Back Exercises Ranked (BEST TO WORST!)

With so many back exercises, it might be hard to rank and decide where you should be focusing your efforts to build bigger lats while also increasing your strength. In this video, I’m going to show you the most popular back exercises ranked from worst to best to help you decide which ones you should

So, the One Arm Row is an absolute no for me, putting it number one on my list  of the worst back exercises.

What s up guys, Jeff Cavaliere, Athleanx. com. What you see behind me is a bunch of difference back exercised. Many of which you’re either have  done in the past or you’re still doing right now. But after today, you’re going to want to get rid  of a few of them.

Because I’m going to help you to rank them from the worst to the best, leaving you  only with the best back exercises that are going to deliver the gains that you’re after. And so, as we kick off this list here, it’s important to first define the criteria that goes  into the selection in the ranking of these back exercises. First and foremost, are these exercises  capable of being progressively overloaded? And no, this list is not being populated by those that  are the best strength building exercises. But we do know that strength leads to hypertrophy,  which is the main focus of the list.

Secondly, we know that the back has a lot of  muscles in it. This particular episode here is going to focus on those that are doing the  best job of helping you to build bigger lats. Future breakdowns in the series can focus on the  other areas of the back, like the upper back and traps or maybe even the lower back. But for  here, we’re really looking at the lats. And finally, guys, is the exercise safe?

A  lot of people will perform any exercise in the pursuit of gains. But here on this channel is  a physical therapist, I have to consider safety. I’m going to build that into the selection  criteria for every one of these exercises. And so now with the groundwork laid, it’s time  to start working from the bottom up. The worst category here.

And I’m looking at my number  one no, and it’s a version of the row, t’s the One Arm Dumbbell Row. You see, I don’t  dislike the unilateral aspect of the exercise, that’s not it. But when you put one knee  up on the bench as you do, this is actually introducing a stress to the groin that I’ve  talked about in many of those before that I’m just not comfortable with. Literally, as I’ve  given myself two hernias from the exercise. You put an asymmetrical strain on the inguinal  canal, which is oftentimes a weak spot for men as it is, which can oftentimes lead to the hernias  that we don’t want.

The big thing about it, though, is we have better options that don’t  require us to have one knee up on the bench. We’ll get back to that in a second, but for  now, the One Arm Row is an absolute no for me, putting it number one on my list  of the worst back exercises. So now making our way up through the worst  exercises for your back, we have to look next to the Lat Pulldown. But no, not any version of  Lat Pulldown, but the Behind the Neck version of Lat Pulldown, because where you pull to makes all  the difference in the world. See, this variation takes those elbows out of the scapular plane, the  natural plane they prefer to move in, angled about 45 degrees forward and flares them far too much  out to the side.

And what that does is it forces the shoulder into a lot of internal rotation. Well, those arms are up overhead internal rotation with elevation can lead to impingement problems. Guys, do me a favor and put that bar in front of the body and put this exercise at the top of  your list of ones to skip with the big red X. And so, with that I get to break out my blue  marker now as we work our way up the rankings into the Better Category, good exercises, but still  with limitations. And the first one we look at is the Renegade Row.

And while this does allow  us to hit the lats through a rolling motion, we have to look beyond that because we’re being  compromised by the load we can actually use on the exercise due to more of that instability. Now, we’re not talking about that asymmetrical lower body instability that we have for the One  Arm Dumbbell Row, but we’re just shifting it up the kinetic chain into the core. And if your core is weak, you’re not going to be able to lift a lot in this  exercise. So, if we’re looking for hypertrophy, we’re undermining our ability to achieve it by  introducing a variable that really doesn’t have to be there in the first place. And also, the row  itself, the range of motion is being cut short by the floor.

Unless you want to use your front  delt to lift the dumbbell out in front of you to increase that lat stretch, you’re limiting  your ability to take advantage of the stretch reflex that can produce more gains as well. Guys,  for all of these reasons, though, the exercise is one I program myself, mostly in circuits or  metabolic type workouts. The exercise for hypertrophy is limited and therefore it deserves  the blue circle here for better just not great. Moving on in the Better Category here,  it actually pains me to see this exercise sit so low on the list, but we’re talking about  the Deadlift. Look, remember the criteria here lat development.

And while the Deadlift itself  requires a lapse to be completely engaged in order to keep that bar tight to your body,  it does so through an isometric contraction that doesn’t necessarily lead to the greatest  overall hypertrophy gains for the lats. Now, ironically, we look at the muscle gains  in the upper back and traps through the same isometric contraction. Those tend to be better. But again, we’re going to reserve that for a later video. But suffice it to say that even though the  Deadlift is one of the greatest exercises of all time when it comes to lat development, it doesn’t  check all the boxes and therefore it just gets the blue circle for the Better Category.

And next up here, the Better Category, we have another exercise like the Deadlift that  starts from the floor but does a much better job of hitting the lats, but not without its  drawbacks. We’re talking about the Pendlay Row. And here we have to look at the risk and reward  of the exercise. Does the reward of pulling the bar through a greater range of motion off of the  floor outweigh the risk of attempting to do so with a body not prepared to do that? You see the slightest bit of hamstring inflexibility, or a lack of lumbar extension  mobility is going to compromise your ability to perform this safely.

Even though we can  better target the lats from this completely horizontal position, at what risk are we doing  it. When we realize again that there’s better options by simply shifting your torso slightly  higher, I just can’t make this exercise rise too far up the list, so therefore it’s going  to sit here in the Better Category only. And so now I get to break out my yellow marker  as we continue our way up the rankings, this time into the Better Still Category. And for the  first exercise here, I want to look right here at the Tripod Row because this one actually gives us  a chance to correct some of the things, we didn’t like about some of the previous exercises, namely  the One Arm Dumbbell Row and that Pendlay Row we just covered. What do we have here?

Well, we  have asymmetrical loading now being symmetrically loaded across the lower body. Because all we have  to do is take that knee off of the bench and just put ourselves in this position with one hand  stabilizing our upper body. And doing just this, again, allows that symmetrical loading of  those pelvic muscles that don’t now have to undergo any of those stresses that we don’t  want to introduce. Regarding the Pendlay Row, I actually have a chance to achieve as much of  a horizontal position as I want on this exercise because I have the additional upper body support  that allows me to do so without putting my low