So, the One Arm Row is an absolute no for me,
putting it number one on my list of the worst back exercises.
What s up guys, Jeff Cavaliere, Athleanx.com. What you see behind me is a bunch of difference
back exercised. Many of which you're either have done in the past or you're still doing right now.
But after today, you're going to want to get rid of a few of them. Because I'm going to help you to
rank them from the worst to the best, leaving you only with the best back exercises that are going
to deliver the gains that you're after. And so, as we kick off this list here, it's
important to first define the criteria that goes into the selection in the ranking of these back
exercises. First and foremost, are these exercises capable of being progressively overloaded? And no,
this list is not being populated by those that are the best strength building exercises. But we
do know that strength leads to hypertrophy, which is the main focus of the list.
Secondly, we know that the back has a lot of muscles in it. This particular episode here
is going to focus on those that are doing the best job of helping you to build bigger lats.
Future breakdowns in the series can focus on the other areas of the back, like the upper back and
traps or maybe even the lower back. But for here, we're really looking at the lats.
And finally, guys, is the exercise safe? A lot of people will perform any exercise in
the pursuit of gains. But here on this channel is a physical therapist, I have to consider safety.
I'm going to build that into the selection criteria for every one of these exercises.
And so now with the groundwork laid, it's time to start working from the bottom up. The worst
category here. And I'm looking at my number one no, and it's a version of the row,
t's the One Arm Dumbbell Row. You see, I don't dislike the unilateral aspect of the exercise,
that's not it. But when you put one knee up on the bench as you do, this is actually
introducing a stress to the groin that I've talked about in many of those before that I'm
just not comfortable with. Literally, as I've given myself two hernias from the exercise.
You put an asymmetrical strain on the inguinal canal, which is oftentimes a weak spot for men as
it is, which can oftentimes lead to the hernias that we don't want. The big thing about it,
though, is we have better options that don't require us to have one knee up on the bench.
We'll get back to that in a second, but for now, the One Arm Row is an absolute no for me,
putting it number one on my list of the worst back exercises.
So now making our way up through the worst exercises for your back, we have to look next
to the Lat Pulldown. But no, not any version of Lat Pulldown, but the Behind the Neck version of
Lat Pulldown, because where you pull to makes all the difference in the world. See, this variation
takes those elbows out of the scapular plane, the natural plane they prefer to move in, angled about
45 degrees forward and flares them far too much out to the side. And what that does is it forces
the shoulder into a lot of internal rotation. Well, those arms are up overhead internal rotation
with elevation can lead to impingement problems. Guys, do me a favor and put that bar in front
of the body and put this exercise at the top of your list of ones to skip with the big red X.
And so, with that I get to break out my blue marker now as we work our way up the rankings into
the Better Category, good exercises, but still with limitations. And the first one we look at
is the Renegade Row. And while this does allow us to hit the lats through a rolling motion,
we have to look beyond that because we're being compromised by the load we can actually use on
the exercise due to more of that instability. Now, we're not talking about that asymmetrical
lower body instability that we have for the One Arm Dumbbell Row, but we're just shifting it up
the kinetic chain into the core. And if your core is weak,
you're not going to be able to lift a lot in this exercise. So, if we're looking for hypertrophy,
we're undermining our ability to achieve it by introducing a variable that really doesn't have
to be there in the first place. And also, the row itself, the range of motion is being cut short by
the floor. Unless you want to use your front delt to lift the dumbbell out in front of you
to increase that lat stretch, you're limiting your ability to take advantage of the stretch
reflex that can produce more gains as well. Guys, for all of these reasons, though, the exercise is
one I program myself, mostly in circuits or metabolic type workouts. The exercise for
hypertrophy is limited and therefore it deserves the blue circle here for better just not great.
Moving on in the Better Category here, it actually pains me to see this exercise
sit so low on the list, but we're talking about the Deadlift. Look, remember the criteria here
lat development. And while the Deadlift itself requires a lapse to be completely engaged in
order to keep that bar tight to your body, it does so through an isometric contraction
that doesn't necessarily lead to the greatest overall hypertrophy gains for the lats.
Now, ironically, we look at the muscle gains in the upper back and traps through the same
isometric contraction. Those tend to be better. But again, we're going to reserve that for a later
video. But suffice it to say that even though the Deadlift is one of the greatest exercises of all
time when it comes to lat development, it doesn't check all the boxes and therefore it just gets the
blue circle for the Better Category. And next up here, the Better Category,
we have another exercise like the Deadlift that starts from the floor but does a much better
job of hitting the lats, but not without its drawbacks. We're talking about the Pendlay Row.
And here we have to look at the risk and reward of the exercise. Does the reward of pulling the
bar through a greater range of motion off of the floor outweigh the risk of attempting to do so
with a body not prepared to do that? You see the slightest bit of hamstring
inflexibility, or a lack of lumbar extension mobility is going to compromise your ability
to perform this safely. Even though we can better target the lats from this completely
horizontal position, at what risk are we doing it. When we realize again that there's better
options by simply shifting your torso slightly higher, I just can't make this exercise rise
too far up the list, so therefore it's going to sit here in the Better Category only.
And so now I get to break out my yellow marker as we continue our way up the rankings, this
time into the Better Still Category. And for the first exercise here, I want to look right here at
the Tripod Row because this one actually gives us a chance to correct some of the things, we didn't
like about some of the previous exercises, namely the One Arm Dumbbell Row and that Pendlay Row
we just covered. What do we have here? Well, we have asymmetrical loading now being symmetrically
loaded across the lower body. Because all we have to do is take that knee off of the bench and just
put ourselves in this position with one hand stabilizing our upper body. And doing just this,
again, allows that symmetrical loading of those pelvic muscles that don't now have
to undergo any of those stresses that we don't want to introduce. Regarding the Pendlay Row,
I actually have a chance to achieve as much of a horizontal position as I want on this exercise
because I have the additional upper body support that allows me to do so without putting my lower
back at risk. All in all, this is a simple tweak to make that take some of those limitations
and now puts them in your favor and puts this as the first in the category of Better Still.
Moving on in the Better Still Category, we have an exercise here that not only allows us to target
the lats well but introduce an all important component that gets overlooked in our training
called straight arm scapular strength. We're talking about the Straight Arm Pushdown. Now,
we talked about the benefit of having the lats involved in the deadlift and their
ability to stabilize that lift. This puts us in that same position, but it gets us
there dynamically. The lats are working to pull that arm out from the front your body
down to your side, allowing us to focus on the adduction function of the lats and minimize some
of those other back muscles that oftentimes like to kick in on those back exercises.
That being said, you have to make sure you're paying attention to the exercise name itself,
the Straight Arm Pushdown and a little bit of bend in the elbow here is going to invite the
desire of the triceps to kick in and help you do the exercise. If you pay attention
to how it's performed, then it deserves its spot here squarely in the Better Still Category.
And so, if you watch my chest exercises ranked from best to worst, you have watched all the
ones in the series, right? Well, if not, I'll link two of them for you at the end of this video and
then just make sure you're subscribed so you never miss any of them when I put one out.
Now, you might be wondering what this next exercise is doing in the back exercise
video and we're talking about the Dumbbell Pullover. You see, how you perform an exercise
determines what muscles work. When we do the Dumbbell Pullover with the focus being the lats,
we want to make sure that we flare those elbows out way out to the side. Now the benefit of this
exercise is the stretch that we can achieve on the lats by doing it. If we can increase
the stretch, we can increase the recruitment capabilities of the lats on the exercise.
Now how do we do it? Well, we simply let those arms drop back over our head.
But what if we have limited shoulder mobility? We still have a safe alternative. You just simply
drop your hips down lower, realizing that we can take the attachment points of the pelvis
and the arm and stretch them out away from each other without having to go into a limitation and
mobility that just doesn't allow us to. The point is this exercise has been a staple that developer
for many, many years because it can deliver the gains if you know how to perform it right.
The Dumbbell Pullover gets another yellow circle here for a Better Still exercise.
Interestingly, for your body weight guys out there, you actually too can get the benefits
of this exercise without even having to own a single dumbbell. You can do the Human Pullover.
And what this does is it takes a concept that is tough for me to grasp the relative motion concept.
And instead of moving your arms on a fixed body like you would do in a Dumbbell Pullover,
you move your body on fixed arms, but the arms are doing all the work.
The abs here are stabilizing your body in space, but the arms are pulling as hard as they possibly
can in order to lift the weight of your body, effectively allowing you to place a great overload
on the last and allowing them to grow even when you don't have access to any equipment.
And lastly, the Better Still Category we have another variation of the row, and this time we're
talking about, the Seated Cable Row. And right off the bat, we actually know we can use some heavy
weights here. Why? Because we can utilize our legs to help us a bit and let the eccentric focus of
the exercise take over. By allowing our legs to help us push and then control on that eccentric,
we get the overload every single time we allow our arms to reach out in front of our body. That being
said, I would prefer that you use a V handle here, if possible, because we realize we're not going to
have that wraparound benefit of the lats with any of the handles that we use. And if you introduce
something like a straight bar, you're going to get those arms into further extension, yes, but
that's going to kick in the rear delts more. The rear delts being weaker than the lats is
going to limit the amount of weight you can use. So, the V handle works nicely here. Just be sure
that when you are reaching forward here, you're not allowing the low back to round with you.
Keep that low back and a good, firm, safe position and you'll get all the benefits
this exercise has to provide and put it right here firmly in the Better Still Category.
And so now I get to break out my green marker as we continue to work our way up the rankings,
this time to the Almost Best Category, all great exercises that allow me to showcase that wrap
around capability of the lats that I mentioned. And I also now get to kick this off by showcasing
one of the best to ever do this, John Meadows. You see the Meadows Row named after him,
gives you the chance to really feel like your elbow is moving through space in a way that
doesn't put any stress on your shoulder. And as I mentioned before, you're allowed
to do this out of that tripod setup with both feet on the floor, avoiding that asymmetrical
loading that we always try to avoid from any other type of row. Beyond that, guys it's not
just a great exercise, but it's named after a great man. John Meadows was a friend of mine,
and he had that fitness education first focus on his channel, always staying out of the drama,
something I think we can all respect. That's why the Meadows Row here belongs as my first
in the category of the Almost Best. Continuing now with the Almost Best Category,
we actually have probably my favorite exercise of all time when it comes to
back exercises. It's just not ranking all the way at the top because it requires a machine
that not everybody has. We're talking about the One Arm High Cable Row. But once again,
the wrap around capability of the lats is built into this exercise, not to mention the ability
to stretch out the origin insertion of the lat to their maximum. When you reach out all the way in
front of your body, you have the distance between that pelvis and the arm as far as it can possibly
be intensifying that stretch to a level you really can't achieve on any other exercise.
And again, we can take that unilateral benefit and really focus on developing the lats,
overcoming any imbalances you might have. If you have access to the machine,
this is going to be a must do exercise. If you don't, I've got you covered, but it still
belongs here in the Almost Best Category. And so, you might have been taken aback when
I mentioned the Lat Pulldown being in the Worst Category of back exercises. However,
as always, how you do what you do matters. And when we talk about doing the exercise properly,
it makes the Lat Pulldown rise all the way up to the top of the list,
this time to the Almost Best Category. You see putting those elbows out in front of your body
not only gives them a better mechanical advantage to ironically pull more, but
it does so once again out of that safe position to allow you to do this for years to come.
Not to mention, the exercise is entirely scalable. With the simple shift of a weight
pin in the stack, you can match not only the level of strength you have right now
but allow you to progressively load it to get to new strength levels and with that new gains.
If you're interested in a little experimentation to see even better lat gains, then I invite you to
try the Rocking Pulldown variation I've covered before. This gives us that chance once again
to get that wraparound capability of the lats tied into the movement as well by simply pulling
a little bit harder on one side of the bar than the other as you bring it down. Either way here,
guys, the Lat Pulldown is a classic for a reason, and it belongs here squarely
at the top in the Almost Best Category. And wrapping up our exercises in the Almost
Best Category four back. We've got one here that ironically doesn't get as benefits from
the wraparound function of the lats, but through its capability for overload and momentum to drive
your gains. We're talking about the Dead Row. The opportunity to load this exercise up and then take
advantage of the momentum the legs generate from below gives us a chance to experience
a heavier eccentric on the way down. Not to mention it's a great athletic exercise.
It's an explosive movement, and dare I say a fun one, that gives us a chance to learn
how to move our bodies explosively through space from our feet to our fingertips. Guys,
the Dead Row belongs here for me at the top of the top and the Almost Best Category.
So, I mentioned the top of the top, but only one could be at the top of the best of the best
when it comes to the best exercises for your back. Or is that two? You see, in this case,
we've got two spots here, the Weighted Pullup and the Barbell Row that are going to share
the top spot and earn that Green Star. See, we're talking about first the Barbell Row being the
best option for building your back without the deficits we talked about, maybe with the Pendlay
Row. The Barbell Row gives you that option to maximally overload the lats while still having
an eye towards the safety of the exercise. Now, if your lower back is still something of
concern, you could always do the exercise in a chest supported fashion, which is still going to
give you all the benefits on the lats but provide a little bit more support for those that need it.
Now, talking about the vertical pulling exercise, guys, it's the Weighted Pullup that wins for me.
And again, you have to do both, so that's why we're linking them here. The Weighted Pullup
gives you the chance to add weight if able, so that you can overload the exercise once again. And
the fact that the accessibility of the exercise is much higher than having to have access to a Lat
Pulldown machine is going to make it my top choice when it comes to vertical pull movements.
Guys, the back is a big place but when we know how to navigate through the exercise
options to leave you with only the ones that are going to deliver the best gains,
well, then you're ahead of the game. If you're looking to see where other
exercises rank for other muscle groups then I want you to check out our chest exercises
ranked video here and our tricep exercises ranked here. Guys, if you're looking for
a complete program where we take only the best exercises and work them into a step-by-step plan,
you can find them over at Athleanx.com. If you haven't done so, make sure you click Subscribe
and turn on your Notification so you never miss a new video when we put one out. See you soon.