When working on your upper body, it is a common knowledge that when you are pushing you are working on your chest and shoulder muscles, and when you are pulling you are working on your back muscles. However, it is also a fact that just because you are performing pulling exercise, that does not mean that you are working on your upper back or specific muscle group that you are wanting to work on. If you have been working on your upper back and not seeing the results you are looking for, you may need to revisit how the back muscles work.
Function of Trapezius
Trapezius muscles is popular muscles that trainee favor to train. If you are looking for thickness or 3D back, this is the muscle group that you want to work on.
Trapezius originate from bottom portion of the skull down to 12th thoracic spine (T12) then insert to clavicle, acromion process and scapula. So it does cover large portion of our back side.
Action of trapezius includes, rotation, retraction, elevation, and depression of scapula. In other words, without proper movement of shoulder blades the trapezius can not be trained properly.
Function of Latissimus Dorsi
Latissimus dorsi, commonly known as lats, is another popular muscle. If you are looking for width of the back, this is the target muscle.
It is originated from T7-L5 and iliac crest then insert to the humerus, or upper arm.
Lats action can be observed during adduction, or moving towards the body, of the arm and internal rotation of the arm. Therefore, common exercise you may hear is lats pull down or dumbbell row with internal rotation.
Trap and Lat Exercise Pointers
In many occasions, just because you are working on seated row for trap and lat pulldown or pull up for lats, there is a chance that you may not be using the muscles that you want to work on.
For trap, most important portion is protraction and retraction of your shoulder blade. Also depending on your elbow position, how you stimulate trap will vary. For example, when you do seated cable row with wide bar where the elbows are away from the body, you are targeting upper portion of trap. When you use narrow grip where elbow in then you will be targeting lower portion of trap. How you grip (overhand, underhand, neutral) can also vary how you can stimulate trapezius.
For lats, the most important point to keep in mind the either the elbow must point down of arm is close or closing in towards the body. For example, when you are doing your cable lat pull down machine, you can lean back a bit and pull the bar to your chest by keeping your elbows pointing outwards. This will be working mainly in your trap. However, if you sit upright and pull the bar towards your chest but keeping the elbow pointing down towards the floor, then you will be working with your lats. Grip can play important role in how the muscles are stimulated, however, it is important to work with vary the grip.
4 Tips to Improve Back Exercises
1. Stretch Chest Muscles
This issue is common with two types of people. Those who spend a lot of time in front of computer and those who spend more time on developing pec or chest muscles. Reason why this becomes a problem is because of forward rotation of shoulder and shoulder blade due to the tight chest muscles. Due to the tightness in the chest and shoulders pulled or rotated forward, it is challenging to retract the shoulder blade or adduction of the arms during the back exercises. Therefore, you may be performing the pulling exercise, however, there is a high chance that you are only pulling with arms and not utilizing back muscles.
Solution to this is to restore elasticity by mobilizing and stretching the chest regions before back exercises. Using of lacrosse ball, floor pec stretches are good example of those exercises.
2. Mobilize Shoulder Blades
The things we do on daily basis are happening in front of us, naturally mobility of the shoulder blades are limited mainly in protracted position. Cooking, working on the computer, driving, using cellphone and so on. Being in this position may restrict the retracting function of the shoulder blades. This can be a cause of first issue but not moving it at all can also lead into a problem.
Solution will be re-introducing the ideal movement patterns to the shoulder blade. Exercises such as banded face-pull and band pull apart can help restore the movement in your shoulder blades.
3. Decrease Weight
Attempting the pulling exercise with heavier weight is pretty common at the gym. Because the arm strength is great people assume they can pull heavy and get a results. Often times even when they can pull heavy weight, they may not be retracting or utilizing the scapula movement properly.
As for the solution, decrease the load at least during the warm up sets and check to make sure you are using your arms and scapula properly for the muscle groups you are targeting. Using time under tension can also help stimulate the muscles even with lighter weight. Remember, if you cannot feel the scapula moving, most likely you are not using the back muscles properly.
Master the movement first! The weight will gradually increase and results you desire will follow.
4. Vary Your Grips and Tools
Changing grip width and position can change how you can stimulate your muscles. Also with various tools like dumbbell, kettlebell, TRX, can use rotational movement and increase the range of movement in both arm and shoulder blade compared with barbell and pull up bars.
Every exercises that you are wanting to perform does require learning. As much as we would like to lift heavy to get results fast, however, without proper technique or proper use of the body, outcome may not be what you were looking for. When you reach plateau or not seeing the results you are looking for, go back to the basics and work on precision of the exercise technique. Once the basic techniques are practiced you can increase weight to see if you can perform the same way even when the weight is heavy. You can also vary grips, tools, and time under tension to challenge your technique in different format.
Kota Shimada
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