Build a Big Back with Bands (NO WEIGHTS!)

If you want to build a big back with bands and did not think it was possible, then this is the video for you. Here, I’m going to show you the best ways to build a bigger back using just resistance bands and no weights. In times of gym closures and an increase in the number of people doing home back

What’s up guys, Jeff Cavaliere, Athleanx. com. We  continue our popular band exercise series here. Today I’m going to show you how to build a bigger  back with just bands. See, a lot of times people think they’re screwed when they’re training  at home and they don’t have access to a gym.

But I’m telling you, if you have a couple of these  here, you’re going to be able to train your back well. And not just your back, but I mean  your whole back. See because there’s a lot of different areas of your back that are important  to train. We want to hit the width of your back with the lats. We want to hit the mid back  thickness with the mid traps and Rhomboids, the upper back thickness with the upper traps.

Of  course, we want to stabilize and support at all by strengthening our lower back. Guys let’s  start breaking them down area by area, exercise by exercise to give you the best of the best. So, let’s start with the lats, because most people focus on building bigger wider lats. Remember,  we could train them two ways, we could go up and down or we could go horizontal pulling motions  front to back. Well, when we talk about up and down the staple exercise is always going to be  the pull up.

So, what we can do is we can either make it easier or harder. If you want to make  it easier you put the band around the bar, you simply step into it like this and this is going to  unweight a percentage of your bodyweight. However much resistance the band provides will assist you  with that much and perform the exercise that much easier. Or you could do this and simply weight up  a backpack or throw a bunch of heavy things into a backpack and anchor the band to it and then  step into it and put the band around your neck. Now you’ve got a resisted pull up.

When it comes  to building a bigger back, don’t underestimate the importance of overloading and bands can absolutely  provide overload if utilized the right way. All right. So, sticking with the basics here,  guys have got your vertical pulling down. What about your horizontal pull? Well, if you want to  substitute for the Barbell Row, you take the band.

But what most people do wrong is they either grab  just one end of the band or they don’t provide enough resistance. And it’s easy to do because  all you have to do is place it under your feet and take a nice wide stance. What that does is  obviously it increases the tension of the band. But here’s the better part, don’t just grab one  band, reach down and grab both of them. You can see what the anchor point dramatically shortened  now, the resistance of that band has increased considerably.

Is it a complete replacement  for Barbell Row? No. But when all you’ve got is a band, it’s an incredible way to create  overload in that horizontal pulling direction. So now, while a lot of us will stop right  there and focus solely on pulling up and down vertically or front to back horizontally,  the real magic actually happens when you do something in between—transverse plane pulling. And that’s what this exercise does.

This is the high to low Kneeling Banded Row. What this  provides us with is an opportunity to take that band way out in front of our body and then  pull it all the way back down and around the back. One benefit we get here from bands is that we  can continue to pull even an extra inch, which is going to provide an increase in resistance. The  other reason why this works so well is because of those fibers of the back. Realize they don’t  just run straight up and down or side to side, they do run in this southwest to northeast  direction.

That means if you follow the fibers, like I always tell you to rotation is the key. Some people might have a hard time generating that peak contraction as you drive your elbow back to  the spine unless they have something else going on and that is the other arm back there waiting  for it. Because we can create a more intense back contraction by doing so. So, I like this for  that purpose, it’s called the Two for One Row. You enter the band in a low position and grab  on with one arm, you row it back until it’s an isometric contraction.

Hold it there the  entire time. It’s waiting for that other arm to meet it. How do you do that? You grab the  top portion of the band and with that other arm, you’re going to simply drive that arm back  again, trying to meet those elbows in the middle. This is a great variation for building  up that mind muscle connection that oftentimes is missing when it comes to back training.

We finish up the first zone here for the lats with two exercises that will actually allow you  to take maybe the biceps out of the movement, because a lot of times people tend to dominate  with biceps and pulling exercises, not so good when you’re trying to build your back. So what we  want to do is straight arm exercises that focus on the abduction function of the lats. This here  is the most classic you can have, and it’s called the Straight Arm Push Down. With the band anchored  up high in the arms held out straight, your only goal is to drive those elbows down to your size as  tight and as hard as you possibly can. Resist the tendency to bend the elbows and turn this into  a Tricep Push Down.

Keep the elbows locked out and do all the driving through the lats. The second way to accomplish a straight arm functioning of the lats is with the classic  pullover exercise. You might be thinking, didn’t you include this already in the chest  edition of the series, Jeff? I did but was performed very differently. Because instead of  having the elbows tight together, I want them to be flared out.

If they’re flared out, you’re  moving the focus towards the last as the main driver of the movement. Now, it doesn’t matter  of the elbows get much further than, let’s say, eight or 10 inches from where they start, it’s the  act of moving them towards abduction, towards your size that’s going to light them up and help you  to use this exercise to build bigger lats. So, if limiting yourself to a single vertical and  horizontal exercise wasn’t bad enough when you’re trying to build bigger lats, skipping zones all  together is a really bad idea if you want to build a bigger back, especially with bands. But that’s  where bands come in really, really effectively, because I’m going to argue this exercise here  that targets the second zone is one of the most effective you could possibly do, and it’s really  best performed with bands. This is called the Zeus Row and it hits that Zone 2 middle and lower  traps, unbelievably.

If you try this, I guarantee you’re going to say this is the best part of  this entire video. What you do is you anchor the band up high and you angle your body forward. And when performed like this with a narrow grip, it tends to minimize the contribution of the  lats with abduction and really, really lights up those rhomboids and lower traps and mid traps  unbelievably, like I said. You have to try this, I promise you, you’re going to love every minute of  it. Or maybe hate it, but it’s going to work.

So, can I show you something cool, guys, when  it comes to bands? It’s not just the type of band you’re using, but how you anchor the band  that matters. So, if you really want to hit the mid back, realize that the closer our hands are to  each other, the more we’re actually going to limit the ability to pre-stretch that area. Because  if I wrap it around something narrow here, my hands will start and finish in this position. But  if I were to take it around something much wider and take that left over right, right over left  the grip, which is going to protract the shoul