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Here’s something nobody’s ever told you before: Your technique is keeping your back small. Sure, we could talk about exercise selection, reps, sets, and frequency, but these factors are largely irrelevant if you don’t understand the back muscles and what adjustments to make to really hit them. If you want to actually gain some size on your back, there’s a hell of a lot more to it than deadlifts and pull-ups. Thick and Wide: The Muscles When people talk about building the back, they mean choosing exercises that build thickness or width. But what do those even mean? We need to differentiate between them and see which muscles create each effect. The characteristic you need more (thickness or width) will determine your best technique. Back Width The muscle responsible for creating width is the latissimus dorsi – the lats. It originates from the spine, where the fibers fan upwards and insert into the humerus. Back Thickness The muscles primarily responsible for creating thickness are the upper back muscles: teres major, rhomboids, traps (upper, middle, and lower), and the posterior delts count here too. Arm Path and Grip The path your arms take – flared versus tucked in – during pulling exercises will determine which back muscles get hit more. So if one area of your back is taking over (keeping you from building another area) you can change your arm path and focus in more on what you’re wanting to build. Grip Type The type of grip you’re using will play a role in arm path. It doesn’t wholly dictate it, but certain grips will make arm path more natural than others depending on what area of the back you’re trying to isolate. A supinated (underhand) grip will lend itself to keeping the arm path in close to the body, which will tend to bias the lats more. A neutral grip tends to do the same, but can also be used to hit the teres a bit more. A pronated (overhand) grip will be most commonly used to hit the muscles of the upper back because it’ll naturally lend itself to a more flared arm path. Grip Width A closer grip or shoulder-width grip is usually more ideal for targeting the lats. A wider grip can be a great option for the upper back, especially when doing chins or pulldowns. It can cause a bit more abduction of the humerus. That said, one reminder is to have elbow-to-wrist alignment when you’re in the fully contracted position of a pulling exercise. It’s a great overall position for the joints to be in to fully maximize the area of the back you’re trying to bias and can keep you from compensating with other muscle groups. Building a Wide Back Let’s talk about the lats. Since they attach to the spine, then fan upward to the humerus, it should make sense that to fully lengthen and shorten them, and work them in line with the fibers, the arms need to begin in front of the body (lengthening the lats). From that position, you want to take an arm path where you initiate the pull by driving the arms down and bringing the elbows in towards the hip (shortening). The Row When you focus on this execution principle, you’ll understand that a row, depending on how it’s performed, can actually be a dominant lat movement rather than an upper back movement. Various row machines can be used to bias the lats rather than the upper back if that’s what you’re wanting to do. The Pulldown The way you do a pulldown will also dictate which area of the back is working with the greatest amount of tension. Even though pulldowns are traditionally known to hit the lats, if you’re not doing them right, they’ll do more for the upper back. So keep the narrow or neutral grip in mind, and remember to keep the arm path in front of you. Cues Start with the arms in front of the body rather than out to the sides and use a narrow or shoulder-width grip. Lengthen the lats while maintaining tension. Don’t lose tension in the fully lengthened position. Drive the arms down to initiate the concentric without allowing the elbows to flare. Make your arm path come in close to the body and drive the elbow toward the hip. To Arch or Not to Arch? To hit the lats, brace with the abs rather than extending the lumbar spine (arching the lower back). You’ve probably read that to get a full lat contraction, you need to arch the lower back. You even see pictures of guys with huge backs using an arch when doing pulldowns. It’s not a bad technique, but it doesn’t preferentially build the lats. Why? Because it actually takes away from fully shortening the lats and will decrease output by them, creating more engagement in the upper back. So instead, brace with the abs to create more stability by maintaining a neutral spine. It’s in the neutral spinal position that the lats can produce the greatest amount of output and contract maximally. Building a Thick Back Hit the traps, rhomboids, and teres major. The Pulldown Let’s take a quick look at a pulldown variation that targets the upper back, also known as the “lat-less” pulldown. You’re
Origin: Thick and Wide: The Back Solution

Building big, healthy shoulders goes beyond just overhead pressing a city bus. Sure, that’ll get the job done if you’re capable of it, but there’s a better way. We’ll get into some of the exercises you probably aren’t doing, but there’s something we have to talk about first… Maximizing Tension There’s a handful of reasons you might find it difficult to develop a stubborn body part. Lack of mind-muscle connection, poor execution, poor movement selection for your structure, and poor overall programming are a few. The old bodybuilding adage, “train a muscle at different angles,” was basically a way of saying that you need to take advantage of the length-tension relationship within different movements. Different exercises will provide different resistance curves to the muscles being trained, so they’ll train those muscles at different lengths within the movement. Maximizing development is about creating as much tension as possible in those different lengths. The key is to find exercises that best suit your structure and best train the muscles in various positions: lengthened, mid, and shortened. But it’s also important to use movements that stress the targeted musculature appropriate within those lengths. Here are four exercises that’ll satisfy this approach: 1 – Banded Dumbbell Press The dumbbell overhead press is a proven delt strength and size builder. But both strength and physique-focused lifters could be doing it more effectively. The most common way people do the press is seated (which is fine), then they lock the elbows back by using external rotation, and press from the shoulders to the overhead position with the dumbbells arching together over that range of motion. There are a few problems here. To start, you can’t get away from the fact that this exercise predominantly hits the anterior delts. This means you should be making sure to get the anterior delt loaded maximally in its most lengthened state. Doing this will keep you from going into excessive external rotation and instead let the elbows come forward a bit, allowing you to work in your natural scapular plane. While pressing, you want to avoid that common arching motion because it actually takes the delts out of their active range of motion very quickly. It’s the traps that adduct the arms in that overhead arching motion. This arching motion also shortens the lever arm in the movement, making it easier as you reach lockout. And that’s cool and all if you aren’t trying to stress the actual delt muscles. But if you are, it means you’re not spending as much time in the area where the movement is actually difficult. The better way to perform these is to press directly upwards with the dumbbells staying in line with the elbows. It’s no different than if you stacked the elbows and wrists in a vertical line with one another like if you were doing a barbell press. Lastly, to make these more productive, add a band to flatten out that descending resistance curve. By adding in the band we’re eliminating that dead area in the range of motion at the top and creating a longer torque curve. Now you’re maximally loading the anterior deltoid in the bottom, you’re staying in a longer active range of motion, and you’re eliminating that dead range of motion near the top where there’s very little tension. 2 – Rear Delt Row with Supination I’ve done my fair share of bent-over lateral raises (rear delt raises), but the truth is that they fall short as a rear delt movement. With a bent-over lateral raise, the rear delts never actually get fully shortened. A key component in maximizing an exercise is to get the target muscle fully lengthened and then fully shortened within a movement. But some exercises don’t do that as well as others. A better option is the rear delt row with supination. With this exercise, you’ll be rowing (as you might expect) to bring the elbow behind the body as far as possible, which will shorten the rear delt. But you’ll add a twist, literally, by supinating as you perform the row. Why the twist? Because it’ll bring about a certain amount of external rotation in the shoulder, which is one of the components of the rear delt. Supination at the forearm is actively linked with external rotation of the shoulder, just like pronation is linked with internal rotation. This isn’t an exercise you’ll go super heavy on, but you won’t need to so long as you’re using the appropriate resistance with it for the mechanics, and making sure to get the rear delt fully shortened. 3 – Incline Lateral Raise It’s nearly impossible to cheat with these, unlike the standing lateral raise. Not that cheating is bad, and I actually do add cheaty lateral raises into my programming from time to time. But for most guys having trouble getting a strong mind-muscle connection, the incline version is a better choice. This exercise will also naturally put the resistance in line with the middle fibers of the delt. When you use a standing lateral raise it’s
Origin: Stubborn Delts: The High Tension Solution