After taking a rest day yesterday (Wednesday) due to fatigue from being sleep deprived because of coughing at night from bronchitis, I trained my back. I did a total of four exercises. My back training, as well as other training days in my training split, has been stepped up due to having access to barbells and heavy dumbbells that I was unable to have access to at Planet Fitness.

The key to my training, is training for a full muscle development. This means I do various exercises that trains each body part from different angles, which stimulates all areas of the muscles to maximize hypertrophy.

For my first exercise I did pull ups. Pull ups are one of my best exercises that I am good at. I have been doing them very consistently since 1994. I have even won pull contests throughout the years. Today I did 5 sets of 10 reps. I can do 25 reps or more if I want (even though I am 25lbs heavier than I need to be), but I often set my target at 10 reps, but I do them slowly and very controlled in order to stimulate the back muscles more effectively rather than just pumping out quick reps. Sometimes I will strap extra resistance to myself while doing pull ups, such as a resistance band or weight belt. But most of the time just doing the pullups slowly and controlled, and squeezing the contraction at the top will be sufficient enough to achieve adaptations similar what you get by doing a linear progression. As you can see below, I used a stretching rack to do my pullups. I prefer doing pullups with a close hammer grip. Pullups are one of the best back exercises that exists. I highly recommend people to do these, even if you have to use equipment that assists you.

For my second back exercise, I did deadlifts. I did 3 sets for 3 reps. Obviously, that is low reps. I am in a strength building phase for now. I am using a weight that is heavy for me, and my goal for the meantime is to be able to do that weight for 5 reps in a controlled manner, then increase the weight a little at a time in future workouts.

Deadlifts are one of the best exercises that you can do. Many people are afraid to do deadlifts because they are hard, and they have the reputation of being dangerous. But when done correctly they are very safe because the body was designed to lift things off the ground. Deadlifts work the entire back and basically the whole body.

For my third exercise I did dumbbell rows. I did 3 sets for 8-10 reps. This is an exercise that I haven’t done for a long time. I am glad to start incorporating them back into my back routine. This exercise stimulates the back muscles and builds thickness.

For my fourth and final exercise I did lat pulldowns. I did 3 sets of 12 reps. Even though lat pulldowns are a very similar movement to pullups, I like to do them because they allow me to use less weight and do the range of motion even slower and more controlled than the pullups. This allows me to focus on squeezing the contraction at the very top, which gives extra stimulation to the muscles that you won’t quite get from the heavier pullups. This does not necessarily develop strength like the pullups do, but it will help develop strength in certain weaker spots within the range of motion, such as the very top of the movement.