back workout Archives

Midback Muscle Building

Q: I’ve been reading about 3D Positions of Flexion, and it makes total sense. Most of the three-way hits for each muscle are straightforward, but I’m confused about midback. Is a row classified as the big midrange exercise? With a barbell row, the arms squeeze the shoulder blades at the top, which is the contracted position. Is a barbell row both a midrange and contracted exercise?

A: You need to look at the lats and midback together to understand the three positions of flexion for each. For lats, you use pulldowns or chins as the big midrange exercise. Then you follow with pullovers for stretch and stiff-arm pulldowns for contracted.

For midback muscle building, there’s no need for a midrange exercise—you get that on the pulldowns or chins for lats. Those exercises pull the arms down and back, which affects the lats as well as the midback…

[Read more…]

Aftershock Training to Jolt Muscle Gaining

Q: I was reading some past articles where you guys had mentioned something called Aftershock training. What is that, and should I try it?

A: Aftershock training is supersetting two exercises, but with a distinct reason—more fast-twitch fiber recruitment for new muscle growth quickly (it can rejuvenate standard straight-set 3D POF training, as you’ll see).

[Read more…]

How to Thicken Your Back and Re-Rip Your Abs

Q: In the Pre-Ex 3X Mass Workout and Size Surge 2.0 e-books I just got, you have bent-arm bent-over laterals for midback. The illustration shows palms facing back, but I feel them better with my palms down. Which way is best for midback mass? I need more thickness between my shoulder blades.

A: The bent-arm bent-over lateral raise is a CONTRACTED-position midback exercise in the Positions-of-Flexion mass-building protocol. You do them like a bent-over lateral raise for your rear delts, only you allow more of an elbow bend so you can better squeeze your middle traps to thicken your back. [Read more…]

Upper-Body Mass From the Back

Q: In the Positions-of-Flexion exercise matrix [in 3D Muscle Building] you don’t have any midrange moves listed for midback. Instead, you say, “covered with lat midrange work.” But I know I’ve seen behind-the-neck pulldowns in some of your workouts as a midrange exercise. Should I not use that exercise? Is it dangerous?

A: Doing pulldowns behind your neck can be dangerous—if you train heavy and pull the bar too low or jerk the bar down. [Read more…]

New Growth for Slacker Muscles

Q: No matter what exercise I use, I can’t feel my lats working. I’ve tried drop sets, but I get nothing from those. Any suggestions on how to get new growth for slacker muscles? I feel lat-less.

A: You’re not alone. Most trainees have difficulty feeling the back working. The arms tend to take over because the nerve-to-muscle connections to the lats are underdeveloped. But there is a great way to get in touch and grow the slacker muscles in your back… [Read more…]

Heavy/Light Training for Efficient Gaining

Q: After seeing 10×10 in your newsletters, I’ve been trying it on arms [10 sets of 10 reps with minimal rest]. They blew up bigger than ever! They looked about two inches bigger when I was done. My problem is that I feel I need to train with heavy poundages to get the most growth. Do you think it would work to alternate a 10×10 workout with a conventional heavy session each week?

A: That’s precisely how we designed the Heavy/Light Ultimate 10×10 Mass Workout in the 10×10 e-book. On the so-called light day, you do only 10×10 on one big exercise for a muscle. For the uninitiated, 10×10 is taking a weight you can get about 20 reps with, but you only do 10. Rest 20 to 30 seconds, then do 10 more, and so on till you get 10 sets of 10—although on the last few sets you should only get eight or nine because they will be BRUTAL—with a giant pump! [Read more…]

Get-Wide Back Attack

Q: I have almost all of your e-books. I can’t begin to tell you how much muscle they’ve helped me build. I’d be lost without them, and I reread them often. My question is about back width, which is one of my weak points. In The Ultimate Mass Workout [the original X-Rep manual] you say that parallel-grip chins is the Ultimate Exercise for lats. But in many of your programs, like the POF-X workout in the X-Rep Update #1 e-book, you have wide-grip pulldowns as the big midrange move for lats. But what about chins? I’ve read that wide-grip chinups are the best lat exercises. Can you clarify, please?

A: For most trainees, parallel-grip chins will put the biceps in an advantageous position to maximize pulling power, but not so good as to make the biceps the prime mover. That’s why we say it’s the Ultimate Exercise for lats—if you’re only going to do one exercise for lats, that’s at the top of the list.

But if you’re doing a full 3-way Positions-of-Flexion workout for lats, you can afford to use wider, overgrip chins to activate different fibers with the arms pulling into the torso laterally. You get the forward-pull function with the stretch and contracted exercises…

For example, wide-grip chins force your upper arms to pull into your sides more laterally than from the front, as with parallel-grip chins. That will put different fibers at a leverage advantage. Then you move to pullovers, the stretch-position move, which has your upper arms pulling toward your torso. Last is stiff-arm pulldowns, the contracted-position exercise, which also has your upper arms pulling into your torso from the front.

If you did parallel-grip pulldowns as your big midrange move, you wouldn’t have any lateral-pulling exercises in your lat workout. So even though the wide-grip chin may be somewhat inferior to the parallel-grip version, in a POF program it provides unique fiber activation due to the lateral angle of pull.

What about wide-grip pulldowns instead of chins? Well, wide-grip chinups provide better semi-stretch-point overload down near the bottom of the stroke—you can’t rock back as you can on pulldowns; however, you cannot alter the angle of your torso on chins as you can on pulldowns. Angling your torso back as you pull down puts lower-lat fibers in an advantageous position…

Because of the different fiber-activation patterns, we usually suggest that those with lat-width problems do two sets of wide-grip chins, then one set of pulldowns with a slight backward lean. That should give you new lat development and flare for seam-stretching width.

Note: The 3D Muscle Building e-book is the Positions-of-Flexion manual, with POF workouts for every bodypart.

Till next time, train hard—and smart—for BIG results.

—Steve Holman and Jonathan Lawson
www.X-Rep.com

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