Proper Training for the Upper Back

This post starts a series describing how to design adequate routines for training the different body-parts. This first chapter provides you with the general guidelines for proper upper back training.

The upper back is a complex body-part made up of several muscles. The largest visible muscle of the upper back is the latissimus dorsi (a.k.a. lats). Lats are very important, because they determine your upper body size, width, thickness, and V-shape. Lats are worked by every pulling movement that stays in one line with them, i.e. pulling front to back or downward. Another important muscle in the upper back is the trapezius. Since it is trained differently from lats, I will cover it in a future post. Finally, under the lats and the trapezius, there are some additional muscles (teres major, teres minor, infraspinatus and rhomboids) which contribute to upper back thickness. The same exercises used to train the lats hit these muscles too.

Training the back properly can be complicated. The main problem is that you cannot see your back while you are training it, and for this reason, you cannot see how you are performing, you cannot see the results. The key is to develop a mind-muscle connection. You must visualize the exercise, slowly execute the movement, and focus on the contraction, holding it for a second and feeling the burn in your back. In addition, you must always use weights that allow you maintaining proper form with a full range of motion. This is extremely important because bending your back when lifting heavy weights is one of the prime causes of injury. So be careful, and keep a straight back (slightly arched) during all back exercises.

For proper development of the upper back, you'll need at least 3 to 4 exercises. Your exercise selection must include adequate training for the two main features of the back: thickness and width. Thickness is developed with rowing exercises, such as barbell rows, one-arm dumbbell rows, T-bar rows or seated cable rows. Width is developed with exercises that pull downward, such as chin-ups/pull-ups or lat pull-downs. Chin-ups/pull-ups (especially when using wide-grip) are crucial for building a wide back. You can vary the grip and style of lift of your chin-ups/pull-ups for targeting different zones of the back.

Both width and thickness are essential for possessing a balanced back. If are lucky and your back is already balanced, then you can design 50/50 programs (50% exercises for width, 50% exercises for thickness) using some of the exercises introduced in the previous paragraph. You can also use 66/33 programs, but periodically switching the dominant feature between width and thickness. However, if you have one feature that is better than the other, your must design 66/33 programs that focus on the feature that is lagging behind.

If you need more information for designing your upper back workout, you can read the article “All Out Back Training” by John Giljum or the article “Training the Back!” included in the I.C.E. Training Program developed by Big Cat.

Planning: the Key to be Successful in Bodybuilding

“Failing to plan is like planning to fail”. This statement, excerpted from Muscle 101 site, clearly summarizes the importance of planning for achieving success in bodybuilding. For this reason, this post introduces the planning actions you should incorporate into your training program for obtaining your desired results.

Your first step must be defining long-term goals and deadlines for accomplishing them. Write up a detailed plan of what you need to do to achieve these goals and design your program toward the realization of them. Since maintaining the right direction for achieving long-term goals can be difficult, in addition you have to define short-term goals connected to your long-term goals and focus your training to fulfill them. Use the accomplishment of both long and short-term goals to motivate yourself.

In order to check if you are achieving your goals, you have to write a training diary. This will let you evaluate your progress, identify stagnation, and look back to see what programs worked for you in the past or how many reps you did with a specific weight before. You have to write down in your diary accurate records of each workout (e.g. exercises, reps, sets, poundage, rest, tempo), detailed information about your nutrition (e.g. what you eat, number of calories, macronutrients intake) and any other information that can be relevant as for instance how much you sleep. Find a few minutes periodically to review your diary and evaluate if you’re accomplishing your goals in the established deadlines or not. If not, redesign your program as appropriate to overcome this situation.

Your training diary must include also some periodical tracking of your physical progress to determine in you are advancing toward your goals. You can use the scale as an indicator, but don’t focus only on this because it supplies partial information (e.g. you cannot distinguish if you’re gaining muscle or fat). Consider other methods such as taking before and after pictures or using a measuring tape for tracking the size of your key body-parts. In addition, you can also measure your body fat percentage by using calipers and body composition tests as explained in the article “Learn How To Measure Your Success” by Jeremy Likness.

You can find a detailed justification about the importance of planning in bodybuilding and the basic issues for planning your training in the chapter “How to Plan Your Growth” of the book “Beyond Brawn - The Insider's Encyclopedia on How to Build Muscle & Might” by Stuart McRobert, in the article “The Importance of a Training Log” by Matt Danielsson and also in the “Measuring Progress” section of Muscle 101 site.

Jump to the Next Training Level: Intermediate’s Program

As a result of the beginner’s program that you have been using during the last months, your body has adapted to training and stress and you have mastered the groove of the movements. In addition, you have surely gained some muscle mass and strength. However, you feel that lately the progress seems to be slowing down a little. Now your muscles work more efficiently, so they can handle the workload easily than they used to be. This means that they are not stimulated enough, and for this reason, they grow slower, or perhaps they even stop growing altogether. To overcome this situation, now it is the time to jump to the next level of your bodybuilding training: the intermediate level. You can find in this post the basic guidelines that you must follow for designing your intermediate’s program.

As you’ve learned to use your muscles more efficiently, you require higher intensity for further progress, and consequently you will need more time to recover. Obviously, you cannot increase the intensity and train all your body-parts in the same day. For this reason, you probably will need to split your workouts so that you can focus more on specific muscle groups and train with the proper intensity all your body-parts. The obvious answer is to split the body into 3-4 different days, and extend the rest to allow for full recovery. A split option in a 3 day split workout can be, for example, push movements on day A, pull movements on day B and legs on day C. Train 3 days a week in non-consecutive days using, for example, the following pattern: ARBRCRR and give each body-part at least a full week of rest before training it again. Use three or four exercises per body-part, combining compound and isolation exercises for maintaining proportion and symmetry.

At this level it’s time for introducing periodization in your training. Combine heavy cycles (for strength training and muscle building) with light cycles (for endurance training). During heavy cycles focus on compound exercises and stay in the low rep range for hitting more fast-twitch fibers. During light cycles increase the isolation work for hitting the muscle from different angles and stay in the high rep range for hitting more slow-twitch fibers. In any case, maintain always perfect form and feel the contraction. Periodization will help you to avoid stagnation. In this sense, remember also varying your workouts every 4-6 weeks by altering one or more factors (i.e. number of reps, sets, tempo, exercise selection, etc.).

Of course, nutrition and rest are also very important in an intermediate program. Follow the general guidelines provided with the beginner’s program. Eat several small meals throughout the day (every 2.5-3 hours) including enough protein (1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight per day). In addition, drink plenty of water and sleep at least 8 hours per night.

Finally, keep in mind that you will probably never see the gains you got when you were a beginner. Although this may be slightly discouraging, you should mentally adjust to slower progress. With determination and consistency gains will still come, but slower than before.

These and other guidelines for developing your intermediate’s program can be found in the articles “Intermediate Training: You're not a ‘Newbie’ Anymore” and “Intermediate’s Bodybuilding Program” by Matt Danielsson and also in the article “Progression of Training” included in the I.C.E. Training Program developed by Big Cat.

Understand How Your Body Works: Metabolism

Metabolism (i.e. the process in which food is converted to provide energy and to produce and maintain cells and tissues) is a key concept for achieving a full comprehension of body physiology and being able to improve your bodybuilding program with this knowledge. This post exposes the basic issues for understating your metabolism.

Metabolism is mainly controlled by two hormones: insulin and glucagon. The most important role of these hormones is to regulate blood glucose levels, but also the fat storing/releasing process into/from the adipose tissue. Both insulin and glucagon are produced by the pancreas, but they have opposite biological functions. If one is secreted, the opposite hormone secretion is inhibited and vice versa.

All of the carbohydrates you eat are converted to glucose by the liver before being released into the bloodstream. After a meal your blood glucose level rises as carbohydrates are absorbed. In order to avoid reaching dangerous glucose levels, this rise in blood glucose triggers a release of insulin. Insulin decreases blood sugar by moving glucose into the muscle cells to be used as an energy source or to be stored as glycogen and also by storing glycogen in the liver. When the muscles cells and the liver are full or when a great amount of insulin has been released (because blood sugar levels have risen too quickly), insulin converts and stores as fat some of the glucose instead of storing it as glycogen. This occurs because insulin shuts down your fat burn capacity and activates your fat storage capacity.

Moreover, if insulin levels get too high, this causes too much glucose to be moved into cells, producing hypoglycemia (low blood sugar). This occurs, for example, when eating high GI carbohydrates. Initially your blood sugar level spikes, and then paradoxically insulin decreases it to a lower level than before. Normally, the body would compensate this by mobilizing some stored fat, but since insulin has switched off your fat burning capacity, this is not possible. Body solves this by breaking down muscle protein for energy, because it is the tissue that consumes more calories. In addition, maintaining high insulin levels over a long period of time (e.g. eating too many carbohydrates) reduces insulin sensitivity. This motivates releasing more insulin to reinforce the reduction of blood glucose level. This is very dangerous, since keeping in this state can lead to diabetes.

You can prevent muscle breakdown and increase your insulin sensitivity by limiting high GI carbohydrates from your diet (except just after your workout) and by training, because training depletes the stored glycogen in the muscle, so when glucose enters the bloodstream, you're not force-feeding the muscles, you're just feeding them something they want and need. This also justifies why it is good to eat high GI carbohydrates just after training.

Insulin is highly anabolic. It facilitates amino acid transport into muscle cells, and also blocks many catabolic processes and due to this it is one of the key factors determining your muscle growth. Hence it is advisable to create an insulin spike just after training in order to gain mass.

Glucagon is released when blood glucose levels become too low. This hormone aims to raise the glucose levels back to normal by preparing glycogen stores to be used for energy. In addition, glucagon has the effect of stimulating breakdown of body fat to be used for energy. Glucagon also shifts the metabolism from carbohydrate burning to fat burning.

You can complement the metabolism information in this post by reading the article “Blood Sugar & Insulin” by Matt Danielsson, the article “The Blood Sugar Hormones” by Derek Charlebois and the “Metabolism” section of Muscle 101 site.