Hey guys, just looking for advice to see if any improvements can be made to my back workout.
I train traps with my shoulders, and the gym doesn’t have dedicated pulley cable row machines. It dies have hammer strength but I prefer free weight. The only Exercise I’m not comfortable with is dead lifts due to an old lower back injury
Currently I’m doing
Narrow grip pull down - 1 warm up set, 1 working set to failure, 2 drop sets to failure
Wide grip pull-down - 1 warm up set, 1 working set to failure, 2 drop sets to failure
T bar row - 1 warm up set, 1 working set to failure, 1 rest pause set to failure, 2 drop sets to failure
Barbell row wide grip - 1 warm up set, 1 working set to failure, 1 rest pause set to failure, 2 drop sets to failure
1 arm Dumbell row - 1 working set to failure, 2 drop sets to failure
Dumbell Pullovers - 1 working set to failure, 2 drop sets to failure
Hypertension - 3 sets to failure
I feel I’m hitting all areas of the back, just wondering if anyone can think of anything to improve this workout outside of dead lifts? Possibly could switch the wide grip pull-down for chins. Thanks in advance
You have most of the best lifts in there. My only suggestion would be not to do them all at once.
Start your session with hyperextension, doing paied sets with some abdominal move.
Pick a “big” row variation. Do this first and heavy! T- bar rows are good. Think of this as your “main” back lift.
Then do some kind of pull down or chin up. I don’t think you need to do both, all the time.
Then a 1 arm rowing variation.
Finish up with the pullovers.
After 3 or 4 weeks, rotate exercises. Switch from t- bar rows to barbell rows. Instead of chins, go back to narrow grip Pulldowns. After that, use the Hammer Strength machine for your 1 arm row. Finish with Straight Arm Pulldowns on the cable, instead of pull-overs.
First, I’d really like to see what kind of reps you’re working with on everything. That’s a huge factor in knowing what could be tweaked.
Second, like the guys said, that’s a lot of intensity in the workout, so you could do with dropping an exercise or three. Hitting failure and drop sets and rest-pause on multiple exercises is a monster workout.
It’s low volume for each exercise, which is necessary whenever you crank up the intensity like that, but doing so many different exercises increases the overall volume for the bodypart, which defeats the purpose of a high intensity-low volume approach.
Working set - once I hit 10 reps on a weight, the following week I up the weight, then work my way up to 10 over time. So it’s usually between 6 reps on a new weight, up to 10 reps when I’ve been at it for a few weeks
Rest pause sets usually can just Squeeze out another 2 or 3 reps
For the drop sets it can be anything from 3 reps usually no more than 7 for each drop
So in total my reps would be around around 36 reps per Exercise on an average week sometimes slightly higher
Instead of using the same rep scheme for every lift, I’d mix things up more. For example, on the pulldowns, work in the 10-12 range for the main set. For the t-bar or barbell row, cap the work set in the 6-8 range. For pullovers, I’d also stay in the 8+ range and take it easy with the higher intensity/lower rep mini-sets. It’s a vulnerable position for the shoulders and hitting failure at a weird position could be bad news. Stiff-arm pulldowns are a good alternative with much lower risk.
I still say it’s too much total volume, and you’d be fine dropping several exercises. Or coming up with a “back workout A” and “back workout B”, and alternating them each week. “One pulldown, one row, one or two other things” is a solid general approach. This article also has some great ideas.