Upper Back Exercises: Do Them Right and You'll Have a Great Set of Upper Back Muscles

Common Mistakes with Upper Back Exercises

Here’re some things you should avoid when doing your upper back exercises…

• As with every other muscle group, don’t overtrain!!

• No cheating! There’re ways to lift more weight such as leaning back and using your body weight to pull down the extra load. If anything, this hurts your chances of developing any sort of muscle in your back. Using your body for leverage in lifting a weight much too heavy for you does nothing but waste your time. You won’t be building muscle. You will, however, get some funny looks from other people in the gym. Don’t be that guy or girl! The only exercise where slightly leaning back is acceptable is the lat pulldown. This is because leaning back actually helps to isolate the upper back muscles as opposed to the arms and shoulders.

• Maintain a good posture! This definitely allows you to get a complete workout in an efficient manner. Slouching only weakens your ability to lift the weight and you’ll quickly reach a plateau. Not only that, but this helps develop posture during every day activities! This will allow you to avoid instances of back pain that would occur normally with someone who slouches.

• Remember those rhomboid muscles (see picture to the left)? Those are the upper back muscles that pull your shoulder blades together. Use them! Make sure to squeeze your back muscles to make sure you’re actually working them. I see too many people that just use their arms in rows and pulldowns. Make sure you’re actually using your back muscles! If you feel your arms burning during your back workout, you’re either doing it incorrectly or you’re using too much weight.

• When doing upper back exercises, remain still! Again, when ego kicks in, we want to lift more and more weight! We will stop at nothing. This happens with hard work, only! Do not cheat and jiggle your body around to try and force the weight down. If you find yourself doing this, choose a lighter weight. Even if you do get the weight off the ground, you're not doing anything for your body. The weight has to be challenging, but not overpowering. For example, if you find yourself doing a pull-up on the lat pulldown bar, man up and use a lower weight.

• In most instances, pulling the bar down behind your neck is not recommended. It’s been said that this action actually stretches, strains and overworks the ligaments and muscles surrounding your shoulder joint (such as the rotator cuff muscles). This movement is only rarely used in specific advanced workouts that you don’t need to worry about here.

Following these simple rules will help you avoid embarrassment and injury. In short, be sure to use a weight you can handle! This will alleviate many of the problems listed here along with getting a better upper back workout. Do your upper back exercises the smart way!

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