Search This Blog

20 July 2013

Best Back Exercises

By Mike Caton


The back has many functions and therefore several muscles that should be targeted when exercising the back. This article will highlight these movements and exercises.

Pulling the arms down from an elevated position. This movement uses the large latissimus dorsi muscles that wrap from your mid back around your side. They are responsible for the V shape of the back. Exercises that accomplish this movement are: Pull Ups, Chin Ups and Pull Downs in any variation. Note: images for all these exercises can be found here.

Taking the arms backward while at your side. This action is normally called rowing. You will use these muscles when doing this motion: the latissimus dorsi in addition to the teres muscles, spinatus muscles along with the rhomboids. Some of the exercises that achieve this action and pinpoint those muscles are: Rows, One-Arm Row and also Low Pull.

Pulling the arms back while in an elevated position. This is the least common of all the shoulder movements. It would require having the arms elevated in front of you and then to pull the arms back while keeping them elevated. There are very few movements in life that do this except for the sport of rowing. During this activity, your elbows are kept high as opposed to the row exercise where your elbows are at your sides. Exercises that simulate this movement and work these muscles are the same as for the standard row exercises, but while maintaining elevated elbows.

Shrugging or raising your shoulders. This is certainly a very common and practical action. The trapezoid muscles are the main mover. Any one of the assorted shrug exercises will target .

Extending the Back. Doing so is moving the back from a bent over posture to a neutral posture. The muscle tissues that bring this about are the erector spinaes. A small number of the exercises which make use of these particular muscles are Back Extensions on a Ball or Roman Chair as well as tilting forward while on a rowing machine.

While exercising your back, make sure to select exercises that target each of these movements in order to have a complete, strong back.




About the Author:



No comments: