A strong mid back is the key to having great posture while eliminating a lot of nagging injuries.
Developing a strong mid back is going to be the key to having great posture while helping eliminate a lot of nagging shoulder, neck and low back injuries. This will be especially true if you combine great mid back strength with great stabilization of your glutes and abs. The good news is by applying RBT into your workouts, you will be training your back, abs and glutes all at one time on almost every exercise.
Functional pulling should also develop strong hip and core stabilization. The fact is the stronger the hips and abs stabilize, the more pulling force you can generate through your key mid back muscles including your lats, rhomboids and serratus. The key is making sure you train your back on your feet as much as possible. By training on your feet you are able to use the ground to automatically activate your glutes and abs…no conscious thinking needed. It happens automatically.
RBT’s ascending variable resistance also teaches you how to set your mid back muscles, specifically your lats and rhomboids by making the muscle work harder at the end of the pull. When these muscles become strong at end range setting, your ability to sustain a strong upright posture becomes much easier, especially as fatigue sets in throughout a long work day. Plus, this setting or squeezing of the mid back muscles is what your shoulder needs to stay healthy with repeated pushing like with push ups, bench pressing or overhead pressing.
Lastly a strong mid back helps align your head and neck over your pelvis. This in turn eliminates nagging neck stiffness and muscle tension headaches that come with a slouching rounded shoulder posture. This often happens the more we sit behind a computer or perform front dominate tasks throughout the day.
Best Band Exercises for Absolute Back Strength
Heavy band squat rows will be the best band exercise to implement to develop absolute strength of your mid back. This exercise will allow you to challenge the muscles with higher levels of resistance while being able to get your glutes aggressively involved. Plus, you will really feel how you can set your mid back muscles at the end of the pulling motion. Plus, by attaching the band high, low or in the middle, you automatically can specifically train all 3 levels of the mid back.
Heavy Band Pulling Workout
Great Back Defining Auxiliary Exercises
The key to great back muscle definition and well functioning mid back muscles, is to make sure you train in multiple patterns of movement using varying resistance and rep counts. All of the following back auxiliary band exercises allow you to train in all 3 planes of motion. This includes rotation which you will find is the most important pattern of movement when it comes to developing awesome mid back muscle definition, mobility and postural strength.
Recommendations for Successful Long-Term Mid Back Development and Function
1. Challenge yourself to constantly change up your patterns of movement
The back muscle fibers are aligned in multiple directions. Therefore, it’s important to avoid constantly pulling in straight planes which most single pattern machines and free weights do. By using bands, you can easily change up patterns of pulling which will continually hit different muscle fibers while also improving mid back flexibility.
2. Train using single arm movements often
Pulling with one arm allows you to bring in rotation more while simultaneously challenging the opposite side butt muscles to stabilize. Anytime the butt muscles are aggressively activated, it instantly creates better mid back muscle activation and recruitment which we know is the key to better muscle definition.
Single Arm Back Training
3. Incorporate high rep volume training often
The mid back muscles are key postural muscles. As a result, they are endurance muscles that respond well to high rep volume training. By using RBT to train your back, you will quickly realize all the different exercise variations there are and how quickly you can move from one exercise to the other. This makes changing direction and volume training very achievable.
Back training complexes are a great way to high volume train
4. Take your arm muscle out of play
Looped bands eliminate having to grip a bar by placing the band on your wrist. Having the band attached at your wrist (versus having to grip a band or a weight) decreases the likelihood of using your biceps to pull and instead places a greater emphasis on pulling with your mid back muscles. Combining this technique with the thought of “trying to pull your elbows back with your mid back muscles” dials in even greater contraction of your mid back muscles.
Better Band Pulling Grip
5. Stay flexible, especially in the rotational plane
Make sure you incorporate band distraction stretching into your pre-workout warm up. If you want your mid back to become more defined you have to make sure muscles and joints are ready to maximally lengthen and move in all planes of motion before starting to strength train them. Plus, mobility is the key to keeping those shoulders healthy.
Band Distraction Stretching
Want to Start Training Your Back with RBT but Unsure Where to Start??
Here is a Great Place to Start!!!
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