Sensible Fitness

at 4:09 AM Labels: Exercise

If you want to have a strong back, decrease your chances of getting a back injury, and want to have a strong core, you must work on your back muscles and exercise them regularly. Many people think that working the core only involves doing abdominal workouts. While exercising the abdominal muscles is essential to having a strong core, it is only one of the many factors playing a role in building your core. The anatomy of the back musculature is designed so that they work in harmony with the abdominal muscles, not to mention that they also stabilize the upper hamstrings.

Every time you pull a weighted object toward you, you are working your back and biceps. As a result there are numerous back exercises. And all of them without exception also indirectly work your biceps. In this section, I want to show you my favorite back exercises.

The first and the hardest of all back exercises is the pull-up and its no-less-evil sister exercise the chin-up. The pull-up works mostly the upper back muscles and secondarily the biceps, whereas the chin-up works primarily the biceps and also the back.

Of course the pull-up is harder than the chin-up, but don't give up. If your gym has a pull-up assist machine, it's a great start. However... if you want to do pull-ups, you have to do pull-ups!!!! It's sort of an all-or-none kind of exercise, if you never do them, doing one is harder than getting a graduate degree.

For a strong back, no exercise is better than pull-ups. Start by doing one or two a day and keep adding one or two after a few days. They only get easier after that.

You can also do a variety of back exercises using the cables at the gym. I like the cross cable pull where you take each cable with the opposite hand and pull to bring your shoulder blades closer.