The BEST Dumbbell Back Exercises (WIDTH & THICKNESS)

If you have ever wondered what the best dumbbell back exercises are, then you have come to the right place. In this video, I am goin to give you the best dumbbell back exercises that fit multiple different categories of training.

so you want to build a big back and all you have at your disposal is some dumbbells well I got good news I can help you by giving you the right exercises and the thing is you’re probably used to using either machines or barbells to get the job done but it doesn’t have to be that way if you are doing the right things that said there is some context needed here too cuz not everybody’s focused on size some just want to be stronger some want maybe even a more durable back as a physical therapist I’ve got you covered no matter what your goal is but again it starts with the right exercise and right here it starts with the first category and that’s strength so what if you did just want to get strong what dumbbell exercise are you doing for your back that’s going to get you there well I don’t mean to get cute here and introduce a new piece of equipment but honestly you can’t pass up this exercise option and it’s simply a weighted pull-up so go grab a pull-up bar from a supporting goods store for 15 bucks or 20 bucks but take that dumbbell and either grab hold of it with your feet like this or simply wrap a dog leash around it and turn it into a weight belt or dip belt and wrap it around your hips far often people focus on just increasing their repetitions here and while that is a good way to increase some overall strength it’s not the best way to overload strength as the main focus so if you do this with a dumbbell here you’ve solved that problem and it’s a great one even if you had available to you those barbells or even those machines next up we have power now this is where we want to take that weight that we’re moving but add that other element of speed how quickly can you move that weight through space and when we train athletes that is a very important element of our training so what do we do well you want to do either one of two exercises here the first one is what I call a dumbbell dead row and all we’re doing is basically turning this into a deadlift row combination it’s a very explosive there I say fun exercise that definitely includes that speed that’s missing from a traditional barbell row now some of our athletes actually have to be more explosive unilaterally so we have an option for that it’s called the gorilla Row in similar to the dead row it’s an exercise we can be very explosive on but one side at a time now you’ll noce there’s a little less leg involvement here but by no means does that take away the explosive power that you’re building here with your back what’s nice about this is you have two variations you can either allow the elbow to drift further out to the side away from you to get more of the upper back and rear delts or you can keep it nice and tight to get more explosive for the lats the bottom line is that either of these groundbased exercises checks that box for helping you to become more powerful and if that is your goal then these are the two exercises that I recommend every time now if you’re like most who come to YouTube Fitness videos you probably are looking for the exercise that helps you just to build the big back right a big Vaper wider back well there is an exercise to do that it’s called the dumbbell tripod row it’s named that way because of the three points of contact with one hand on the back of a bench for support and two feet squiring on the floor now this should not be confused with a dumbbell one-on row even though it is actually similar in terms of the focus the execution is quite different it doesn’t have some of the hernia risks that come from that variation of the exercise but what it does have is an AB ability to drive high levels of tension into the working muscle and when you’re trying to build big muscles tension overload is one of the key ways to drive hypertrophy so this exercis is teller made for that with the extra support you get with your hand on the back of the bench you’re able to focus mostly on just lifting as heavy weight as possible to get in that five six or seven rep range but still be able to drive really good contractions into the lats by keeping the elbows tight to your side and driving them back behind the body the extra stability provided in the Tripod setup again eliminate some of those other things that we don’t want but does give you my favorite option for hypertrophy when tension overload is the method now let’s say you’re a little bit more sadistic right you like the burn and you want to build muscle with the burn well we talked about many times before those higher rep counts can still really drive muscle growth if you know how to use them properly you’re going to have to train them all the way to failure but you need an exercise that doesn’t cause other areas of your body to give up first so what do we do it’s another row variation but is the chest supported row and we don’t just do one variation here but we perform a drop set so we can train two and through failure so my favorite way to do it is to lay face down on a bench here with my dumbbell row weight and what I start with is my elbows pointed out wide so what I get here is more of that upper back rear delt and midback thickness I take this all the way to failure realizing that I’m not quite done at that point cuz all I have to do to keep this going and to keep the burn coming is to Simply drop my elbows down close to my side shifting that Focus now more to the laps and I do once again what I did before take it all the way to that rep grinding extreme burn failure because we know in that range as the metabolites continue to acre in your muscles that we have the opportunity for growth so if you’re willing and able to get comfortable being uncomfortable well then there are some muscle gains waiting for you and this is the exercise that’s going to allow you to do it the easiest now of course there is one other method for driving muscle gains through hypertrophy and that is through one that a lot of people are talking about these days it’s actually one we’ve been using for a long period of time here and that is stretch and the Ecentric overload of a stretch on an exercise well what exercise is more tiller made than a dumbbell pullover when it’s the lats that you’re trying to grow but there’s a few things you want to make sure you’re doing right when you do the exercise and the first thing is position your body the right way to increase the stretch on the lats you want to move their attachments further away from each other so we know that our arms and our hips are going to want to be separated as far as we can possibly place them how do we do that start by dropping the hips when you put your hips down this position you should already feel an intense stretch on the lats just by putting your arms up overhead to start the exercise but when you drop the arms further behind your body you’re going to feel this intensify even more and you’ll know you’re doing the exercise right last thing is tempo and here I want you to slow down I want you to feel every single repetition as you perform that lowering of the dumbbell the greater the stretch that you get the greater the stimulus for growth if you can go a little bit lower on each subsequent repetition because your flexibility is improving from rep to rep then by all means do it but when you’re looking for that stretch exercise that’s going to give you the growth you’re looking for the dumbbell pullover is my go-to choice every time now sometimes as coaches we need exercises that allow us to train our athletes with a little bit more versatility especially if we’re short on time so rather than look for a different portion of the lat with each exercise or a different portion of the upper back we need one th