A large and wide back is the dream of every novice athlete who decides to connect his life with sports and bodybuilding. There are many different exercises for this muscle group, during which different muscle fibers work. How to swing your back in the gym? How to train back muscles for girls? What exercises can you swing your back at home? If these questions interest you, then welcome! Especially for you, we have created an article that discusses all these topics in detail. Interested in? Then we wish you a pleasant reading!
Best exercises
People who are interested in how to swing their back in the gym or at home, first of all want to know which exercises are best for this muscle group and which are worse. In fact, there are no better or worse exercises for the back. Everything is purely individual and depends on the human genetic predisposition. For some people, pull-ups work better, for example, for others, tilt-bar pulls. We want to present you a list of those back exercises that are very popular among many professional bodybuilders. We begin our article with exercises for the gym, which must be performed with special equipment. After that, we will tell you about exercises at home, and we will end all exercises for girls.
Pull-ups on the horizontal bar
Someone will probably say: “What? Swing the latissimus dorsi on the horizontal bar in the gym? Never mind!”. Unfortunately, many visitors to fitness centers react just like that when they are asked to do this exercise. Indeed, why pull up on the horizontal bar, which is in almost every yard, when you can use the barbell and simulators for which you paid? In fact, people who hold such a point of view are depriving themselves of a good and, most important, effective exercise. Despite its simplicity, pull-ups on the horizontal bar well pump back muscles, biceps and forearms. If you can do more than 12 times in one approach, then experts recommend hanging an additional burden on yourself (a pancake from the bar, a portfolio with books, etc.) so that you can continue to progress.
Technique of execution:
- Grasp the horizontal bar with a grip slightly wider than the shoulders, so that most of the load goes precisely to the broadest muscles.
- As you exhale, lift yourself up and linger a bit at the top point.
- As you inhale, slowly lower yourself down.
A few tips:
- If you are pulling very little or you can’t pull up at all once, ask a friend to hold your legs in the ankle area and push him a little “dead center” to complete the repetition.
- Do not use inertia or swing, do the exercise as concentrated as possible.
- For the width and thickness of the back, it is best to pull yourself with a straight and moderately wide grip. A narrow back grip (palms toward you) basically loads the biceps, and therefore is not too suitable for working out the widest.
- If you have a very weak grip, use special belts.
Wide grip upper chest pull
When it comes to how to swing your back in the gym, you can not say about this exercise. It is an excellent alternative to pull-ups on the crossbar, and is well suited for those who have so far given the previous exercise is very difficult.
You need to do it like this:
- Take the starting position: choose the weight with which you can do 8-12 reps, take the handle near the corners and sit straight. Bring your knees under the specially designed stops. Your arms should be straight and your back muscles stretched.
- As you exhale, pull the handle down to the top of your chest so that it touches your body. When pulling the handle toward you, lean back about 50 degrees.
- Slowly and slowly return to the starting position, and then repeat the movement a specified number of times.
Inclined rod pull
Many athletes who swing their backs in the gym of the old model (the same basement rockers from the 90s, where there are nothing besides old Soviet barbells, dumbbells) use this exercise to develop the widest. When it is performed, in addition to the back muscles, biceps, shoulders, forearms and lower back are indirectly loaded.
Perform it in this way:
- Straighten your back, bend to the parallel with the floor and take the shell with your upper grip so that your arms are shoulder-width apart.
- Pull the bar to the bottom of the pectoral muscles with a powerful movement. Elbows should be kept as close to the body as possible.
- Controlled and slowly lower the projectile to its original position.
Advice:
- When you swing your back with a barbell, the spine should be straight throughout the set.
- Work at full amplitude to stretch the widest ones as much as possible.
- For a more stable and safe position, experts in the field of bodybuilding recommend performing this exercise on special racks.
- In the draft of the rod in the slope, a small cheating is permissible. It will be difficult for you to progress in the scales if you strictly adhere to the same position all the time. At the top point, when your muscles contract, it is allowed to slightly raise the body to achieve the required load.
Dumbbell Dumbbell
An excellent exercise that can be performed both at home and in the gym.
Proper execution technique:
- Place the shell on the floor near the horizontal bench. With one foot, carefully rest against the floor, and put the knee of the other leg on the bench. Lean forward, put one hand on the surface of the bench, and the other take a dumbbell.
- Straighten your back, and then, without taking your elbow away from your body, lift the projectile as shown in the image below.
- Slowly and without sudden movements, lower your hand to its original position.
- After completing all repetitions, make the same movement to the other side.
Hyperextension on the simulator
If before that we talked about how to swing your back in the latissimus department, now it's time to talk about training its lower part. The exercise discussed in the section trains the long back muscles well , and also indirectly loads the hip flexors and the upper back.
To achieve a good result, do the exercise in the following sequence:
- Adjust the treadmill so that your waist is at the level of its edge. Sit on the hyperextension bench face down and put your feet on the stand.
- Make an inclination forward (about 70 degrees), and then rise until the body is fully straightened.
- Repeat the movement as many times as necessary.
Advice:
- Do not swing to the sides and keep tension in the muscles during the entire set.
- Do not make sudden movements up or down.
Deadlift
A kind of exercise like deadlift. It is a basic exercise that includes a number of muscle groups: long and upper back muscles, trapezius muscles, forearms, shoulder girdle muscles, biceps, hip flexors and quadriceps. Deadlift is a very effective, but at the same time very traumatic exercise, which is strictly forbidden to beginners!
It is carried out according to the following principle:
- Put the bar on the floor and hang on it the necessary number of pancakes. Go to the prepared projectile and place your legs at a distance slightly wider than your shoulders.
- Bend the legs at the knee joint, and then take the bar at shoulder width with a different grip, as shown in the photo.
- Accept the starting position: the head should look forward, you need to straighten in the back, and the bar should be kept so that it is closer to the legs.
- As you exhale, go up so that the bar is as close to your feet as you can.
- As you inhale, lower the projectile to its original position, also trying to hold it close to your legs.
Advice:
- To avoid personal injury, do everything as carefully as possible.
- Keep your back straight throughout the set and never round it.
All of the above exercises should be done in 3-4 sets of 6-12 reps. You do not need to do all the exercises in a row, as described above. A program can be compiled, for example, according to this principle:
- Hyperextension.
- Pullups
- The draft of the rod in the slope.
- Dumbbell dumbbell pull.
Workout at home
How to swing your back at home? Can this be done without a horizontal bar, barbells, dumbbells and fitness equipment? These questions can often be heard from many people who can’t afford the expensive subscription to the fitness center or home training equipment. We will not give you false hope, but let’s say as it is: without equipment from the gym you can never pump up a wide and muscular back, as, for example, with Ronnie Coleman or Arnold Schwarzenegger. To increase muscle mass, it is necessary to increase strength indicators, and this can only be done with the help of simulators, bars, etc. But, despite this, you can strengthen your back muscles and tone them at home. You can imitate the draft of a barbell or dumbbell, using, for example, a bag of books, a bottle of water, or some other kind of burden. Or you can do the following exercises:
- Reverse hyperextension. Lie on the floor or on the bench, face down, stretch your arms forward or in different directions. As you exhale, raise your legs up as shown in the image below. On inspiration, lower your legs down, and then repeat the movement 15-20 times. Just need to do 2-3 approaches. During work, the gluteal and rectus muscles of the back are involved.
- Pulling towels onto yourself. Exercise to strengthen the widest. Put your feet shoulder-width apart, in one hand take the end of the towel and lift it up, and bend the other in the elbow joint and hold the other end in front of you. While exhaling without straightening your arms, pull the towel down toward your stomach with increasing tension. The voltage must be maintained for at least 3-5 seconds. In total, you need to do about 3-4 sets of 6-8 times for each hand.
Girls back training
How to rock the female representatives? Those girls who want to achieve success in the field of bodybuilding or powerlifting, as a rule, are engaged in the exercises that we described earlier. If you do not belong to such girls and just want to have a tightened back, then we suggest you try out the following exercises that can be performed both at home and in the gym:
- Raises the arms and legs. Get on all fours, align your back. Raise your right foot and left arm at the same time, and then vice versa. For a better study, you can make a short pause at the top point.
- Torso lifts. Lie on your stomach, close your hands behind the head in the castle, and put your legs together. As you exhale, raise your torso with your legs pressed to the floor. Exercise is somewhat reminiscent of hyperextension, since during its execution the lower muscles of the back and buttocks are actively working.
- Swallow. An exercise known to many since high school. Take a standing position, bring your feet together and raise your hands parallel to the floor. At the same time, bend over and raise your leg so that your trunk and limb are parallel to the floor. You can stay in this position for a few seconds, and then change your leg, or you can do everything dynamically and without pauses.

Thanks to the above exercises, girls can swing their back without fear of injury. Figured out? Move on.
Recommendations
Now you know that there is nothing difficult in pumping your back in the gym and at home. Now we would like to share with you additional information that will make your training sessions more effective and, importantly, safer:
- Warm up well at the beginning of your workout. Some novice athletes neglect the warm-up and immediately start working with heavy weights, which is absolutely impossible! A good workout not only “includes” your body in work, but also warms up your muscles and joints, which is undoubtedly important when exercising with iron. It is best to perform each exercise on the principle of the pyramid: first do several approaches with small weights (increasing the weight of the projectile with each approach), and then move on to your working weight.
- Watch for the correct technique. Many people can swing their backs in the simulator for years, but still not have any decent results. As a rule, this is often associated with improper technique for performing certain exercises. That is why it is extremely important to first get acquainted with the theory, and only then move on to practice. It will be great if your fitness center has a trainer or some experienced partner who will come to your aid if something happens.
- Remember about security. If you do all exercises with the perfect technique, but feel that during the performance of any of them you feel pain or discomfort, then we strongly recommend that you abandon it. This is especially true for exercises that shake the back, legs and chest, because among them there are many traumatic movements. Remember that safety comes first. It is better to choose a less effective exercise, but more comfortable and safe for you.
- Do not swing your back too often. Many visitors to gyms who have just recently begun to engage in fitness, mistakenly believe that the more often they train, the faster they will increase muscle mass. In fact, frequent training sessions (especially frequent back muscle training) will not only not increase your result, but, on the contrary, will lead to overtraining and loss of strength! To work out the broadest, one hard workout per week will be enough.
- Train not only the broadest muscles. There is nothing wrong with swinging a broad back. It is bad when a person shakes only a broad back. In order to have a beautiful and aesthetic physique, it is necessary to train all muscle groups (chest, legs, arms, etc.).
Can I swing my back without exercise equipment? What back exercises can girls do? What exercises are best for pumping the widest? How to swing your back at home? We hope that we were able to give you complete and detailed answers to these questions. We wish you success in your workouts at home or in the gym!