In spite of the several importance of having thick and strong back , most of the people don’t give much attention to these group of muscles. A strong back not only helps you to have good posture, it also prevents several back problems that are common with ageing body. This article, is especially for people who like training at home or who prefers to use dumbbells over machines and cables.
If you are training at home, then dumbbells is a must-have thing for you. If you have dumbbells in which weights can be added it is better.
The Trick:
First of all, there is a trick to train your back muscles and that is “don’t go too heavy, too soon“. The reason behind this is that while training your back muscles you’ll also use other muscles for support.
So, if you lift heavy then it might happen that you’ll end up using supporting muscles too much. A good strategy around this is to use light weight and build the back muscles strong, and increase the weight little by little.
Top 5 dumbbell exercises for back:
Deadlift
Deadlift is an amazing exercise for your lower back and it is always a good idea to build the base first. So, we will train the lower back first. Deadlift, also hits your lower back, glutes, hams and quads, but in this case, we need to keep our focus only on lower back. So, while going down we shouldn’t go deeper than your shin level, this will concentrate all the tension on the lower back.
There is almost no difference between barbell and dumbbell when it comes to training your lower back. You have to hold the dumbbells in the pronated grip, as you would do with barbell.
Try this:
Instead of holding dumbbells in the pronated grip, hold them on your side, in a neutral grip. This will take care of the problem caused by barbell. When your holding a barbell, you have to bend a little forward, which causes the back to curve a bit. And, if you don’t arch your back properly, you won’t get any result. But, if you hold the dumbbell in the neutral grip(on your sides), then you don’t have to bend forward. So, now instead of thinking about arching your back, you can just focus on going up and down in proper form.
Shoulder external/internal rotation
You may have heard a thousand of times about rotator cuff and how you can get rotator cuff injury if you don’t warm up properly, and how to cure a rotator cuff injury. Your rotator cuff is made up of multiple muscles and one of them is teres minor. Teres minor is a muscle little above your latissimus dorsi, it starts at the back, from your shoulder blade and ends at your shoulder.
Many people train it unknowingly in the shoulder routine, but it is a back muscle. This is one of those muscles that aren’t very big and yet they play an amazing role in enhancing the aesthetic appeal. To train this muscle is very easy, all you have to do is rotate your shoulders externally.
Now, many people prefer to rotate both the shoulders at the same time but it is better to do one arm at a time. Especially, when you are doing it to train the teres minor properly, when you just want to warm up, you can do both the hands at the same time. With the free hand, you can feel the tension on the muscle. For many body parts this technique can be extremely useful.
Teres major
Teres major is a muscle above your latissimus dorsi and below your teres minor. It starts at the shoulder blade(back) and ends at the biceps bone with your lats and pectoralis major. To train this muscle, all you have to do is rotate your shoulder internally. You don’t need heavy dumbbells, a light to medium weight is fine.
Hyperextension
It is another exercise for your lower back. If you go to gym it is okay, if you workout at home, then you probably won’t be having a Hyperextension machine. But, you can do this on your bed too. It won’t be as effective, but it is okay for beginners. Ask someone to sit on on your calves, while your pelvic bone should be at the edge of the bed.
Or if you have leather couch such as this one. You can do this workout without dumbbell at first but you need to start adding a little weight after one or two weeks. Secondly, if you are training at home and you don’t have dumbbells of different weight, it is not problem, all you have to do is hold the dumbbell a little far away from the body. The further you hold the dumbbells the more weight you’ll feel.
Dumbbell row single hand
Dumbbell row is a very effective exercise for your Lats and your upper back. But, the problem with it is that, it can be hard to get it right. Some people like to do it on a bench and some people like to do taking the support of the dumbbell rack. You can choose, either of the way to do dumbbell row, but make sure that your are putting all the stress on the lats and upper back. It is of no use to pick up very heavy weights and go with the motion without hitting the desired muscles correctly.
If you are not able to get enough tension of the lats, then you an inclined bench for the support, like shown in the picture. Although, in the picture it is much lower. Keep the incline of 60-75 degree.
Bentover dumbbell flys
Although, this exercise is very common for your rear deltoids but it is equally useful for your rhomboids. It is below your traps and hence, many people confuse it to be a part of trapezius. Although, your rhomboids are trained a little bit with most of the back exercises but it is big muscle and requires more focussed effort to develop properly.
This exercise will be absolutely useless if you don’t squeeze your shoulder blades together. If you want to focus more on rhomboids and less of rear delts that look forward instead of looking down. And, bend your upper back.