Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1972: Back Building Master Class

Episode Date: December 22, 2022

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin cover everything you know to build your back. What you will learn in this episode. (1:40) The importance and value of having a strong/healthy back. (2:49) The muscles of the back and favorite exercises for each.  Lats. (11:28) Trapezius. (18:22) Rhomboids. (23:35) Erector Spinae. (26:31) Exercise types.  Pulldowns or rows. (28:42) Deadlift. (30:04) Pullover or straight arm pulldowns. (36:24) Rep ranges. (38:48) Tempo and technique. (40:34) Related Links/Products Mentioned Visit PRx Performance for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! December Promotion: At-Home Holiday Bundle (MAPS Anywhere, MAPS Suspension, MAPS PRIME, and The No BS 6-Pack Formula all for the low price of $99.99!) Do You Have Back Or Shoulder Pain? YOU NEED TO TRY THIS! | Mind Pump Mind Pump #1490: How To Improve Your Posture How To Actually Target Your Lats With The Lat Pulldown! How To Do A Perfect Pull-Up (AVOID MISTAKES!) How To Isolate The Upper Trap and Rhomboids with The Dumbbell Shrug MAPS Strong The ONLY Way You Should Barbell Row Supertraining (book) How to Perform a PROPER Dumbbell Pullover (Target Chest of Lats) | MIND PUMP Mind Pump #1827: The 3 Best Rep Ranges To Build Muscle & Burn Fat How To Properly Do The Seated Cable Row (IT MATTERS!) Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Robert Oberst (@robertoberst) Instagram

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the world's number one fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump, right? In today's episode, we talk about building your back, everything you need to know, by developing a strong, healthy back. We talk about the muscles, the reps, the sets, the back, everything you need to know by developing a strong, healthy back. We talk about the muscles, the reps, the sets,

the exercises, everything. It's a great episode. That's episodes brought to you by some sponsors. The first one is PRX Performance. They make home gym equipment that's as good or better than the stuff you see in the gym. For example, they have a squat rack that folds into the wall, comes off the wall by like four or five inches,

so you can still park your car in the garage, but then when you're ready to work out it comes off the wall Super super stable, but they have lots and lots of other equipment and you can make monthly payments So it's like paying a gym membership except it's your home gym go check this company out Go to PRXPerformance.com forward slash mind pump and on that link you'll get 5% off because you listen to mine pump. Also, we've got a sale going on this month. We have the at home holiday bundle. These are all workout programs you can do at home with minimal equipment or no equipment. The first workout program is maps anywhere.

Then there's maps suspension, then there's maps prime, and then there's the no BS 6-pack formula. All of these together would normally retail for over $330, but right now you can get all of them in this bundle for $99.99. If you're interested, just go to mapsdysember.com. All right, here comes a show. Today's episode we're talking about developing the muscles of the back, everything about the back, the best exercises, wraps, sets, all the different muscles you can focus on.

If you want to develop a better back, this is the episode for you. It's the back master club. It's your least favorite. It's our self. Yeah, it was my favorite, man. You know what's funny about this is that in body building, they just give general back.

Like, do you know how many muscles make up the back? Just this whole mass right here, we're gonna call it back. Yeah, it's like, there's so many muscles that make up the back, but we're gonna focus on, I guess, some of the major ones. The main ones that you would wanna target with exercises, because by targeting these muscles, you'll pretty much hit all of the muscles of the back. But it is, it's a huge area of the body.

There's lots of different muscles that make up the back. And there's lots of different functions at the muscles of the back. Pretty good. Everything from stabilizing your spine, giving you a better posture to controlling your shoulder blades, your shoulders, bringing the arms back and together, even helping with respiration and breathing.

Like the muscles of the back, quite a few functions when you look at all of them. Were you always a big deadlifting back fan guy or did that develop over time? I, when I got into working out, the Mr. Olympia at the time, say I would read the bodybuilding magazines, it was Dory and Yates,

and he was known for his like insane back development. And then before that, you know, watching Pumping Iron, Franco Colombo, you know, just because he was Italian, I thought, oh, that's cool. He had a big back. And so I just was like, infatuated with developing this like really strong back. And then the deadlift was the one, that's the one exercise of all exercises that I did that I was, I felt like I had a natural affinity to. Every other exercise I had to work really hard at getting good at. With the deadlift, I remember I could deadlift 300 pounds

very, very shortly, very quickly after starting working out. So it just, you know, you combine those two things and it was like asking my favorite. I feel like you could literally split somebody in half as to whether or not they're a pusher or a puller and what comes easier for them, just naturally. Kind of weird, right? Yes, it's strange, but every time I ask,

it's you're either more inclined to do some kind of a pulling move or a pushing move, but yeah, I was definitely on the pushing side. If it had to really work through pulling moves to get better at them, especially the deadlift. Well, I mean, that wasn't even really a part of your team for long time, because I didn't football. You guys don't do that, right?

Not very. I mean, yeah, cleans, you do pull it off the ground, but it's, yeah, it's not a big part of it. I mean, you do some speed, right? I mean, there's not really a lot. You're not heavy deadlift. You're not heavy doing cleans. You know, aside for, I'd love your opinion on this too, Justin, especially you because

your pedigree in sports, that there's besides the hips, I would say you could, you can't always judge someone's athleticism by looking at them obviously. There's many times when you can't tell, and then the person performs phenomenally. Yeah. But I would say besides the hips, the back, the back tells you a lot, right?

Tells you a lot of somebody's gonna be strong if they're gonna have good performance, if there's somebody that you need to be careful. Especially right up along the spine. You can tell if you see that, director's spine, you see like visible, like muscle definition there that's protective for their core. You know that they got a lot of power output. Most of the time it's pretty accurate between that and like obviously the big glutes and

you know hip power that is, power that is responsible for that. I think it should get some extra credit too for the value it brings to just overall posture for general population. I mean, you're talking about athletes right now. We talk about bodybuilders, how important it is when you talk about sculpting and building in physique. But I think just for the average client, and I think I started to figure this out towards the back half of my training career.

I started to really put a lot of emphasis on the back in like my old lady who just wanted to be healthy and fit because everything we do in our daily life is is anteriorly driven, right? We're in front of us. And so you know, you're driving, you're eating, you're, everything rounds the body and closes the body. And movements for the back does the opposite. It opens you back up and it strengthens those opposing muscles. And so, I find that if you have neglected strength training for, you know, a long period of your life

or your entire life, the back muscles are so important for just overall health and good posture. The number one injured part of a person's body has to do with the back. Low back, and then if you move up the spine, there's even upper back exercises, neck, exercise, neck, excuse me, upper back injuries, and neck injuries are quite common as well. You know it's funny, modern life, I mean I'm right on there with you Adam, modern life is terrible for the back. It's like modern life took, so what's that one line when it comes to hard labor, back

breaking labor. Hard labor involves a lot of the back, lifting things, pulling things, you know, you know, hitting hammers or, youers or a hoe into the ground where you're farming. That's a lot of back work. We got rid of all that. We got rid of all of it, and it's one of the most atrophied weakened parts of a modern man

or modern woman's body is the back. So just like you, I figured that right away. When I would get a new client, the back, whether it be posture, stabilization, strength, like, it was a big focus of my workouts was getting this person's back stronger because I knew if I could strengthen it, that they would get these huge profound benefits. And again, it's also super neglected. Like, think about modern life. Like you almost use none of your back. We don't pull ourselves up, we don't carry anything heavy, we don't lift anything heavy. No row, anything.

Nothing, nothing. So it's like the super out, you even see this kids now, you see terrible posture and back in your skin. See this kid now. Oh yeah, this protracted shoulder chryphosis, they're just like slowly turning into a shrimp. You just kinda see this,

and you've seen the exaggerated version of that with like an 80 year old person that's just sort of like can barely even lift their head up at that point and you know gravity really like affects at that point like when you let all these patterns kind of persist. So to be able to combat that with back exercise crucial to keep you going. That was a big part of my sales presentation. So I used to do, when I did the squat, I would do a squat assessment on a client, and then I'd kind of show them where their posture was. And everybody is forward, right?

Like you never meet anybody with the opposite issue, right? Everybody is rounded forward. And if I had somebody who was, say, 30, 40, 50 years old in their life and they're not in this like eight year old position, I'm like, we've all seen that, that eight year old, let's get the walker and they're all hunched over like a shrimp like you're talking about. Like, do you think that person woke up one day and they just were like that?

I'm like, no, when they were 30 and I would show their posture. They looked like this and they're 40 and they like this and then they're 50 and I would show them like where they're at right now and then what happens in 10 years, 10 years, 10 years, 10 years, if you don't start to address it, and that's part of my job. I know you came to me to lose 30 pounds and that's your main goal, but I also want to address these things,

by the way, we organize your strength training exercises, and so I would put a lot of emphasis on the post year chain and the back, right? And I remember not that long ago, it's a while ago now, we had a question where somebody was asking us to like kind of debate whether we thought squat or deadlift was king, like what's the king of our size? And squat has been known as the king of all exercises for a long time, but I would make the argument that the deadlift is for these reasons. We get up and down from our car,

from the toilet, from your dinner table. And so, most of us have some sort of squatting patterns that we incorporate, but to the point you just made is, what are we doing where we do a pullover, a pullup, a row? You never. A hinge with it. Like, those behaviors don't really happen

in normal day life. And so I would make the case that because of how neglected is, it is king for that reason. Because they both could be argued how much muscle gets built and how many calories are burned and how many muscles are incorporated. But then which one is more crucial to overall health and posture?

Maybe we should make a doors heavier. Yeah, row of doors. Yes, I'm gonna figure this out. As heavy as you. It's also, the back also contributes tremendously to aesthetics. Even for women, I know sometimes I'm gonna like, I don't want a big back. No, no, no, no.

A good, strong, healthy back gives you good posture, which good posture is one of those things. If you have healthy posture, it's one of those things that subtly shows good health. What I mean by subtle is if you're standing with bad posture and you corrected just a little bit, you're attracting this improves in relation to that posture. And people might not even be able to pick it out.

They just notice that you look better. You seem more confident, you seem more able, right? More prepared. And it's not just posture, it's also, it gives the illusion of a smaller waist. It gives the, for men, it gives you that wider shoulder look. And it just overall, very important aesthetics. In bodybuilding, in bodybuilding is an aesthetic sport.

I know it's extreme, but there's a lot of truths in bodybuilding. What they find with the extremes in bodybuilding actually come from truths and evolution. Like why we find certain things attractive. And what do they say in bodybuilding. What they find with the extremes in bodybuilding actually come from truths and evolution, like why we find certain things attractive. And what do they say in bodybuilding shows that the contests are one or lost as soon as the contestants turn around, as soon as they show their backs?

That's what will win or lose a competition. So when it comes to aesthetics, even if you don't think you want this huge back or whatever, strengthen your back will contribute from the front, your aesthetics, and how you look even from the front. So let's talk about some of the muscles of the back, and we're gonna cover just kind of the major ones

because there's so many back muscles that if we went through all of them, it would take forever, not just that. If you just focus on the ones we're talking about, you're gonna pretty much hit all the small muscles along the way as well. So the first one, let's talk about the lats. These are the big wide muscles of the back.

So the biggest muscles of the back. And some, I remember learning that they were the biggest muscles of the body, then I've heard people say, it's the glutes. Nonetheless, it's up there. It's one of the largest muscles of the body. And it's the wings part of the back. It's actually the widest muscles of the body. Now, what they're largely responsible for, because if you look at the last from the back, you'll see that they kind of attach along the spine, then they kind of come up and they fan out and then they

kind of pinch in and attach in the humerus, right, in this kind of upper arm area. And what they essentially do is adduct the humerus or bring the arms in towards your body or from up top down towards your body. So a pull up, a pull down a row, those exercises are gonna work, those big, you know, meaty parts of the back known as the lats. And then aesthetically speaking, developing your lats gives you this really nice posture look. By the way, the lats are also involved in posture., developing your lats gives you this really nice posture look.

By the way, the lats are also involved in posture. A lot of people don't realize this, but the lats are involved in some way to stabilize the spine and believe it or not, the lats also help a little bit with respiration as do most of the muscles of the back. Favorite exercises? Lap pull downs, pull ups. I would have to say for a pure lat exercise, it's got to be pull ups. Yeah downs, pull ups. I would have to say, for a pure, lat exercise, it's gotta be pull ups. Yeah, weighted pull ups. If you can. It's gotta be pull ups.

And there, you know, people ask, like, what's better? Like, wide grip, close grip. I would say for most people, a relatively, like a moderate grip. So not too narrow, not too wide, it's probably appropriate for most people. But then as you become more advanced, you can find that different grips tend to work.

The muscles a little bit different. Oh, yeah. I would make the case that there's tremendous value in varying up the grips. For sure. I try. If I pull ups, which they have been in my routine, actually pretty consistently for a while now, if, and I think a lot of that has to do with having a home gym, right? I don't have a lap pull down machine.

I don't have a lot of different exercises. I have just the basic stuff. And since pull-up is one of the best things I can do for my lats, it's a staple right now. But I love that the PRX has all the different groups. Yeah, so I'll go through a kick where I'm like, all the pull-ups are neutral. All of them are kind of a Y-grip.

Some are going to be a supinated grip. And, all the pull-ups are neutral, all of them are kind of a y-grip, some are gonna be a supinated grip. And they all attack the back in a slightly different way and just a slight novelty of positioning the wrist and elbows in a different position hits the back different. So if I catch myself pulling up the same way and it's been a while, it's just naturally I'll change that. So nice, yeah, change up with stimulus. One thing I've found two that not a lot of people probably do I've seen it done a few times

I've I'm always a big proponent of rotation and so Trying to mimic that kind of spiraling line in a press, but now using that as a single arm pull lap hole down to I've I love doing those as well, just as to sort of counter that same movement and bring kind of control and stability there to help the shoulder kind of really stay healthy and packed in place. Yeah, I like that. And you're going to get some interesting bicep activation with that while you're turning the hand. And it hits kind of all those different motions. I just change your grips up a lot is what I like to do.

I would say a wide grip requires definitely more strength and more shoulder stability because the risk of injury goes up higher whereas a more narrow grip tends to be a little bit safer. I think neutral probably for the most comfortable for the hands. Your hands are facing each other. Yes, I would totally agree. Probably the most comfortable for someone. Totally.

In rows, rows also hit the lats quite a bit. It's just not as direct of a lat exercise. And Rose hit more of the mid back. Yeah, I'd put Rob Lloyds and traps in that. Right, and so let's get to that, right? So before you get to that, I want to say something that Justin just like lightly said, and I think this was a, I want to try

why we go through this whole masterclass to share things that like we're like, I don't know, either, you know, pivotal moments in our training and talking about the lats, he said, weighted pull-ups. For a long time, I understood the value of pull-ups and I just did bodyweight. And as I got stronger, I just did more reps, more reps, more reps. And it wasn't really until we started training together, and I didn't start training the single, the double, the triple, even like anything under five, five by five, just never hit

my routine. And so it never dawned on me why I would do three pull ups. And so I just just never did that. And that didn't happen until later. I saw huge benefits from loading pull ups really heavy and just doing two or three Treating like a true strength exercise. Yes. Yes. Yes muscle endurance It was always muscle endurance. It was like oh, I haven't done pull ups in a while Let's get back to pull ups and of course if you haven't done them in a while sometimes like five to ten is hard

And then I'd work my way all the way up to where I've wrapping out 20 plus and then I was like Oh, then I let it fall on my routine and then I come back It wasn't until way later in my lifting career that I actually, when I'd progress and pull-ups to think, oh, now I'm getting up to 12, 15 reps, instead of me just keep progressing on reps, how about I load the sucker and do, you know, five of these or three of these,

and I saw a huge development in my back by doing that, so I just wanna pull that out. So I did weighted pull-ups pretty early because I read an article by Jack Lillane. And Jack Lillane at one point, I think it was 50, he set the world record for pushups and pull ups. And they said, well, what are your some of your secrets to be able to do so?

I think you did a thousand, if I'm not mistaken, a thousand pushups. He did, he actually had the record before David Goggins and then Mike McCaskel. Mike McCaskel, yeah. And just and held forever. Again, he was 50 years old, pretty remarkable. And he said, oh, heavy bench presses and weighted pull ups.

And everybody was like, what? And so he actually did, he saw that heavy bench presses got in better at pushups and weighted pull ups got in better at doing lots of reps of pull ups. And so I started doing this. I would put a dumbbell between my legs and do two or three reps. And it's one of the best exercises to do weighted.

A lot of people don't know that. A lot of people don't know that. And some exercises lend themselves better to low reps. I didn't know that. I mean, as a trainer and knowing the value of pullups, I neglected that. And by the way, even if you were gonna train, I would use that tactic,

even when I was gonna do higher rep, because for the post activation, potentiation value from it, right? So I go heavy, I go one or two reps real quick, heavy weighted, and then I go high reps, and you'll see how easy the reps are after you do one set of really heavy. It's mind boggling, so such a hack, right?

For getting good at pull-ups and building strong, a strong back and good last. Totally. All right, now let's talk about the traps, the trapezius muscles. Now, these muscles actually have quite a few different functions. A lot of people think of just doing shrugs. That's the upper traps.

The mid traps actually bring the shoulder blades back together. So doing like a row where you're pinching your shoulder blades back, we'll hit that kind of mid-upper mid-trap area, where you kind of wear the, you know, if you look at the neck like below the neck, kind of give you that muscularity there. And then the upper traps shrug the shoulders up, but they shrug their shoulders up, kind of this up and back position, not this forward position.

When you move them forward, you hit other kind of muscles, a little bit more, levitator scapulae being one of them. Now the traps are very important for shoulder stability. Having weak tight traps is quite common, especially with people who work on computers all day long in this kind of forward position because the CNS tells the traps to stabilize their shoulders because we've got really poor mobility and strength. So people are always complaining about tight neck muscles. Working the traps out properly along with other back muscles,

will help alleviate a lot of these issues. Which is counterintuitive, right? Because in a lot of times when you're tight and in pain in that position, you think you just need to stretch it out and relax and to be able to strengthen a lot of these imbalances and added points of stress really helps to kind of alleviate pain in general. and balances and added points of stress really helps to kind of alleviate pain in general. So a point that you made that,

again, one another, one of these things that took me a while at the pieces together, I remember getting on a kick and wanting to build my traps. And what I ended up doing was all these variations of shrugs, neutral grip, behind the back shrubs, like forward, super, I did all these like shrug stuff to do it. I even did the reverse shrugs, we actually had the barbell bug, you know,

shrubs, like I did all kinds of crazy stuff with that. Never really focused on like my upper back, where I target it with like rows, with my elbows, elevators, with that. And you can really develop the traps by actually hitting them like that. And my traps got so much bigger and better from doing that. And I think that a lot of that had to do with,

I had already done all the shrugging stuff like crazy. I had put zero emphasis on the back of the upper back and actually doing like rows where you elevate your elbows. And I saw tremendous value in building the traps that way. Yeah, do you have any elbows? And I saw tremendous value in building the traps that way. Do you have any favorite trap exercises for you guys? I, you know, have you ever done the one where it's behind your back?

Oh yeah. That was a, that was a, Lee Haney, Lee Haney, that was his favorite. Lee Haney was a six or seven time Mr. Olympia. That was his favorite. You gotta have good shoulder mobility. You gotta go light. You gotta go light. The reason why it works so well behind the back is because you have to keep your shoulders

back in order to clean the posture of it. Right. When you're doing that. So the untraditional stuff for the things that blew my mind. I had done all the shrugging things. Like I said, the high rows where I was, you know, rowing with my elbows up in the air and like elevated. So I was targeting really high and snatches. Oh God. My traps blew up from cleanser, right? Yes, they're the hand cleanser.

Are you talking about snatch grip hand clean? Yeah. Oh, that one's nasty. And not just I did not see that coming at all. And in fact, I remember I pieced it together when I was doing the hand cleansed oppresses for my shoulders and my traps, just like my trap shoulders, everything blew up from that exercise. And I loved it because

in my space when I was doing that with the bodybuilding community, nobody was doing that. It's such a power lifter, Olympic lifter type of move that none of the bodybuilders were training that way. And I saw huge development from doing that. Yeah, that's got to be my favorite. Is a snatch grip, high pulls or hang cleans or hang pulls? We got those in map strong. That's the first time I ever did them. Was Robert Obers told us about them? I followed the program and I couldn't believe how much my traps responded. I did lots of shrugs and stuff like that, but it was that snatch grip, high pull.

There's a lot of gems in that program for your traps and for your posts, to your chain in general. Yes, crazy. And then I like, of course there's shrugs, but I also like doing shrugs on an incline, on a really, really high, almost straight back incline. So the incline is just slight leaning forward on it. So my face is facing the actual, the seat and then shrugging. And the reason why I like that is because I'm just

Forward enough to where I can target I like that too because what you're doing is you're almost incorporating a little bit of a row And with the shrug it's and that back to the point I was making about you just don't a lot of people don't tend to target The traps like that by trying to and you get kind of both right there with the shrug Yeah pulling back and what I really like about it is I get a full range of motion. I'll let my shoulders really drop so I could feel that full range of motion. This is the biggest mistake people make with shrugs, by the way, is using too much weight

in a short range of motion because you can load the hell out of shrugs and look cool in the gym. Look, I'm grabbing the 150s or whatever and kind of do this like chicken head, you know, movement or whatever. Go lighter, focus on all the way up, squeeze real hard, all the way down.

Let them stretch a little bit. All like do that with lighter weight, watch what happens, makes a huge difference. All right, next up with the rhomboids, these muscles actually are underneath the traps. It's a deep back muscle, but they're involved in stabilizing the shoulder blades and they bring the shoulder blades back.

This, my favorite exercise for rhomboids or rhomboids, or rhomboids, yeah. Just good or bad, good or barbell roast. That's it. And it gives me that upper mid back thickness. I do the Doreen 8 style one right. I'm not flat to the ground, but I'm up at 45 degrees. And then I get kind of mid-trap, kind of,

you know, mid-romboma activation. Get fun and functional with it and do some fast switch stuff with like, Pendle A-Rose, or then I'll go over, but with rotation added in there for me. So, yeah, I like to change it up like that, but really, I mean, rows are staple. That was just something that's gonna help to counter a lot of this, this anterior forward movement and stress.

I love Pendle A-Rose. And so, you know, you said something about the way you are shrugging into a trap. So this is an example of like programming, how my brain works. If I'm going to be, if I'm going to do that exercise where you're leaning over the bench facing forward

and shrugging, I'm not going to do standard barbell Rose because I'm already hitting that area pretty well. You're going to pull down. I'm going to do, yeah, or I'm going to do completely bent all the way over and do Pinlay, right? Where I hit more hitting that area pretty well. You do pull down. I'm gonna do completely bent all the way over and do pinlay, where I hit more in that targeted area. So, now if I do something that's more traditional where I'm doing a normal shrub,

then a traditional binover barbell row where I'm at, I don't know what degrees that is, but I'm quite pinlay bent over, but I like pinlay. What's the one where you're laying on the bench with a wide heel row? I like the lot of slur. I've only done to find those at a few gyms. I've never done it. Oh, yeah. No, I've never found a place. I thought the car the car one didn't have one of those. No, where you're laying on the bench. Yeah, yeah. I think it's got the bar that does this. Yeah,

I've never done it. Now to be honest with you, it looks uncomfortable like you like you won't be able to read. This pressure in the stomach. But I've never done it before. You guys like it, huh? Yeah, I love that. Now, and I'll do a variation of that with an incline bench and do dumbbells that way. That's how I've always done it. So it's similar to a space-dashy supported. You're not quite parallel to the floor. You have kind of a, you're taking the incline bench up at just a tiny bit and to where my hands are down.

I won't hit the ground. And I roll that one. Well, this is especially good after you've fried, by doing heavy dead lifts and you want to still hit your back, right, and you get that chest support. So that way it doesn't add that excess stress on your great point, Justin. Another example of understanding programming,

if I'm gonna do heavy deadlifting, and my erector's pene is gonna be fried, just like I'm fried already from doing something that heavy, I'm gonna support myself and things like that. That's actually what I'm doing. Yeah, I might not do a barbell row, I might do a T-bar row, or a seal row, or do something seated because I already...

Or even a one arm dumbbell row, right? At least a hand in your knee. Yeah, absolutely. No, 100%. And, you know, we're gonna get to this, but the exercises for back can be broken down into two categories, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're all the same. And we'll get to that in just a second.

But first, we need to talk about the erector spinae muscles. These are the muscles that run along the sides of the spine, and they help extend the spine. They keep it strong and straight. And when these are well developed, if you look at someone from the back, you'll see that the channel. Yeah, it goes in, right? So where the spine is, it kind of goes in because there's these muscles along the side.

This looks very, very attractive in both men and women. So you'll see women will wear like a back backless dress and when she has that nice developed kind of mid back, they'll look really good. And then of course with a man, it exemplifies strength, post-strips stability, right? A rectus spin A muscles extend the spine, so you can do back extensions, you can do superman on the ground, or you can do deadlift. And we'll get to the deadlift,

but the deadlift isn't just a erectus spin A muscle exercise. The deadlift actually hits everything. And I think you're good. But it's definitely the king of that. And if I can tell, when you talk about the canals on somebody's back, if you deadlift or not, that's where you can tell. It's a, but it's definitely the king of that. And if you, I can tell, when you talk about the canals on somebody's back, if you deadlift or not. That's where you get to. It's a dead, give away when you don't.

And it's very obvious when you do it, especially when you're good at it and you can lift, then you can deadlift heavy, that develops those canals, like nothing else. I, it's okay, what are you guys' opinion then? If you're a deadlifter, do you spend very much time doing hyper extensions? No.

I know. It's a good point, no. No, not a ton at all. I do rotation, I do stuff from my QL, but not a ton of back kicks. I'll do some, but not a ton. Yeah, I mean, every now and then I'll throw in some cobras, like floor cobras are like weight

with some dumbbells, but just, you know, in terms of like being intentionally doing hyper extensions now. I just feel like you're getting so much from the deadlift in that department and because that's such high stress already, it's like, what am I really doing with this simple exercise where I'm like body weight or holding a 45 pound plate into hyper extensions

when I was just doing 400 pounds deadlifting. I actually like back extensions better for the gl doing 400 pounds deadlifting. Two days later. I actually like back extensions better for the glutes. There's a way to do them. Yeah, you round and you tuck in. And it's all on the hips. And it's actually a better glute exercise. Yeah, yeah.

Then it's like a good morning on the hybrid extension. Exactly. What machine is it called? A reverse hyper, where the legs go up. Oh, I love that machine. Yeah, that one's right. I prefer that actually. Yeah, all right.

So exercises for the back can be broken down into some pretty basic categories. The first one, the most obvious one, are pull downs and rows. So exercises where you're pulling from up here to down here. And then rowing is anything from in front of you back. Now that doesn't mean that all rows and all pull downs are the same.

With rows, you could change the grip and you can change the angle a little bit. And the same thing is true, did I say rows? The same thing is true for pull down. So pull down's rows, there's different variations. Like I can row from down here, from here, from up here. And then as soon as I come up here, now it's more of a pull down

and I've got different angles. And the point that, or the part that makes it different for the back is not really the position of the wrist as much as the position of the elbow, right? So it's like understanding that you can grab all these cool variation handles. And that helps dictate where the elbow goes. That's right.

And so what you're really paying attention to is where the elbow, like so if I'm in supinated, look where my elbow drives versus where if I'm in a wide grip, look where the elbow drives. So when you're creating variety for the pull down and the row, think less about the handle different cool tools that you can get. Think more about where the elbows are driving down and back and how different it is from the last exercise or whatever thing you've been doing more recently.

So that's how you vary those movements. Totally. Now, let's how you vary those movements. Totally. Now, let's get to the deadlift. There's some interesting controversy sometimes in our space about the deadlift. Is it a hip exercise? Is it a back exercise? Well, it's both.

It's both. But the interesting thing about the deadlift is it's amazing for both. You almost never find an exercise that's incredible for two things. It's either like, well, it's really good for this, but maybe not so much for this, but it works that as well. When it comes to deadlift, it's one of the best back exercises period, end of story. It will develop all the muscles that we covered here in this episode.

Part of the reason is the load. There's almost no exercise that I can think of, no traditional exercise that I can think of, where you'll be able to use as much weight as you can with the deadlift. So the potential for tension with the deadlift is so high. In other words, if I do a 500 pound deadlift, okay, versus a row with 220 pounds, I mean, they're both heavy, but man, 500 pounds is 500 pounds. And the

tension produced in my back is going to activate so many different muscle fibers. And like Adam said, I can almost always tell when someone doesn't deadlift by how well or poorly their back is developed. I mean, it's really like it's about the amount of force that you can generate and it has to meet or exceed the demand of the load. And so to be able to do that with a substantial amount more weight that you're gonna deadlift off of the ground, it just places more demand on the overall exercise

which then affects your body to grow, to meet the environment that you're placing it in. What's the book that you always tout, Justin, that is the one that talks about? Is that the one with all the isometrics? Talks about all the science behind isometrics? Uh-huh. So for the people that don't know where they stand

on this deadlift argument that I cannot stand that we even have for. I wish people would just go read all the studies. Yeah, but I also like do a little bit of work. Let's simplify this so people understand. Let's first back it all the way up to understanding. If you understand the science behind isometrics and the value on what it has for muscle building,

if you listen enough episodes of Mind Pump, you've heard us talk about that. It's the reason why we've incorporated in some of our programs that we talk about as one of the like lost secrets of training that people do not put a lot of focus on. That talk about the king of isometric exercises, we just talked about all these different muscles

that are in the back, it's this massive muscle and it is a massive isometric exercise. You are having to keep the spine completely rigid and in order to keep that spine rigid like that, all these muscles that we're talking about have to activate in fire. Well, so along those lines, so for the erector spine, if your spine does zero flexing, okay, which is going to do some flexing with a heavy deadlift. But even if it does zero, yes, it's isometric for the erector spine.

But it is not isometric for the last. Yeah, because you're moving. Your arms are in front of you at the bottom, and as you stand up, the arms come to your side. So your lats actually go through contraction. You're trapezius, your rhomboids go through contraction. When your hands are down here, and you pull way up, you're scapula, your shoulder blades do come together

at the top of the movement. So in some ways, it's like a super-high tension. It's a reason why people think, and the reason why I bring up the isometrics is because people look at the range of motion on all the muscles you just said. And they go, it's this tiny, shortened range of motion. Therefore, it's inferior to these other exercises that take the muscle through from a range of motion. My point of bringing up the isometrics is we understand how valuable it is just to create

an isometric contraction or tension and how much muscle that can build. So this whole idea of just taking it through range of motion dictates whether it's a superior exercise or not is moot. It does matter that you are creating so much isometric tension in those muscles that you would never be able to load it like that in any other exercise. And that's what brings so much value to that. Not getting so detailed about, oh, well, this is technically contracting a little bit here

and a little bit there. It's like, because that argument is where people try and argue against it. Oh, well, you're what you're saying right now, a lot pull down. That's weak. You only take it through a quarter of the range of motion compared to doing a pull over, a pull over does way more, more, more, more, and more. And so then they try and take that argument that direction that it's a short and range of motion, therefore it's inferior. But at my point

to bring the isometrics up is that isometrics have so much value and show me an exercise that you can load like that and get that kind of isometric tension. You can't, you can't, it's the heaviest exercise that most people will ever be able to do. It's also got tremendous carryover. So like if you add 50 pounds to your deadlift, you're gonna be a lot stronger and pretty much every back exercise.

So if it's not like this traditional back exercise and why does that always happen? In fact, I've had clients where we've gone through cycles where we're just trying to get better at deadlift and I do minimal, I don't have any minimal any of the back exercise, do a little bit, but pretty minimal. Then we go back to other traditional back exercises and they're the strongest they've ever been.

This happened to me, if you listen to this show since day one, you heard me go through this. Like I shared this experience. This was after you were already a pro competitor. Yes, yes. I was not deadlifting consistently and I never really, and I decided for the first time in my life, after already training 15 years in my life, that okay, I'm gonna go on this kick,

where I just, I eliminate like 90% of all the backer size I was doing, and all I was gonna focus on was deadlifting, and I got really strong with deadlift. I got my deadlift at the 550 pounds, and then, after I'd done that, I'd gone back to the traditional movements. And I was across the board on these movements that I hadn't done in months, some of them over a year,

and all of them I was stronger in. That, and including hamstring curls, which was also got here. We'd like blew my mind. I'd been working on that hamstring curl machine my whole life and couldn't get in past a certain way. I was double away when I got back that just and to and what's so crazy Because we know we understand the said principle how important it is like for a very specific exercise in movement to think

That I was able to not do all those exercises and see huge strength gains in it that to me was enough for me to go Holy shit. Totally that that amazing of an exercise now Let's talk about some back isolation exercises. And really they're mainly, I would say, isolation exercises, that's where you kind of put most of the exercise in this particular category. And these include things like a straight arm pull down or a dumbbell pullover.

Now I love the dumbbell pullover because there's almost no exercise that trains that particular motion. Right? We're going for combos, tricep in lats, which is an interesting blend. Yeah, I think it's just a healthy exercise to do. It works on thoracic mobility, it works the lats, the chest, to a small extent is involved there.

So I think pullovers are straight on pull downs, straight on pull downs more for isolating pullovers, more just for shoulder function and just more of that kind of classic, bodybuilder pullover, type value, whatever. I think that pullovers are a must exercise and clients routines regardless of your goal. Yeah, just very few times in your life as we age, or will you be required to lift your arm

completely above your head like that and using gravity to take you through that to help you connect to your lats, to your shoulders, to all the stabilizer muscles, when you're all the way pulled back in that position has so much value for overall health. And so this would be an exercise that you would see me doing with my seven-year-old client because of how much value that holds.

And also, too, to a lot of athletes that I've trained and just the people in general that are in the gym that get really strong in one direction. This is a great counter to a lot of shoulder chest chest strength that you know will help to to also be able to stretch and maintain mobility and have that ability to reach over your head without having to put so much emphasis on all of the mobility drills and things that you know we highlight yes it's it's that's good but there's also ways to incorporate this in your training. So it's just a constant thing that you're checking and you don't have to go back and really address it through kind of mundane mobility exercise. Yeah, if you have tight lats, do pullovers with the lightweight and focus on the stretch,

cross bench, meaning the bench is like this and you're laying across it, not down it like you normally would, so that you can sink your hips as your arms go back and really get a lat stretch on the way down. All right, let's talk about rep ranges. You know, back exercises, the back muscles do really well in all the rep ranges. I mean, low reps do really, really well for the back and so do higher reps. It's one of those areas where I encourage clients to do all of them. I do this for most muscles, but I like the low reps for back, especially because like dead lifts, they let themselves really well to low reps.

But what's the key with this? The key is to train in all the different rep ranges. And I almost always advise people to stay within a particular rep range for a few weeks before moving to another one, just so you can get into that zone of what it means and feels like to train for 15 reps or 10 reps or five reps, right? Low reps, moderate reps, high reps. They all work really, really well. And all the exercises that we talked about work well in all these rep ranges. Deadlifts though, however, I will say special just special focus here. If you go high reps with deadlifts, be very careful. Forms are to break down when you fatigue and then that can become

you know a high risk. Yeah, just go light. I mean, I do still think there's lots of value though, in high-rept deadlift. So just you have to reduce the load, or perhaps, you have to judge the weight. Yeah, you can't go, oh, I'm a five. I mean, I did high reps deadlift, just to get literally just yesterday.

So, but I just got done saying, I can't deadlift 500 right now, but let's say I can deadlift 400 right now, I'm sure I could. I was deadlift 500 right now, but let's say I can deadlift 400 right now, I'm sure I could. I was deadlifting 135. Right, right. And you're just slowly controlled. Yeah, setting it down and like it was just,

I mean, I got a crazy pump from it because I hadn't done that in a long time. So, you know, you get to reduce the load. Now, and I know I could have put 225 and muscle those out, but it's like, why? You know, I mean, the goal is to train in a novel way because I hadn't trained in that way. I don't want to risk that with a high risk type of movement

like that, so lighten the load and still do that. Yeah, tempo, technique. When we're looking at the back, really slow down, focus on the squeeze. That'll help you connect to the back muscle. So when you row, pause here at the top of the movement and squeeze the shoulder blades back and squeeze and see if you can feel the different parts

you're back contracting. I think tempo and technique are important for the entire body, but especially important for the back, you can't see it. You can't see the muscles. It's really a feel thing. It's a feel thing and for beginners, the back has got to be, the muscle,

the back got to be the hardest to feel for people when they're training. It's so hard for them. But then once you start to feel it, it gets easier because then you can start to cause. So you just remind me another, another pivotal moment in my training career with, with back. And that was when I learned to control the weight back on the negative, and then I could take advantage of like the eccentric portion, right? So you remember when we used to teach like a seated row, for example, to a beginner client,

set up tall and straight up right row. You'd stick your fingers in their back and show them how to squeeze and come back. And then as you became more advanced and you really understood how to control with the lats and to resist the way it on the way back you'd actually encourage them to roll the scapula all the way forward. As they come forward? As they come forward to get the stretch and the range of motion. Yes, you get a greater range of motion.

You know, those rhomboids mid traps there. So and traditionally what you see a beginner lift are doing is they do a CD row and even they get a good form, right? They understand how the squeeze are lost and then they let the weight just pull the pull it back versus learning to active yeah activate the back and control the weight and the same thing goes for like a row real common you see people row they throw the weight up there and then they let gravity just pull it down when you get really good at controlling the negative with your your back you'll see a huge, I think, change in the way your back

gets developed by learning to do that. Now, you probably should work out your back two to three days a week, and you do want a deadlift at least once a week, and your routine should have some pull downs and some rows. You want to kind of have both in your workouts because they're both really important. And that's pretty much it.

It's nothing super complicated. Just make sure you have some kind of a deadlift, some rows, some pull downs, and then focus on all the stuff that we talked about. And you should be able to develop yourself a really nice back. Look, if you like this podcast, head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out all of our free guides. We have guides that can help you with almost any health or fitness goal. You can also find all of us on social media. So Justin is on Instagram, my pump Justin. You can find Adam on Instagram, my pump Adam, and you can find me on Twitter at my pump

cell. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballad, maps for performance and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints in over 200 videos, the RGB Super Bundle is like having sour, animal, and justine as your own personal trainer's butt at a fraction of the price. The RGB Super Bundle has a full 30-day money bag guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com.

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