Posts Tagged ‘bodyweight workout for back’
You can get a great workout for any part of your body with body weight exercises. In this post I want to review some of the exercises that you can perform for a great bodyweight workout for your back. The back is one of the greatest looking body parts when it has been developed correctly. You will find out as you have a chance to do many of these exercises that bodyweight exercises are one of the best ways to develop your back. In fact the great Arnold Schartzeneggar once said that if you want to develop your back then one exercise in particular was what you should concentrate on.
That one exercise is the pull up. If you want a big back then you need to do pull-ups. In this post we will cover a number of pull-up variations along with a few other back exercises.
Before I go any further let me state that the pull-up is the greatest of all bodyweight exercises. It is a pure strength exercise. Pull-ups can be very difficult for many people to do. If they are difficult for you then you can do a cheat pull-up. I provide an example of my son doing a cheat pull-up with a chair. You merely place one foot on a chair or stool and use it to give you the boost you need. Or you can attach an exercise tube to each end of your pull up bar so that it hangs to your waist or knee level when you are hanging from the bar. You would put one foot in this to give you an extra boost to help you get up.
Different grips on the pull-up bar will work different parts of your upper back. So experiment with your hand grip and see what results you get. So here we go.
The best pull-up exercise and potentially the most difficult to perform is the wide grip pull-up. This exercise will work your lats to a great degree and will be more responsible for wide lats than any other exercise.
The next picture shows what most consider to be a standard chin-up. It involves an underhand grip where the wide grip involved an overhand grip. This pull-up is also a great exercise for your biceps.
You can also perform the close grip pull-up with an overhand grip.
For a real challenge you can do the towel pull-up. These are quite difficult. This exercise is also killer on your grip since you need to grip the towel in order to do the pull-up.
This is a variation on the towel pull-up. One hand grips the towel while the other hand grips the bar. The staggered grip makes for a difficult and challenging exercise.
The pull-up is not the only bodyweight exercise for the back. Another great exercise is the inverted row. It works the same muscles as the bent over row. Simply support a weight bar between two different object (I used my squat rack) and perform the exercise as shown in the picture. You can also use a sturdy dowel rod or broom handle laid across two stools. My son has his feet on the floor in the first picture and to make the exercise more difficult he places his feet on the bench in the second picture.
For your lower back you can perform reverse hyperexetensions. I do not have a reverse hyper bench so we use a makeshift bench. I have a preacher curl bench. We slide it up to my old tablesaw and hook our feet under the tablesaw (not running of course). It works just fine.
You can also perform a superman exercise for the lower back. Lay on the floor on your stomach with your hands extended out above your head. To perform the exercise lift your head, arms and feet off the floor and hold them in the air for a count of 15 – 30 seconds. Rest and then repeat.
Oh, I almost forgot. Here is the picture of the cheat pull-up.
If you perform these exercises I think you will be pleased with the result. Give them a shot.
