 In this episode of Mind Pump, we talk about one of the most important body parts you could possibly train, both from a functional standpoint, in other words, training this area will make you move better and prevent pain, just as a normal human. But also from an aesthetic standpoint, looks, this body part is extremely important. We're talking about the back and we're talking about the four kind of segments or categories of exercises you should pick from when you're training your back. So we talk about rowing movements, pull down movements, extending tight movements, and movements that help you stabilize the spine to prevent injury and to develop an impressive, amazing looking back. But before the episode starts, I want to remind everybody that MAPS aesthetic is 50% off. Now this is our program designed specifically for people who work out to change the aesthetics of their body. People want to shape, sculpt, and build their body how they see fit. In other words, you can go into this program, it's fully laid out for you, and you can pick body parts and areas that you want to place more emphasis on so you can literally sculpt your body like a sculptor. Again, this workout program is 50% off. Here's how you get the discount. Go to MAPSBLACK.COM and use the code BLACK50BLACK50, no space for the discount. When you competed in the physique world, when you were in that whole space, what was the most important body part, the one body part that could either win competitions or lose competitions? Your back, for sure. Easy, right? No, no, no. For men's physique, I mean, of course, you can make a case for almost everything. Anything's really too bad. Yeah, but when you look at the average gym goer, somebody who has just good symmetry and they came in and they trained really hard for a year, you could get on stage and compete with amateur men's physique guys pretty well. If you did a good job of dieting and everything like that, just from a standard physique, meaning that you've trained pretty balanced in your chest, arms, shoulders, and everything. But I think the impressive backs is what really would separate all of us. When you would turn around, flare out your lats, you would be able to really exaggerate that shoulder to waist ratio, which they like that, that's what they're looking for. If you have a really impressive back, I mean, I think it's what won the shows that I won. I think for sure, when I looked at the other guy, I think sometimes the guy had better arms than I did or maybe a better impressive chest or abdominal region. Cavs? Yeah, better calves. Cavs are on the bottom of the list for sure for men's physique. Thank God. I got away with mine for sure. It's true for bodybuilding. It's true for bikini competition. It's true for women's display sports, figure, fitness. The back is like the, and it's funny because it's the one body part where it also makes an impact from the opposing side. So what I mean by that is, if I don't have nice looking hamstrings, you can't really tell from the front. It doesn't make a big difference. Your back actually makes a difference from the front too because it gives you that illusion of having the hip to waist ratio. Right, wideness. It's also made up of a bunch of muscles too. It's not just one muscle. Yeah, I know we call it like the back, but that is there are tons of muscles. Right. And so I think it just, it takes a ton of work to make it really impressive in comparison to chest or shoulders or arms. You could do a couple of exercises, just two exercises probably for the chest or the shoulders or the arms, and you can build a pretty impressive one. The back is not the case. The back takes a lot of separate attention to detail in order to build the chest. And you can watch what you're doing, you know, like with your chest and your arms and your abs and like it's really hard to, you have to feel your way through it and really connect with your back is a challenge for a lot of people because it's like, for some reason it's that neglected person behind you. No, that's a great point. How many, almost anybody can flex their bicep. Everybody's listening right now, you know, flex your bicep right now. Everybody could do that. Probably another 50 to 60% could flex their chest. It's super disconnected to the back. Right, right. Tell someone to flex your lats right now. And I bet you only a very small percentage of people could actually do that. Totally. Now, from an evolutionary standpoint, a strong, healthy back meant you were probably a pretty functional, strong and healthy person. When you look at Greek sculptures and Roman sculptures, when they're displaying muscular, you know, gladiators or athletes or gods, pay attention to the muscles that they placed special emphasis on and all of them, you turn them around and they have these very muscular, sinewy looking backs. When you look at people who work laborious jobs, who don't even lift weights, people who have to work hard physically for a living, the one part of their body besides maybe their hands that is well-developed is their back. In fact, you can almost always tell when you look at an athlete or I knew when I was in jiu-jitsu or wrestling, you know, if somebody had a muscular looking back, you know, it was a good guess for it. Yeah, it was a good guess that the person was probably going to be really strong. Well, you're making the case evolutionary speaking, but I think too like health, like in just longevity. And when you think about us, we're so anteriorly driven, right? You do everything in front of us. Everything's in front of us and we're rounding in the body. The body from literally almost the day we're born to the day we die is just closing up, closing up, closing up as we get older. And so to do stuff that addresses the posterior chain or your back side, like your back, helps, you know, protect or prevent you from rounding forward like that. So, you know, I think of it that way. Like, man, I talk about one of the most healthy things that we can do for ourselves for our overall posture is to develop your back. You see that right away just in presentation, right? Being nice and upright, like you need that back support to be able to keep everything in good alignment and be able to keep you tracking even with your shoulders especially. And number one area of chronic pain in Americans, and you can even extend this to the rest of the developed world, is the back. It's either low back pain or upper neck and shoulder pain, which comes from a lot of issues in the back. Those are the most common areas of pain, low back in particular. It's also, if I see somebody working out in the gym with some experience training, the one part of the body that I often see people doing it the wrong way without good form and technique is the back. In fact, one of the things I would do with a client who had worked out before is I would do my assessment. One of the things I'd do with them was be a cable row because it was an easy way for me to see what they did wrong and show them. Oh, this is actually how you do it the right way. And I'd blow their minds. So it's extremely important yet a very neglected part of the body, both because it's, we don't see it very often and also because we just don't know how to train it properly. And you're right, Adam, earlier you said you have to do a lot more things for the back. Totally true. Angles are far more important for training the muscles of the back than they are for training anything else, just because it's made up of so many different muscles. There's I think something like 11 superficial muscles and seven other would have considered deep muscles that make up the back. It's everything from the lats, the rhomboids, the traps, the erector spinae, you have the posterior deltoids, the stabilizing muscles like the QL and the transverse abdominis, which you can make the argument that that helps support the spine. The more common ones that we know about the lats, those are the the wings of your back. So when you look at someone's back and you see the width that they have, those are the lats. The rhomboids are in the middle of the upper back. The trapezius make up the middle and the upper part of the back. Erector spinae muscles that run up the spine that help strengthen, stabilize the spine. And then the other ones help with stabilization of the lower back and the core, which helps protect the lower back. So and those are just the popular ones that we know to train. We talked about the deeper muscle on stuff. It's a very big complex area. So it's important that you train your back with a few different ways or at least a few different things you need to consider when you train your back, because you can do a back workout with five different exercises, but they may all come from the similar category. And so although you're doing a lot of exercises, you are, you may be training your back in an unbalanced way, which can promote not just injury, but it just doesn't look as good. It's not aesthetic because there's lacking balance. And there's a lot of back exercises. But I think if we can break down how to train the back into categories of ways you can train your back, then people can pick exercises from each of those categories and make themselves a pretty well balanced. No, I think we should break it up in four major groups. And then from there, talk about what what's being done in that and then what exercises that we think are best that support that type of a movement. Perfect. So the most important action of the back, and I'm not saying it's it's not it's most important. The others aren't important. They're all important. But the one that most people should place special emphasis on is the rowing action of the muscles of the back. Okay. And the main reason why I say that's most important is because rowing the rowing action of the back directly counters some of the major major issues that we see in modern life where the shoulders roll forward. So oftentimes when I would get a brand new client and I'm just trying to work on, you know, better posture and trying to get them to move better, the the first exercises I do for back are rowing motions and rowing really constitutes obviously you're imagine you're standing up tall. It's taking something in front of you pulling it more towards your midsection pulling the shoulders back and the shoulder blades back at the same time. This was one that I, you know, if you're talking about having a client for the first time was incorporated into my assessment process, like a seated row was very revealing to see how their body, you know, had formed over the years and how, you know, their shoulder wasn't able to kind of stay in in its proper position and, you know, the strength there and connectivity there with the shoulder blade and being able to pull properly while, you know, keeping that shoulder isolated is something that's very important to then move forward. Perfect. This is so important that this is an exercise a lot of times that I did and didn't do like chest exercises like, you know, a bench press or a, you know, any sort of front delt raises or overhead pressing until I address this if I had a client who came in and they were advanced age and they just want to alleviate chronic pain and feel better and they don't really give a shit about their, you know, how much they bench press or, you know, balance muscle symmetry for looks. They just care about how they move. A lot of times I spent a lot of work working on like rows and kind of even leaving alone bench press for a while until they got to a place where they could really get themselves in a retracted position because some people are so tight and forward that if I do a Cedar row, then I follow that right back up with a bench press. They still, they're not in the position yet to even hold their body correctly. Right. Right. Now I think we should talk about proper row mechanics. And of course it changes from exercise to exercise within the rowing category, but generally speaking, proper row mechanics includes the obvious, which is pulling a bar or a cable or a machine from in front of you towards your midsection area. You can even include the chest. There's some high rows that allow you to do that. So you're pulling something to your body that's in front of you. So this involves using the biceps, pulling the weight back, but it also involves pulling the shoulder blades back and not allowing them to shrug too much or in some cases not at all. So it's not just pulling the weight back because I could technically pull a weight back without pulling my shoulders back. I could keep my shoulders forward and just pull a weight back in which case I'm not doing a proper row and I'm actually making things worse for both my posture and then of course my aesthetics. I'm not developing those mid upper back muscles like the mid traps and the rhomboids, which their action is to pull the shoulder blades back. And I will add this. You should be able to row at bare minimum as much as you can press in front of you. And I would say in more cases you should probably row more than you can press if you want healthy shoulders. If you want healthy shoulders, rowing is extremely important. Yeah, and back to what I was saying about my point because you just addressed it right there is a lot of people when they row. I think seated row is actually one of the most common exercises as far as done improperly, but looks to the average eye like I'm doing rows. Right, because they they're sitting upright and maybe they're not moving all over the place, but because they're rounded forward and they pull in, they end up using their arms and very little of their back gets engaged. And this is probably an area that I probably had to spend a lot more time in with most of my clients. I remember like being behind them and like sticking my knee in their back and pulling their shoulders, pulling their manually pulling their shoulders back to get them to understand what retracting the scapula felt like. And that takes a lot of work, man. If someone's never really done that before and isn't connected really well, we'd have to spend a lot of time in there. You know, I'd be rowing at least two, three times a week every week just to get that action familiarized with their body so that they could go do other movements like bench press. It's like trying to pinch just if you're listening right now, what does that mean? Imagine if there's a pencil between your shoulder blades. Yes, put my fingers right there. Yeah. And try to squeeze your shoulders black like you're trying to hold the pencil with your shoulder blades while you are not shrugging your shoulders. If this is a hard area for you, you know, a movement for you, what you'll find is as you squeeze back, you'll shrug at the same time. We don't want you to shrug too much when you're doing rows. I want you to focus more on the pulling back, the pinching back of their shoulder blades. That's a very important part of rowing. Now, when I started working out, luckily I trained during the the and I was into bodybuilding as a kid, right? Because I wanted to build lots of muscle. I trained during the Dorian Yates era. Now, Dorian Yates for the people who don't know that as he was a Mr. Olympia, I think it was five time or six time Mr. Olympia. And he was known for having this incredible back. That's what got him to win all of his competition. So of course, because he's the champion and because his best body part is back. Everybody wanted to know what exercises did Dorian Yates do to develop that amazing back. So here I am as a kid. I don't know much about exercise. All I'm doing is I'm listening. I'm reading what the top body builders are doing and Dorian Yates was a huge fan of rows. In fact, that was his core exercise. He either did a hammer strength iso rows, the machine you can find in some gyms, or he would do barbell rows, either with the forward hand grip or with a reverse grip or what's known as a supinated grip or your palms face forward. So luckily for me as a kid, the back exercises that I did the most to start out with were rows. Loved rows and my favorites are your good old fashioned barbell row, both with your hands forward and back. And if you do it right, boy, does that. That is such an effective and amazing back exercise. I don't know if I'd start there, though. Don't any clients people should start somewhere else. I like T bar rows better there for a client. So because it their their trunk is stabilized with his chest pad. Yeah. With a chest pad, because then all I have to do is work on them being able to retract versus doing a barbell row requires you to be able to understand how to hinge at the hips and stabilize in that play and then pull your shoulders and then pull your shoulder back. So it's a little bit more complex for the average gym goer. So it's not the first place I start a seated row and a T bar row, I think, is training most all clients. That's the place to start off to get them to really understand how to do that. But eventually we want to progress to where we're doing some barbell or dumbbell rows. Yeah, the dumbbell rows, too. It's like so that's a whole other thing, too, where I'm trying to make sure that they're they know to keep their body and their hips from turning and like so they're anti rotating at the same time. So there's there's a little bit more to that in terms of how to keep your body tight, keep it in the same position, be able to also perform that action that we're trying to teach you through those simple moves. So I like those ones preceding the dumbbell row for that reason because it is you're going to get that, you know, pull left to right, which if I'm if I'm rowing right if I'm dumbbell rowing right here, I'm actually doing it with with rotation. I'm if I'm going to do I'm going to save anti rotational movements for like when we're doing stabilization type stuff, that's where I would if I'm talking rowing exercises, how I teach a dumbbell row here is more I allow rotational movement through the trunk. And if I'm teaching stabilization stuff and doing rows, then I'm doing anti rotation. I love showing that I love doing dumbbell rows as one of the first exercises that I would have with a client for their back. And the reason why I like doing this is I found that it was easier, easier to teach this bringing the shoulder up and back with the dumbbell row because I would allow them to do exactly what you said, Adam, I would let them do a little bit of rotation. So let's say somebody has their knee in their hand on a bench to do a dumbbell row. I'll tell them, all right, pull the dumbbell up to the side of your midsection and then turn up while you're doing that. I want you to rotate just a little bit. So you bring your shoulder up and I put my hand behind their shoulder and say, all right, touch my hand with your shoulder. Inevitably, that would mean that they'd also retract the shoulder a little bit and get some of that moving a little more range of motion that way too. Yes. And it would feel more natural for them. So I love dumbbell rows for that reason. And dumbbell rows are one of those rare exercises that is both beneficial for beginners, but also extremely beneficial for advanced people. In fact, the dumbbell row has got to be one of the staple rowing exercises that you do to develop your back. So I would go seated row, T-barrow, dumbbell row. And then you got your barbell rows where now if you're bringing a barbell to your lower the lower part of your body where elbows are closer to your body, you are going to work different parts of your back and get maybe a little bit more lats. If you're smart, if you bring it up towards the chest, you're going to in your elbows flower out a little bit. Now you're getting more of the upper back and the rear part of your shoulders or rear deltoid. In fact, one of the best exercise I've ever done for the back of my shoulders is a wide grip elbows out row. In fact, I found that even more effective than your traditional reverse flies that people would do. Yeah, well, now you got to talk about when people neglect rows, what does their back look like? Oh, it has no depth. Yeah, muscularly speaking, three dimensional. Muscularly speaking, you don't have that mid back depth to your back. Now, functionally speaking, it looks like forward shoulder. It looks like, you know, even if you do lots of other exercise, but you neglect rows, you might have a wide back, but your shoulders come forward and it's flat. There's no depth to your back. So if you're a female and you're wearing a dress where your back is cut out and you don't do any rows, you're not going to have that mid back, you know, crease that goes down the, you know, the spine or whatever work kind of dips in and gives you that nice that the diamond at the top of your back, because that's where that thick that thickness comes with that three dimensional look comes from that diamond, which is the the traps and the the rhomboids from getting developed from you doing things like rows. So you miss out on that. So I like the definition of it. You miss out on the thickness or the the depth of the back by not doing rows aside from how bad that is for you just over. I think when you think of exercises that the average population needs to be doing more of row has to be up there with that's number one or two. Yeah, right. It has to be the top two or three, I was going to say for the dress is so many things right because we've talked at nauseam that most people suffer from some sort of upper cross syndrome if it's not really, really bad, everybody has a little bit of it. And so a movement like that really totally helps with all of the issues that you're dealing with with with upper cross syndrome. Oh, totally. So I would consider rowing to be probably the most important, generally speaking, you know, segment of movements that you should choose from to do when you do your back workout. So this includes is all types of rows, machine cable and free weights. But we name some of our favorites, though some type of a rowing movement should be a part of your regular back workout. Now, the second segment, the second, second category of exercises. I think this one's easy. It's a close second because it's also extremely important. It's just, you know, generally speaking, not as important I would say is rowing, but it's still very important is doing being able to do a pull up or a pull down that motion where your arms are up above your head, and you're pulling weight down or pulling your body up, you're simulating a pull up. It's a very important action of the of the back muscles. And I think it goes back to our roots as primates who are able to climb trees and pull ourselves up over things. The the and you really work the lats of the back effectively with pulling down or pull up movements of that. That's the main area. And that skill is important, right? Just functional speaking like there. How many times will you have something that's above your head and you have to either pull your own body weight up or grab and pull down like I just feel like that's one of those movements that, you know, if you don't use it, you'll lose it. And it's important that we incorporate that. And ideally, I want to be at a place where I can I have the strength to pull my body weight up. That's where I want I want to be at. But if I'm not there, then a regression to that is doing things like you said, the lap. It goes hand in hand with overhead press. I mean, you want that to counteract and to balance out your shoulder. So you have that longevity in your shoulder joints. So you don't end up, you know, with this over usage type injuries in the end, you know, detracking from where your shoulder position should be. Oh my God, I'm so glad you said that, Justin, when I would get clients who could not reach straight up above their head, which is common. It's common fact. If you're listening right now, you might think this doesn't apply to me. It might go up against the wall, put your butt up against the wall, your heels up against the wall, your shoulders against the wall. Don't let your back arch too much. Keep your back flat against the wall. Try and reach straight up above your head while keeping your whole arm in contact. Well, you might not be able to do that. You might find yourself compensating by arching your back and leaning back and very difficult. So what I would do with clients like that, which was actually more common than you think, is one of the ways they'd get them to get their arms to go above, is I would do pull down movements. Why? Because they're not having to push their arms up. They're pushing down, but they're allowing the bar to pull them up into that range of motion. It's actually a very important part of being able to get your arms up above your head without any pain. Now, from an aesthetic standpoint, I mean, pulling down works the lats. That the latissimus dorsi. The wings. Those are two, those are some of the biggest muscles of the upper body. They gave, they give the back, the meat on the sides and the lower part that the wing aspect of it, super, super prized in bodybuilding physique competition competitions and other type of physique presentation type sports. Very, very important. Now, here's the thing. It's hard to feel the lats when you do a pull down or a pull up for a lot of people. That's a very difficult thing to feel. So technique is very important. Now, just pulling yourself up, you're going to use some lats, of course, but you can do it in a way to where you use more arms than you do lats. So form is very, very important. And I remember the first time I did these right. You know, I was a kid and I did pull downs and I was working out with someone who knew what they were doing and they said, hey, pull your chest to the bar. You know, pull your chest up to the bar, squeeze your shoulders, bring your scapula down, your shoulder blades down, stick your chest up as you're pulling down and then watch what happens. And all of a sudden I felt these lats start to activate. And I thought it would blew my mind. Not only that, but you instantly all of a sudden feel stronger because all of a sudden you engage the bigger muscles to help you out. And we were probably pulling more with your arms before, which are such a small muscle and fatigue early. Totally. I was doing, you know, chin ups and pull ups and stuff. And I just my arms would get really sometimes it takes like that last like one to two inches, you know, that you've been neglecting in that range of motion for you to really finally get that sensation. Like it's been crazy. Now that cue was the most ultimate cue ever for me. And I wish I remember where where I first picked it up. But man, once I picked that up and I started teaching that to my clients, that was a game changer. And I would set a client at the the lat pull down machine. And because here's the thing that's when you're a trainer and you're watching someone do a lat pull down and you can see that they're just rolled forward and they're pulling down with their arms. You see this in the gym all the time, probably one of the most common things. Totally. Right. It's like the number one machine people gravitate to and they do it wrong. Right. And they pulled all down with their arms. I used to love to let them do it the way they are doing it. And then I'd catch the bar and stop it. And I'd hold it about six to eight inches away from them, knowing that they could drive in further. I said, OK, now do not pull it down anymore. Pull your chest up to the bar and from that position. And then also they whoop, they put themselves. Oh my God, I feel that. Right. And then I said, now drive back and squeeze. Oh, whoa. Yes. That's what you want to do. People did it so wrong. In fact that this is common that they'll roll forward as they do a pull down. So the chest will come forward, shoulders come forward. And then they'll turn the last half of the pull down into a tricep press down. You've seen that, right? Where they pull the bar down and it comes all the way down. And really what they're doing there, and here's the thing with pull down type movements, pull down type movements have the potential to really make your posture bad to make it worse. Because if you're doing a pull down with forward shoulder, you are making your forward shoulders strong. Yeah. You're like strengthening that position to the point where reinforcing that shrimp posture. Totally. Now the best exercise in this category of exercises, in my opinion, has got to be a pull up. A pull up done properly is one of the king top exercises you can do for your upper body. It's just one of the best. And I want to make a point of saying something that I didn't I didn't really start doing this till way later on. And I wish I would have I would have early. And that was, you know, if I couldn't do more than, you know, five or eight pull ups, it was like, oh, that's all I just go to that. That's all I, you know, pull up to and then I rest and then do it again. Versus doing sometimes singles doubles or triples weighted. That was heavy. Yeah, that was something that really helped me progress my body weight pull ups that I wish I had that in my arsenal early on that I give as a tip when we talk about pull ups because you know, I get we talk about the benefits that on the show a lot. And I get a lot of DMs of people asking me about pull ups and, you know, how do I increase the amount of reps? And one of the best things that I ever did was actually being OK with only doing one or two or three reps but with some weight underneath me and then getting used to that. And then I dropped away and then all of a sudden I could rep out five, 10 more pull ups, body weight pull ups that more than I could before. I'm glad you said that the back responds once you have good form. I want to say that. I don't want to make sure I say that once you have good technique and form. The back responds exceptionally well to heavy weight. This isn't true for every single body part. And I think all body parts should be challenged with heavy weight at some point. But of course that being relative. But the back just seems to do if you have really, really good form and you do heavy rep, four rep rows or a heavy, you know, three, four rep pull ups, you're going to get strong. But you also will develop a lot of muscle in the back. In fact, when you look at athletes that are just strength athletes and they don't really care about building muscle or hypertrophy, at least that's not their primary goal. They're just trying to get stronger. The one area they almost all have well developed is the back. The back just does. And for me, I'm the same. Look, I love heavy lifting. I loved it more than body building. So I spent a lot of time in that one area of my body that developed really well was my back and is because it just responds. And I think it's funny. We have sayings like, you know, you carry the world on your back or you put you put everything on your back. I mean, that's a part of your body. It's, you know, dare I say designed to be able to handle heavy loads. So once you've got really good form, almost all back exercises you can train in a kind of heavy fashion. But the number one exercise for this category, definitely pull ups. It's my favorite. There's two kind of pull ups you could do. There's a wide grip pull up and a close grip pull up. I'll say this for most people, you should start with a generally, you know, kind of medium to close grip when you do your pull ups. Wide grip pull ups require better control, stability and the risk of injuries much higher. But that being said, if you get good at wide grip pull ups, boy, do you get amazing lat activation. I do like that. I like the neutral grip kind of starting there and then like sort of incrementally making my way out wider and wider as a go, you know, with clients because it is like extremely challenging, you know, that wide grip position to do a pull up. It is. And I say so many shoulder injuries happen from people doing those when they probably shouldn't. You get that more of the they say, you know, back in the day, they would say it hits more of the width of the lats. I don't know if that's necessarily true, but I do seem to feel it more in the higher part of my lat. Remember, that's a big muscle with lots of lots of attachments along the spine. I do tend to feel it more in the higher part of my lat than the more lower part where I'll get the close grip. I think that might have to do more with the stretch. I get at the top with the close grip. Well, speaking of that, that reminds me of another movement that I think is overlooked and falls in this category and I think is an incredible movement is then a dumbbell pullover. Oh, yeah. Doing a pullover, man. I tell you what, that you're talking about the meaty part of the lap feeling it there. That's probably one of the best exercises that I can feel. Oh, that stretch is real, man. Yeah, I'm glad you said that because you can put it in this category of pulling down even though you're not technically pulling something down. If you look at the action of the of the upper arm because with a pullover, your arm is fixed, right? So you're pulling over your body. But if you watch just the upper arm, it's doing the same motion as a pull down. So you're still working a similar, a very, very similar movement. Love dumbbell pullovers. What about, you know, you're all your cable pull down exercises? I think pull downs with the cable. Most people are probably going to start there. As you know, pull up is very difficult for most people to do period doing a pull up with good form even more difficult. So pull down with your different right. And pull down allows you to queue like we just we were talking about, right? We are going through this whole teaching to pull the chest up to the bar, try teaching somebody a pull up for the first time and then also teaching them to pull the chest of the bar. Most of them are too weak to even be able to do that. So a great place to teach the mechanics of the back are we named the first one before seated row, I think, for rowing movements and then the lap pull down for pulling movements. Right? Oh, and in one other exercise and I like this one, you can do it for bodybuilding purposes, but also for correctional exercise purpose is a straight arm pull down. Now, I was familiar with this exercise early on because this was a popular exercise among bodybuilders. But then later on, I worked with a physical therapist and I watched a physical therapist do this, what I thought was a pure bodybuilding exercise with her clients who had shoulder problems due to forward shoulder. So I asked her afterwards and I said, why are you doing a straight arm pull down and she would use a rope oftentimes? Why are you doing this exercise with people who have forward shoulder? It's a lat dominant exercise and is that really the best exercise? And she'd say, well, you'll notice that the bottom of the movement, I'm definitely having them do the straight arm pull down but at the bottom of the movement I'm having them focus on pinching their shoulders back. And she said, you're right, there's not a lot of resistance on those muscles but what it's teaching is it's teaching them to activate their lats while pulling the shoulder blades back. So really it was about teaching the movement pattern which I thought was totally brilliant and from that day forward when people had shoulder problems due to forward shoulder I would always include a straight arm pull down as part of their exercise repertoire which would help with that shoulder back position. And for the trainers in the audience that are listening right now when you do movements like that it's more about the movement than it is the weight, right? So if a client's doing a weight and they're like, oh, this is light for me, that's okay. We're trying to perfect this movement and this pattern down more than I am trying to progress you in weight. And so knowing that when you're teaching something like GVAT that is trying to combat something that is a problem in their posture 100% focus on the movement of it the squeeze and the isolation portion of the exercise more than trying to oh, you can do five more pounds that was easy for you. Totally. Now another category of movements for strengthening and working the back I guess we could call extend, right? Extension. So this is basically from extension it's like it could be hip extension. If you load it properly, hip extension will definitely work and strengthen the back. A deadlift will fall into that category. Or it could be lumbar extension where you're rounding the back and coming up. I don't recommend that for a lot of people but at some point that is an action that you can where basically extension is from bending over to coming up straight. That's really all it is. And in fact, you take the average person and you ask them work your back and the average person has no idea that a pull down a row works the back but they do know that when they bend over and come up. Yeah, they feel it in their back. Yeah, that's using the muscles of the back. Well, and I would make the case for this being the most important. I mean, and for many reasons not just for overall posture but even just the amount of muscle mass that you can put on doing a movement like a deadlift. We've been in this and it's funny because as we're going through this and we're talking about each movement and what muscles are being worked. You know, and there's a lot of camps that would talk about, you know, oh, the row is the best way or pull down to isolate the lats or develop the lats. And there's some truth to that because it's easier to connect to those movements that are more isolating. But I would make the case that nothing will put more mass and more muscle on your back than like a deadlift and extension exercise. I totally agree and I think it's just part of it is just the sheer amount of weight that you end up lifting. You know, with a deadlift you could, I could get most everyday men, average guys to deadlift over 300 pounds. You know, if you're good, relatively good health and you've got good joint health and all that stuff, most men I can get them to pull over 300 pounds off the floor. They will never be able to handle 300 pounds with any of the free weight exercise. Yeah, or even a lat pull down or a row. Not even close, not even close. So that amount of load on the body just has a tremendous muscle building effect in the body. I, you know, it's funny, I've had a lot of friends who've competed in physique and bodybuilding or friends who are just interested in training for the way they look. And I would make the case for, because many of them neglect deadlifts. They neglect this form of this part of the back exercises and I'd make the case over and over and then they would do it and they'd come back and be like, whoa, blue, blue me. I remember when Adam went crazy with deadlifts while he was competing and his back totally changed. You know, somebody who trained for years and then you did deadlifts and. I can really see it now because I watched what it did for me. Now I can look at a men's physique or a classic bodybuilding guy who's competing and fell in that trap of don't do squats and deadlifts, it's gonna make your waist wider. And so they do all the other exercises. Some of them have an incredible physique and I'm thinking of a single friend of mine in particular that's a pro that, you know, he looks amazing on stage but he's missing something and I feel like it's his back. I think his backs are one and lost in shows and when you look at his symmetry and his body everywhere else, it looks amazing. He turns around and for as much muscle he has everywhere else, his back looks okay. And I think it's cause he doesn't do any deadlifting. He totally neglects deadlifting to do all the isolation exercises. Well, Neff, we're talking about strength too. I mean, this is the ultimate base of support. This is the foundation that you can build, you know, so many directions off of like that specific type of a movement there to be able to protect the spine and to be able to, you know, build that much muscle mass, you know, to support your whole body. I mean, the deadlift is superior. It's the probably the most primal way, the most primitive first ways that humans ever displayed heavy lifting strength. Think about it, like lifting something that's heavy off the ground and having to move it. Yeah. That's like the most. That's like the most dinosaur, like caveman thing we can do. When it comes to strength for sure, right? Like, I mean, there's lots of movements that are, you know, foundational. There's lots of movements that can be considered primal. But is there anything that's more connected to just heavy strength than picking something up and lifting it and moving it somewhere? You know, whether you kill, you know, a gazelle and you got, oh, I got to lift that up. I got more, I got to move this rock. We're ready to build something. You got to lift something off the floor. It's a very, very, very important movement. Well, it's also when you, you know, we've gone, we're going through these categories and we're making the case for, you know, what rowing, what muscles that activates and it's working. When you think of a deadlift, it literally wakes up every aspect of your back. Totally. Every aspect. There is not a muscle that is not having to be in your back that is not having to light up in order to pull 300 plus pounds up off the ground. Just not happening. You could do a lot of all the other movements that we talked about and leave out portions of your back by isolating that part of the back. But why, and again, I think that's what makes the case for why it's such a great muscle builder, aside from the sheer amount of weight that you can lift off the ground like your points out, but also that it incorporates. Your brand, yes, asking so much out of it. Wakes up everything. It is. And if you do back extension type movements like deadlifts or back extensions or good mornings properly, if you do them all properly, you get strong and comfortable doing those. It's the single best way of bulletproofing your back. Now I'm not saying you're gonna have a bulletproof back. I'm saying of all the other individual possible things you could do to make your back impervious to pain or to prevent any type of low back pain, especially, it's back extension type movements. Now, of course, a combination of movements is ideal to prevent low back injury or pain, but I'll get, look, Doug is a great example. Doug hired me because his chiropractor sent him to me because he would occasionally, but relatively consistently, injure his low back. One of the exercises that I made sure to get Doug really good at was the deadlift. And when we got good at the deadlift, Doug's back never got hurt again. It just, you just never heard it. It got really, it got impervious. And I remember when I first started training, I was like, are you sure I should be lifting something off the ground? Like that's- Well, let's talk about that a little bit because I think that's important. It's probably a hotspot for a lot of people. You know, most low back pain is chronic pain, right? It's due to some sort of an imbalance, poor posture, them carrying their weight on their body. Predative bad mechanics. Right, all day long. And so they had this chronic low back pain. Well, when you do things like deadlifting, back to my point of it, wakes up every single muscle. Not just the ones that we were talking about. A lot of those internal ones, like your transversa dominus, that supports the spine. And so if those get really strong, strong enough to where they could support 200 or in Doug's case, 400 something pounds coming off the ground, well, your daily tasks that you deal with, the amount of strength and support that all those internal and external muscles that helps support the spine have now been developed on a whole nother level. And so that's really where the bullet proofing your low back comes from, is because you're doing movements like the deadlift that trains all those internal muscles, including all the ones, the big ones that we were talking about. Man, talk about totally supporting the spine and why that's so important. Right, I mean, if you can deadlift, you know, 300 pounds off the ground with good form and technique, you know, what are the odds you're gonna hurt your back when you bend over to tie your shoe or pick up, you know, a jug of water off the ground. Or you have 50 pound bag of dog food, which is like a realistic thing that you're gonna end up having to do. Exactly, exactly. Well, another exercise I like to put in the back extension or the extend category that is, you're starting to see more people do it now, but it was extremely unpopular for a long time. In fact, if you were seeing doing this exercise at any point prior to 10 years ago, they might even kick you out, is a good morning. And a good morning is an old school classic extension exercise. Now to do it right, and I'm pretty sure we have a video on our YouTube channel of Good Mornings. We have it in our programs too. We do, and we do. So yeah, hopefully we have that in our catalog and Jack can put that in the show notes where you'll find some of these exercises. But a good morning, first off, you're bending at the hips, not at the spine. So your spine is staying stable, but you are extending. You are bending over with a weight on your back. The reason why I like Good Mornings is because Good Mornings help emphasize the shoulders pin back, squeeze position while bending over. So it's like teaching good posture as you're bending over because if you have bad posture standing straight up, when you bend over, your posture's even worse. The point is to maintain rigidity in your back. And so that way, that then again translates to other movements where you could know to stabilize when you need to stabilize. And of course, this puts you in a compromising position to where if you weren't tense, when you need to be tense, it could be compromising. But again, this is an exercise that's great for that and also builds a lot of strength around that. Yeah, there was a, there's a debate as to whether or not a reverse hyper, reverse hyper extension really strengthens the back. But what's interesting is years ago, and I think, what's that power? Louis Simmons, who has one of the most well-known powerlifting camps of all time, he invented it. He went backwards on a back extension machine to help fix his low back. And in fact, it did. And he went on to break more world records. And it has since become a staple among powerlifters specifically to prevent low back problems. So I know the prime movers there are more gluten hamstring, but when it comes to strengthening the muscles that support the low back, I love reverse hypers. And I think it's a safer version of an extension than a traditional back extension for most people. Or a good morning for that part. Yeah, exactly. Good morning is a safer, yeah. But you guys made the case for good mornings here in extension. And I get it, because you're extending the body. But those, to me, fall in the last category, which is the stabilization phase of training the back. Because you're really keeping the back as concentration. Yeah, the back is in an isolated position, right? When you do a good morning, you retract the shoulder blades. You keep it in a fixed position. And then you're just hinging at the hips, right? The hips are just sliding back. And then the weight is having to be supported by the back. But there is no real movement going on. But again, what an incredible exercise for the back. And we make the case for it. But that also makes the case for what we've talked about on the show a bunch, which is isolation exercises, which I think are neglected a lot of the times by people. And that's an example of a strength type of stabilization exercise because the back is being stable and not moving, but then you're hinging at the hips and then you can load it. So what an incredible exercise, in my opinion, for the stabilization part of the back. Yes, I would agree. Now, one thing we forgot to mention was what does your back look like? If you don't do a lot of pull downs, you're gonna look narrow, you're gonna have a narrow back. If you don't do a lot of extension exercises, like a deadlift, you're probably gonna have just less general strength in muscle in your back and definitely lack depth. Now, as far as stabilization is concerned, Adam, extremely important. Now, here's why. If I took out your spine outside of your body and I tried to stand it straight up on something, it would fold and flop over. It's made up of many, many, many different joints. It's one of the most, from that perspective, mobile parts of your body because your spine is this, it's this big thing with lots of little segments that can move in different directions. Big caterpillar. And in between each of these segments is a disc and the spine protects the spinal cord and all that stuff. Now, why is the low back, or why is the back, in general, the number one place that people feel pain? Because there's so many different ways to move wrong in the spine. And because, really, the spine needs to be stable while you do a lot of different things. Most movements that you do, that where you're lifting weight, moving or whatever, what you really want your spine to do is just to stay strong and stable and not allow the spine to move in a range of motion that's supported then by its end range of motion. In other words, you don't want your spine to fold and then what stops it from folding is the bones or the spine itself. You want the muscles to be able to do that and that requires a lot of stability. And this category is the most neglected. Stabilization is the most neglected part. It's also one of my favorites to teach because you take somebody, even an advanced lifter who's been lifting for a really long time, and you take some of the movements that you're about to talk about right now in this phase and you incorporate them into somebody's routine and you'll see even somebody who's really advanced really start to, you'll see their numbers go up out of nowhere because I really feel like this is part of the foundation of wanting to build a mast about it. You want to have a really solid, stable support system that you then pile on all the other exercises and things we're saying. So technically, this should kind of be in the first port, right? This should have been like, if we were to order these in priority, I could make the case that this is probably the highest priority before row and then row comes next. It is in terms of importance. Now, the reason why I don't typically train first with a lot of these exercises is because when I have a person who doesn't work out and then I have them do like a farmer walk, which I would consider a farmer walk to be one of the best exercises to stabilize. They don't have good posture to stabilize. So I have to pull your shoulders back, tighten your core. They can't do any of that. So I have to go through and work rows and I got to work pull downs and I got to work extension. Then when I'm like, okay, everything looks like it's moving right, now I can have you walk with weight to do the stable, is it? Cause you need all those to work at once. You do. And that's my favorite exercise, farmer walk. And I did not do, I did farmer walks for fun back in the day, usually to show off if I had, you know, if I was working out with my cousins and I'd be like, well, so you can hold these dumbbells and walk the furthest or whatever. And really it was because I had a strong grip, but I never really trained them until I did maps strong. So we created the program map strong with a strongman competitor. And strongman competitions include typically holding something and carrying it something heavy. So they do a lot of farmer walks as part of the training. So it was in the program, I followed the program and I could not believe the muscle development I got from stabilizing. It wasn't, I wasn't doing any rowing, wasn't doing pull down. I just had a trap bar that was heavy. I got up to 500 pounds I think and I walked. Well, think about, you know, moving, moving with heavy weights, like all that's entailed with that, like your body really has to work over time to really protect your spine because it's, you know, like any like sudden adjustment and momentum that you have to slow down, speed up, like your body has to be able to react on the fly. And so to that point and to be able to like farmer walk a course, like it's gonna go ahead and build all those stabilizer muscles like nothing else. In fact, I would say this, and I earlier I said, you know, deadlifting, do it right. It's one of the single best things you can do to make your back bulletproof. Now, some people may be listening and be like, I'm strong at deadlift. I can lift 500 pounds off the floor, six, and I always hurt my back. What the hell? I thought you said it could make myself bulletproof. Here's why. You lack stabilization in particular in the muscles that support lateral stabilization like your QL, your quadratus lumborum. And I've experienced this myself where I'm coming up with a heavy deadlift and the weight shifts just a little bit. Just a little bit. That's all it takes. Just a little tiny shift in your compromise. And I'm so strong in lifting the weight but I'm not strong enough to support the lateral, you know, sides of the weight or whatever. Boom, I hurt my back. I had to drop the weight. What did I do? Exercises that work on stabilization strengthen the quadratus lumborum, which is a muscle that sits on the side of the spine and keeps the sides really, really low. So now you wanna dive in and emphasize that. We do the same thing in terms of like a farmer walk, we just add one. So it's more of a suitcase carry, right? You know, we really have to accommodate and for the fact that you're loaded on that one side, the other side has to keep everything upright. It puts a lot of demand there. This is also where, you know, earlier when you were talking about rows, this is where I would place that for that exact purpose. You wanna strengthen that. Well, try doing a dumbbell, single dumbbell row but not allowing any sort of rotation going on. So you actually resist the rotation and put emphasis on that part of the motion. So I'll let them rip the heavy weight up and then as they go down, they really resist it and keep the core stable and keep the hips stable and don't allow any sort of rotation in their shoulders and their low back keeping the spine still. That right there will do wonders for training. Oh yes, I love suitcase carries or basically, I mean, you explain it better, just walking with one dumbbell on one hand. But really the form looks like this. Your goal is to try and stand as straight as possible. Don't let the dumbbell pull you down to the side. Don't stick your other arm out to balance yourself. If you have to do all that, you're going too heavy. Go light and walk with one dumbbell and try to stay as straight as possible. The muscles on the opposite side of your body that stabilize your spine get an exceptional workout when you do that. Now you were making the case, Sal, that you wouldn't start here because most people couldn't do it, but I still would start here. I just wouldn't start on the, our favorite movements as far as this. I would start with things like the plank. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Floor Cobra. That's a good point. Yeah, so this is still. That's still stabilization. Right, this is still foundational for me and for someone who couldn't handle a farmer walk or a suitcase carry yet, you'd be doing things like their planks or side planks and regular planks or active planks is what you would be doing to build that support system or foundation that I think pretty much everybody should at least start there. Now, if you're somebody who already can plank and do those movements and you have a pretty good support system, then I think, okay, I could start this person with heavy farmer carries or suitcase carries, but I still think that this is laying the foundation for the back first, then the row to improve upon that and build and then moving down to the other. No, that's a good point. Another thing I would do for counter rotation, stabilization would be I would do other exercises, but I do them standing and I'd have the person use a cable or a band and their goals to stay rigid. So like I could do like a chest press even one arm, chest press where they're standing tall, brace the core, stabilize everything, don't move your body, just do the chest press with one arm. And what's happening with the stabilization of muscles of the back or around the back, especially around the lower back is they're bracing. They're stabilizing and they're preventing the rotation from happening that naturally wants to happen when you're pressing away. And that was just, it was amazing for protecting or helping to protect my client's low back, but I do like the plank. That's a, I forgot all about. In fact, the plank, that's really the benefit of the plank is to increase the stability around the spine. Well, I think this is an area too that I neglected was just hitting even my abs. Even though your abs are on the other side of the body, you talk about supporting the low back for you to be able to do these types of movements. I think it's an area that can get neglected. So doing all core and ab type work to help support in this whole stabilization process that we're talking about that, I think most all people should be starting in before they progress. If you look at a skeleton, okay? And you look at a full skeleton, right? You have the rib cage, which comes around. So the rib cage offers front support to the back. Okay, to the upper back. So not full support. You still need lots of muscle strength. But when you're looking at the upper part of the spine, you get the rib cage that kind of comes off of it and then comes along in the front. So that's additional support for the upper spine. The low back, look at the skeleton. The, all of a sudden the rib cage is gone, just spine. It's just low back spine. So what is in front of that that's supporting the, that's helping to stabilize that part? Well, it's all the muscles of the front side of your core, abs, internal and external obliques and one muscle in particular, the transverse abdominis. The transverse abdominis is muscles that are underneath all those other muscles of the core. And when you, the way you tense that muscle up is like, if you're standing up right now, suck in your stomach. That's it, that's a TVA. That muscle right there is like your natural weight belt and that'll help stabilize the spine. So that's why sometimes people don't get it. They think, oh, why do I have to strengthen my core to strengthen my back? My low back hurts, that's behind me. Well, because there's nothing in front stabilizing but those muscles, that's why those are so important. Now, what does it look like when you have poor stability or you don't stabilize your back? Injury. Injury, it looks like injury. Pretty obvious. So, and you know why I said, you know why this is important to understand? Because I could look at somebody, you could look at someone and have they have a muscular back. They've got good width. So they obviously do lots of pull downs. They've got good depth and thickness. They obviously do lots of rows, lots of muscularity overall from dead lifts and those kinds of things. But why do they keep hurting? Why do they keep hurting themselves? Why do they have to wear their weight belt everywhere else in life on top of that? Totally, totally. It's because lack of stabilization. So you might not be able to see it muscularily, although I'll make the case that injury obviously can't build muscle when you're injured. But besides that lack of stability in the spine, it looks like injury. So you can't really necessarily see it, but you'll feel it if you don't, if you neglect that. For sure. And with that, go to mindpumpfree.com and download all of our resources and guides for free. We have guides on squatting. We have guides on training your arms, your shoulders, your chest, your core, pretty much everything you can want all for free at mindpumpfree.com. You can also find the three of us on Instagram. You can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin. You can find me at Mind Pump Sal and Adam at Mind Pump Adam.