several

• Latissimus dorsi (lats): The largest muscles in your back run from just behind each armpit to the center of your lower back. Olympic swimmers, particularly those who swim butterfly, have well developed lats. These muscles give swimmers that V-shaped torso. The main purpose of your lats is to pull your arms (and anything in your hands) toward your body.
• Trapezius (traps): Above the lats are your two traps. Together, your traps look like a large kite that runs from the top of your neck to the edge of your shoulders and narrows down through the center of your back. Your traps enable you to shrug your shoulders (like when your spouse asks how you could’ve forgotten to pay the phone bill). More important, your lower traps stabilize your shoulders and help prevent shoulder injuries and your upper traps help you to move your head to the back, side, or to look behind you.
• Rhomboids: Your rhomboids cover the area between your spine and your shoulder blades. Along with your traps, you use your rhomboids for squeezing your shoulder blades together. You have to call them your rhomboids, because boids somehow never caught on. Most people who work long hours at computers or in other seated positions have overstretched and weak rhomboids.