3 Back Muscle Exercises You Can Do At Home With Just Dumbbells
Jun 6th, 2011 | By Todd Bowman | Category: Exercises, Training How To
A lot of people find it difficult to do back muscle exercises at home because they don’t have chin up bars or adjustable bars where they can do inverted body-weight rows.
It’s something I see a lot. People tend to make excuses for things rather than look for solutions. If you really want something, you have to go after it. If you want to avoid scoliosis or kyphosis (a hump or large lump in the upper back – sometimes called a hunchback) or even just having a weak arthritic spine and back, you have to really workout your back.
This means you’re going to have to do exercises that target your latissimus dorsi (lats), rhomboid major, infraspinatus, rear deltoids, serratus posterior (lower lumbar or low back). You need to target all of these muscles if you want to have a strong back.
And that means looking to find solutions if you don’t have adequate workout equipment at home. Don’t immediately shut down and say you can’t do back workouts because you don’t have equipment. Do the best with what you got.
It’s important to target your back muscles because it has a lot of muscle mass therefore adding to your overall metabolic rate. In order to do back muscle exercises, you don’t need those fancy expensive equipment. In fact, you’ll be able to exercise your back muscles with only dumbbells and still achieve some results.
Granted because the back is very strong by nature, after all it supports your entire upper body, your spine, shoulders head and neck. This means you’ll need some dumbbells that go very high up in weight. You’d be surprised how much weight you can lift or pull with your back and your legs. Aside from the tongue, these muscles are some of the strongest in the body.
In this video, Craig Ballantyne shares some easy back muscle exercises you can do to train your lats, your rhomboids, scapular contractors and posterior deltoids. Hopefully, it will give you some more variety in doing your training at home.
A WORD OF CAUTION: Don’t simply use these at home workouts to replace either going to a gym where they have all the weights you can imagine or having this equipment at home. Implement these workouts when you’re in a bind. For example these are great workouts to do if you only have 15 minutes before the gym closes. Or you have a set of dumbbells at home and need to squeeze in a back workout before the end of the night. This shouldn’t be a replacement for having access and using high quality equipment on a regular basis.
Dumbbell pullover
Lie on a bench and raise a dumbbell in front of you with both hands. Keeping your arms extended, slowly lower the dumbbell towards your head. Make sure you feel the stretch on your lats. Then pull the dumbbell up.
This is a great exercise for the back and one that you can do as often as 2 times per week depending upon how sore you get the day after you workout.
Dumbbell rows
Lean down on a bench with your arms and leg as support. With the other hand gripping the dumbbell, slowly raise the dumbbell along the side of your hip. You can vary the raising action with either elbows locked on your side or outwards. This way, different back muscles are targeted.
As your lifting the dumbbell, lift is slowly and concentrate on how to isolate and really target your back muscles while you perform this exercise.
Lateral raises
Lean forward and bend your knees as you hold a dumbbell in each hand. Raise your arms, spreading them far wide slowly and slowly lower them back down. This targets your posterior deltoids.
Keep in mind that these are only substitutes for the specific machines that target specific muscles. These are only exercises that will allow you to target those back muscles during the absence of muscle specific machines. The lat muscles give you that wide back look. Having strong lats make you look wider and thicker, a major advantage with the ladies as well as any athletic sports you participate in.
The major advantage of doing back muscle exercises is that it’s one of the large muscle groups in your body. Working them out will increase your metabolism and keep you fit even when you’re not working out.
Because they are such large muscle groups they product a lot of lactic acid (which is a hormone and if there’s too much of this substance can contribute to diseases like cancer etc). But on the flip side, they also produce the most HGH (human growth hormone) and testosterone in the body. Your legs and gluteus maximus (your butt) will produce lots of testosterone as well.
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