Weight Training Tips and Articles

Building Upper Back Width

May 19, 2008 on 2:44 am | In Weight Training Exercises, Upper Back, Build Muscle |

  If you’re trying to build a muscular physique through weight training it’s very important to create a wider appearance in your upper body. Doing this will give you a classic Herculean look and create an illusion of a smaller waist even if you haven’t actually decreased the size of it.

  One way to increase your upper body width is to build the latissmus dorsi muscles of the upper back. The lats are the large wing-shaped muscles of the upper back and building them will help make you look wider.

  The best exercises for building wider lats are pull-ups and cable pulldowns. Pull-ups are a superior exercise to cable pulldowns because you’re moving your body through space when you do them, but many weight trainers may not be able to do enough pull-ups for an effective set if they weigh too much or haven’t built up enough strength so the pulldowns are a great alternative to building a wider upper back. If you want to do pull-ups but can’t do too many reps, there are alot of gyms that have assisted pull-up machines that will allow you to get enough reps to build the lats.

  Whether you do pull-ups or cable pulldowns you should vary your grip to get the most muscle growth possible. Close grip pull-ups and pulldowns with an underhand grip will give you a nice contraction when the bar is at your chest, while wide grip pull-ups and pulldowns with an overhand grip will give your lats a nice stretch to start off a rep. To get the best overall upper back development you should include both close grip and wide grip pull-up and cable pulldowns. You can also experiment with other grip ranges if you’d like.

  When you do pull-up and pulldowns exercises you should always do them to your chest or neck. Pull-ups and pulldowns to behind the neck put your shoulders in a precarious position which may cause an injury.