RIPPED Back Workout - In-Depth Tips (STEP BY STEP!)

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When it comes to training, the back is usually out of sight, out of mind for a lot of guys, and the lats suffer because of that. But if you think that’s bad, the romboids are like the redheaded stepchild when it comes to training. We’re going to fix that [Music] today. What’s up, guys? Jeff Cavalere, ax.

com. Now, first of all, apologies to any of my red-headed stepchildren that are watching this video. You know, that’s just a phrase, but it underscores what we’re talking about here, and that is out of sight, out of mind. Particularly when it comes to the back, and more so when it comes to the romboid. I don’t think guys are training their rhomboids A enough or b the right way.

So, I wanted to put a video together today to show you and break down the different components of what they are, how to test form in case you have any imbalances left and right, strength-wise, and more so what you can do to try to improve that. Now, first of all, what they are and what they do, guys, they are really obviously they’re the muscles between the shoulder blades, okay? So they retract the shoulder blades and they basically if I were to engage them you can see them right in the middle of the back. Their role is to counteract a lot of what we do in front of us. And what I mean by that is constantly we’re working on a daily basis on things in front of us whether we’re on the computer.

Thumb me up right now if you’re watching this like this watching this video slumped over in your chair on your desk or or at uh on your couch. The problem is guys is that we tend to have everything in front of us. So that’s this position of our shoulders. And then you add to that the fact that we train our chest, we train our lats, we train things that do internally rotate our arms and it makes the situation worse. So the only thing we have to combat that are rotator cuff muscles to externally rotate the shoulders, but also the rhomboids to kind of pull those shoulder blades back and in.

Athletically, they’re extremely important. Pitchers that I worked with in uh with the Mets for years, guys, they made it a real uh focal point of their maintenance programs to make sure they did this to try to counteract what was going on with all this forward momentum and motion of the arm. Guys that are strength training, rombo is especially important. Think of a deadlift, okay? Or think of a squat.

If you can’t activate your rhomboids enough and keep your shoulders locked back and in, you automatically start to fall forward. And what have I told you about that before? The body usually follows the head. So if you can’t, if you’re going to start doing this, well, with that goes your head, and with your head goes your body, and with your body goes your low back. So it’s extremely important to start with the rhomboids and make sure that they’re strong.

Okay guys, so let’s test the romboids. show you a real simple way. And for you guys following on Athlete X, you should be familiar with the inverted row. It’s also got a dual application as a testing uh you know exercise. So what we do is remember the round boys are going to pull the shoulder blades back, but there’s a quick way to figure out what the strength of your rhomboids are.

If you get yourself underneath an inverted row right here and you square your body up, meaning I’m not tilted down to one side. this nice and square underneath, I should be able to then move my hands close together and then let go. If I let go and I see this happen, that’s because the strength of the round boys couldn’t hold me in. Okay, if you start to see some kind of drop or rotation, then we know that there is an imbalance on that side. And I’m going to show you how you can be able to address that.

But let’s start first with how do we strengthen these things now the right way and then I’ll address the imbalances too. Okay. So now let’s take a look at how we train them. Right? The most important thing guys there’s two components.

As I said in the beginning the romboids are a postural muscle. Most of the muscles on our backside on our posterior chain are postural in nature which means that they fire to keep us upright even from the glutes but mostly low back up through the midspine upper back right. All these muscles are going to fire just to keep us upright. So they have to be used to working all day long as opposed to some of the muscles in the front. I mean certainly the bicep kind of fires on command.

We don’t walk around all day like this, right? it fires on command. These muscles have to work all the time. So, in order to address them, we really need to work on quality reps. We need to work on holding the the the exercises for a lot longer per rep.

And we also have to have ways that we can activate them better because I don’t think we have a real good ability to do that. They’re mostly on stretch all day long. And a long muscle that’s posturally unstretched for a long period of time becomes a much weaker muscle. How do we sort of consciously figure out what we’re doing here? We really have to make sure that we’re not just rowing.

When we do any kind of rowing motion, we have to make sure that we’re consciously contracting the round boys, too. So, quick little setup here with a band. I can row like this all day long. Okay? And I I mean, I’m using my lats and I’m pulling my elbows in nice and close.

Okay? But when we want to activate the rhomboids, what we have to do is really squeeze the shoulder blades together. Okay? Really squeeze the shoulder blades together. So it’s not just a row, but it’s a row and a squeeze.

You find that you have a right versus left of balance over your rhomboids. You do this one arm at a time. Again, keeping this other side square, but the treatment for that is not one set of 20 repetitions. It’s 20 sets of one repetitions. You want to make sure that you are getting top quality and making sure that you are getting peak contraction of that round cuz that’s our problem, guys.

We can’t contract that with much conscious action. We’re really a little bit more uh unaware of that muscle and that mind muscle connection is extremely important. Let me show you one exercise I think is a great one for you guys to do. The setup here is our land mine setup. Again, you could do this at home if you have a bar.

If you’re at the gym, it’s obviously a lot easier, but you don’t need a lot of a crazy setup to be able to do this. I take a bar and you can buy any of these little strap handles from anything. These happen to come from my machine over there. Slide them over the bar. Slide them over the bar.

Okay, I’ll tell you why we use those. And then put your weight on. Now, ego guys, you got to leave it at the door sometimes when you’re trying to train your back for the purpose of strengthening your rhomboids. It’s not about heavy. The heavier you go, sometimes you lose the ability to control what’s going on back there.

With these straps, I’ve given myself about three or four extra inches, as you can see, to be able to pull and get around my back. Last tip on the roboids. We’re here. We want to be able to get a pre-stretch of the shoulder blades. Let them get around your body.

So, as you can see from here, you might be able to sneak around and see shoulder blades kind of engage together. Pre-stretch them. Let them come forward because now you’re going to be able to actually have some movement to make in order to feel them moving and pinching together. If you start from here and you go up, there’s no perceived motion that you can actually feel. So, you want to make it come around.

So you have a pre-stretch. Now from here, come up and squeeze. Okay. Down, pre-stretch. Never let the low back go with it.

Up and squeeze. Down. Up and squeeze. That advantage of that pre-stretch is what allows you to then at least feel the motio