Your Back Will Never Be Huge Without These 4 Movements

Name: Your Back Will Never Be Huge Without These 4 Movements
Uploaded: 2026-05-11T16:00:56.000Z
Duration: 10 min 48 s
Channel: Renaissance Periodization

Renaissance PeriodizationMay 11, 202610m

Topics6

Four Categories of Back Exercises for Complete Development0:00 Straight Arm Pulls0:31 Vertical Pulls3:01 Rows4:30 Spinal Erector and Mid Upper Trap Moves6:03 Structuring Back Training Program9:02

In a Nutshell

To build a complete, thick, and injury-resilient back, cycle through four exercise categories over 6-12 months: straight-arm pulls (lat prayers, pullovers), vertical pulls (pull-ups, pulldowns), rows (barbell, dumbbell, cable), and spinal erector/mid-trap moves (deadlifts, good mornings, flexion rows). Straight-arm pulls and vertical pulls primarily widen the back via lat development, while rows and erector work add thickness and strength. Alternate between lat-dominant and thickness-dominant groupings weekly rather than hitting all four categories every session to manage fatigue and ensure balanced growth.

AI-Generated Notes

These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.

There are four core types of back exercises that should be checked off the list to make sure the back gets as jacked, resilient to injury, and strong as possible. These four categories should be cycled through and checked off over any given 6 to 12-month period for complete development, as many of these exercises maintain the gains of the others.

The first class of exercises are straight arm pulls, including cable lat prayers and every kind of pullover such as dumbbell, barbell, EZ bar, or machine pullovers. This class of movements targets almost exclusively the lats and the teres major parts of the back. They also toast the rear delts and can engage the long head of the triceps.

These exercises tend to be not very systemically fatiguing, allowing training to or beyond failure very safely for higher reps and the ability to pile on volume. Many other exercises that focus on the lats have a higher degree of systemic fatigue and hit other parts of the back as well. These lat isolation movements allow focus on the lats and teres major to get a much wider back. They serve as an excellent tool to get even more lat training than the amount of volume the rest of the back can handle from exercises that tend to involve more components of the back than just the straight arm pulls.

Vertical pulls are composed of every single kind of pull down, every single kind of unweighted pull up, every single kind of assisted pull up, and every single kind of pull down. There are literally dozens and dozens of variations. The important thing is to use very good technique with a big stretch at the top and a full contraction at the bottom and progress logically with good technique over time.

The details on which one of these to use are really minor and only context specific. There is no battle between weighted pull ups and lat pull downs. It is all good depending on the context. If training is between five or 30 repetitions close to failure, there are no wrong answers. Because there is so much variation, there will never be a shortage of vertical pulls to do. Just a simple grip switch from any one of these is really a brand new exercise.

These vertical pulls will take care of the lats like crazy and they will take care of the rear delts, the teres major, and some other parts of the mid and maybe even upper back as well. They are really lat focused. The lats can take a pounding in volume, so as many exercises for them as possible are needed because of the lots of sets that will be done over time.

The rows train the lats to some extent, but they train muscles of the mid back substantially more. To some degree the spinal erectors, but mostly muscles like the rhomboids, the mid traps, the lower traps, and even the upper traps. This is a massive thing for back thickness.

There are many different kinds of rows, but they generally separate into just a few categories: barbell rows, underhand EZ bar rows, dumbbell rows, machine rows, and cable rows. The details are just the details and are very specific to the individual's requirements at the time that they are doing the row. All the rows are really good as long as a big stretch and a good range of motion are ensured and good technique is used where the weight is not being swung around and the back is actually being used.

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Your Back Will Never Be Huge Without These 4 Movements

Four Categories of Back Exercises for Complete Development00:00

Straight Arm Pulls00:31

Vertical Pulls03:01

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