Back Exercises at Home

Here are the best ways to train your back at home with dumbbells. You can't neglect training the upper back because it is one of the hot zones of fat burning in your body. Since there is so much muscle mass found in your upper back, you can really burn a lot of calories by training that area.

Click here to watch the back exercises video

However, a lot of people have problems training that area at home because they dont have access to a chin-up bar or an adjustable bar where they can do inverted bodyweight rows lying on the ground.

So, this leaves us with a bench, dumbbells, and a ball. Fortunately, there are still quite a few different exercises we can do that will add variation to our workouts and help us enjoy them a lot more.

The first exercise is the Dumbbell Pullover and it is going to train your abs, chest, and your lats. This exercise is a classic Arnold Era exercise. However, it is important to be conservative when performing this one, as you can really injure yourself if you try to do too much weight.

There are a couple of different ways to do this exercise. One way is to do it lying regularly on a bench. Hold the dumbbell over your chest with a slight bend in your arms, and lowering the DB back over your head. You will begin to feel a stretch and using your lats, pull the DB back up over your chest. As the DB gets closer to your chest, then the chest muscles begin to do most of the work.

An alternative method of performing the DB Pullover is lying across a bench. In this position you will feel a greater stretch in the lats at the bottom position; however, you will want to use extra caution in the amount of weight you select. The more stretch, the more risk. So, in this position, keep your hips up, glutes contracted, abs braced and lower DB, and then pull back up.

A second exercise you can do is the Dumbbell Row. Like the DB Pullover, there are a few different ways in which this exercise can be performed.

Starting with the basic DB Row, place your left hand and knee on the bench, right leg slightly bent, butt back, abs braced, and back flat. Next, row the DB up from full extension up to your hip, keep elbow close and into your side.

To add a twist and target your lats and upper back differently, place your body in the same position, place your hand so that the palm is now facing towards your foot, with your elbow out. This is what is known as an elbow out DB Row. You will more than likely be a little bit weaker in this
position.

Also, using your hand and knee for support on the bench allows you to lift more weight, but you can also remove the support system and do these exercises one arm at a time or with both arms.

Instead of using a bench, you will use less weight with this exercise, but you will recruit more effort from your abdominals as well as the muscles in your legs to support your position. You can still perform the regular DB Row or the elbow out DB Row just as you would with a bench, but now you will be standing with a slight bend in the knees, leaning over slightly with your back flat.

The last exercise works your posterior delts and is known as side lateral raises in a bent over position. So, standing with two dumbbells, bring them out to the side, squeezing your shoulder blades together, and back down. You will feel a strong contraction in the posterior delts in this exercise.

The more bent over you are, the more you move stress to the back of the shoulder, and even between the shoulder blades. The more of a standing position that you are in, the more you recruit the medial delts. And when in a standing upright position, you will be working the medial and anterior delts mostly.

So those are some of the dumbbell exercises you can do for variety in training your upper back and lats at home without the need for fancy equipment.

Craig