Building a monster back is a tell-tale sign of a serious lifter. There’s something about a thick, wide back that demands respect in the gym and provides that jacked look. But the back isn’t just one muscle but a large muscle group, each with different functions. The real question is how many exercises you should use to train your back weekly.
To answer, you need to juggle several factors, such as identifying the back muscles, the function of the back muscles, and how many sets they can handle. If you’re trying to optimize your back training, check out this article to learn how many exercises you should train your back weekly.
Major Back Muscles
When we talk about ‘the back’ or ‘training the back’, it’s easy to think of it as one large muscle. However, the back is a complex system of several different muscles, each with its own unique function. This complexity highlights the importance of a comprehensive training plan to hit every muscle adequately..
Understanding the major back muscles, and anatomy as a whole, is a key step in your fitness journey even though many completely disregard it. It will give you the ability to design a training plan that targets each muscle group effectively.
Latissimus Dorsi
Location: Originates on your spine, pelvis, scapula, and lower ribs and attaches to your upper arm bone.
Function: Adducts and extends your shoulder and upper arm.
The latissimus dorsi muscle, or lats, is a massive pair of muscles that run down the outside of your back. In fact, the lats are the biggest and strongest muscle in the upper body, making them a pivotal back muscle to train. Not only do they play a massive role in any pulling exercise, but when developed, they give a man that V-shape.
Trapezius
Location: Your upper traps originate on the base of your skull, the middle fibers span your thoracic spine and collarbones, and the lower fibers begin at the base of your thoracic spine.
Function: Primarily controls the motion of the scapula as well as provides stabilization
The trapezius muscle, better known as your traps, is a massive set of muscles shaped like a trapezoid. Most people will automatically think of the large masses that sit between your shoulders, but that’s just a small portion. The entirety of the muscle is massive and travels around halfway down your back.
Though it’s one muscle, the traps are divided into three sections—upper, middle, and lower. Each section has slightly different jobs, but its primary function is controlling and stabilizing the scapula, or shoulder blades. This makes it a crucial muscle, as the scapula provides a foundation for your arms to operate from.
Rhomboids
Location: Your rhomboids connect from your thoracic and cervical vertebrae to your scapulae.
Function: Primarily assists the traps performing scapular retraction.
The rhomboids are shaped like a rhombus or diamond. These muscles lay underneath the middle traps and have one function: to retract or pull back the scapula. As such, you don’t need to worry about using a specific exercise to hit the rhomboids, as they always contract when you pull your shoulder blades back.
Erector Spinae
Location: Your erector spinae originates at the base of your spine and pelvis. It then runs up on both sides of your spine.
Function: Maintains rigidity and alignment within your vertebral column and holds your torso upright.
The erector spinae is the muscle people refer to when they say “lower back muscle.” Its origin begins at the base of your spine on the pelvis and travels up your back. However, on both sides of the spine, the muscles branch out. This is what gives it the ability to perform its primary job, which is to maintain rigidity.
The primary method to train the erector spinae is through isometric holds. However, it’s also involved in the extension of the spine. Many people confuse the extension of the spine with the hip extension. Extension of the spine is when the spine flexes over, such as when going to tie your shoes, and then extends (straightens).
Posterior Deltoid
Location: Originates on the shoulder blade and inserts on the top of your upper arm bone.
What It Does: Contributes to abduction of the arm and external rotation of the shoulder.
The rear delt is one of the three muscle heads of the shoulder. Technically, this makes it the shoulder, but it is involved in just about every back exercise as it helps pull the arm back.
Movement Patterns Of The Back Muscles
The main variable you want to satisfy when choosing exercise to train the back is to hit all the movement patterns. By doing this, you’ll for sure hit every muscle. Further, you’ll hit every muscle from different angles to ensure maximal growth. Therefore, here are the major movement patterns for your back. We’ll review the movement and then lay out some great back exercises.
Vertical Pulling
The first major movement pattern is vertical pulling. This includes movements such as the chin-up, pull-up, and lat pulldown. However, we could break this down even farther.
Shoulder Adduction
Shoulder adduction occurs when the arms come down to the side of the body, as in a pull-up. These movements tend to emphasize the lats more-so than when the arms come down in front (shoulder extension) as seen in a chin-up. However, this isn’t always the case as some studies show chin-ups and pull-ups cause the same activation in the lats¹. This likely has more to do with the form.
Therefore, be sure to perform shoulder adduction exercises with proper form, coming down laterally and driving your elbows down. The best two choices are;
Pull-ups
Lat pulldown *needs to be performed so elbows come down laterally
Shoulder Extension
Shoulder extension occurs when the arms come down in front of the body. The best example of this is the chin-up. During a chin-up, the palms face toward you using a closer grip, causing the elbows to come inward. When you perform the movement, the elbows come straight down.
Chin-ups generally target the traps to a higher degree as well as involving the biceps.
Some great examples include;
Chin-ups
Close grip lat pulldown
V-grip lat pulldown
Horizontal Pulling
The second major movement is horizontal pulling. This can be applied to any type of row, including dumbbells, barbells, unilateral or bilateral. Similar to vertical pulling, we can break this down a little further. One important note is that many exercises fall somewhere in between or rely on you using the correct form to hit the intended movement pattern.
For example, bent-over rows are often performed with the elbows at a 45-degree angle. However, you could vary the exercise by performing close-grip rows with the elbows tucked closer to the body. Therefore, keep that in mind when we provide exercise.
Horizontal Abduction
Horizontal abduction occurs when your arms are raised and pulled back, like a reverse hug.
Bentover rows
Face pulls
Reverse flies
Meadows row
Shoulder Extension
Yep, it’s the same shoulder extension that occurs during chin-ups. The only difference is that now the torso is leaned over, and the elbows will be pulled behind the body rather than straight down. This causes the elbows to travel farther behind the torso.
Some exercises include;
Close grip barbell row
Dumbbell row (elbow tucked)
Narrow grip seated row
Scapular Control
One of the most important roles of the back musculature is manipulating and stabilizing the scapula. Controlling the scapula, or shoulder blade, is crucial to ensuring optimal performance and overall function.
Your scapula ultimately acts as a foundation for your shoulder to function off of. This is true for every movement, even pushing! Don’t believe us? Protract your shoulder blades, let them come forward, and then try to throw a punch – how’d that go? In fact, if you have ever learned the proper form of the bench press, you know you need to pull your shoulder blades back to provide a solid foundation press.
Scapular control can occur in a range of motions, such as retraction, protraction, and even elevation, known as cranial motion of the scapula or shrugging. Several muscles are involved in this, but the traps are by far the most important.
Spine Extension & Spine Stability
Above, we talked about the extension of the spine. There’s not a ton of exercise to train this, with the primary exercise being the Jefferson curl. However, this is a bit different than other exercises (for obvious reasons), and you should start using light weights and progress very slowly. This works best as part of your warm-up or at the very end of your session.
You could also perform back extensions on a GHD. As mentioned, this is often confused with hip extension. During hip extension, the spine stays erect with an isometric hold as the torso comes up. This is still a great exercise and should be in your program. However, when performing back extension, the back should flex.
How Many Sets Should You Train Your Back With?
When talking about how many exercises you should use to train your back, a major variable is the number of working sets you’ll use. Having more sets will allow you to use more exercises.
That said, there is no definitive number of sets we can prescribe. This is true for any muscle but can get trickier when training the back. Before we explain that, let’s first lay some general guidelines for the number of sets you use.
While there’s evidence that you can see positive adaptations to your muscles using as low as 2-3 sets per week, remember that we’re talking about optimizing. This means we’re looking for the maximum number of sets you can use and see growth. The general guideline is to train each muscle group with 20 working sets per week².
Now, we should clarify that 20 sets are the maximum weekly number. These 20 working sets should be divided across two sessions, meaning each uses 10 sets per muscle group.
So here’s where this gets a bit complicated when training the back. The “back” is not a singular muscle but rather a large muscle group with multiple muscles, as we reviewed at the article’s beginning. At the same time, even though there are multiple muscles, they will almost always work together to some extent.
This begs the question, what exercises count for which muscle? Do shrugs count for lats? Do lat pulldowns count for upper traps?
We’re not expecting an answer, and we can’t give you a clear one either. You’ll get different answers depending on who you ask but this is looking a bit too much into it. These are meant to be guidelines, not rules, so it’s up to you to make an informed decision on how your body responds.
How Many Exercises Should You Use To Train The Back?
As we answer this question, keep in mind we are going to assume you are trying to optimize your training. The truth is you could get away with just using two back exercises if you wanted to. If this were the case, you could pick a vertical pulling and a horizontal pulling. For example:
Bent Over Row
Chinup
Those two exercises alone have laid the foundation for massive backs all by themselves. Now if you had time to do more, we would throw in the rack pull. The rack pull is an awesome back exercise to put mass and width on your back. It also acts as a back extension.
Rack Pull
Bent Over Row
Chinup
From here, we could look at the movements and see what’s missing. One obvious movement is shoulder adduction. Since we’re already doing the chin-up, we would use the lat-pulldown to really isolate the lats.
Rack Pull
Bent Over Row
Chinup
Lat Pulldown
One thing missing is a unilateral exercise. Including at least one unilateral exercise is always a good idea so we would throw in some dumbbell rows. This would also emphasize shoulder extension.
Rack Pull
Bent Over Row
Chinup
Lat Pulldown
Dumbbell Rows
From here, if you wanted to really optimize your back training, we would throw in some face pulls and emphasize horizontal abduction.
Rack Pull
Chinup
Bent Over Row
Lat Pulldown
Dumbbell Rows
Face Pulls
That gives you 6 back exercises that would give you a complete back workout. The only thing you could include would be the Jefferson curl or back extensions (performed correctly) to train spine extension. This brings the total to 7.
Again, you can do less than this and you could make an argument for adding more. For example, a shrugging movement. However, you already train the traps extensively with these exercises so you could also make the argument you don’t need them. This is true but perhaps someone really wants to emphasize their traps.
Related: The Ultimate Back Workout Routine
Training Your Back Depends On Your Needs
As you can see, there’s no single number of back exercises that fit everyone’s needs. Some people could get away with just two exercises. This works for those looking for general strength or those who don’t have a lot of time. On the flip side, a serious bodybuilder could use at least 6 exercises and perhaps even more.
Related:
How many chest exercises per week
How many shoulder exercises per week
References:
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Schoenfeld, B. J., Ogborn, D., & Krieger, J. W. (2017). Dose-response relationship between weekly resistance training volume and increases in muscle mass: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Sports Sciences, 35(11), 1073–1082. https://doi.org/10.1080/02640414.2016.1210197
