Weight Training Tips and Articles

Tips For A Wider Back

January 16, 2008 on 12:26 am | In Weight Training Exercises, Upper Back |

  Most weight trainers strive for a wider upper body appearance to get that classical muscular look. To do this you must decrease the width of your midsection and increase the width of your shoulders and upper back. Adding width to the latismuss dorsi muscles of the upper back will help you achieve a wider appearance.

  The latismuss dorsi, or lats, are the muscles on the sides of the upper back that span from the bottom of the ribe cage to the shoulders. Just about every upper back weight training exercise involves the lats. Row exercises are great for overall back thickness, but if you want to add width to your lats you need to do pull-up and pulldown exercises.

  Because you move your body through space while doing them, pull-ups are superior to cable pulldowns for adding width to your upper back. However, if you having been working out for very long or are too heavy you may not be able to do many pull-ups. Thankfully many gyms now have pull-up machines that you can put your knees or feet on with weight assisting you to get more pull-ups. If you can’t do many pull-ups and don’t have access to an assisted pull-up machine, cable pulldowns are still great for building upper back width.

  To fully develop the lats you can do pull-ups and pulldowns with many various grip ranges. Close grip pull-ups and cable pulldowns will give your lats a nice stretch and contraction, while wide grip ones will help build the outer portions of the lats. Use a variety of grips to get the most out of pull-ups and pulldowns and get a wider upper back.