What's going on nation I'm Scott from muscularstrength.com and today, I'm gonna be talking to you guys about the number one mistake
Holding back your back growth but before we get started be sure to click that notification bell
So you never miss a new video upload from me alright guys so the reason why this video topic came up is because I'm noticing
That a lot of you are having a hard time
Riaan gauging your back now that I'm teaching you to work with the stretch okay and for those of you guys who?
Haven't been keeping up with my skinny guys slash hot gainer series
I'll post a link to those videos down and my pinned comment below, but basically in those workouts
We work with the stretch flex overload
Technique where we do one exercise that really focuses had on the stretching
portion of the movement to work a muscle then we go to an exercise that
Focuses more on the Flex and then move on to our last exercise which overloads the muscle with as much weight as possible
After it's been pre exhausted from the stretch and the Flex if that doesn't make sense
Go back and watch those videos, and it will but getting back to here the number one mistake
Happening is that a lot of you guys when using the stretch method?
don't know how to read engage your back muscles so that your
Biceps don't take over the movement now obviously if you've been seeing some bicep gains which is always a good thing
That's not bad, but if the goal is to get a bigger back
Then we want to make sure that when we're doing our back
Workouts that that is the primary focus and so what I'm gonna. Do is. I'm gonna show you guys on a few different exercises
how to properly reengage your back after sitting in the stretch okay, so the first one is gonna be a lat pulldown
You know obviously with the lat pulldown
The form is very simple all you're trying to do is pull this down to the top of your chest and for most of you
When you get into the stretched position like this you immediately
just kind of pull it right back down like that to get it to the top of your chest and
Then go back to the top of the movement and complete your reps, but what's happening?
Is that after you get into this stretched position, and you feel those lats being pulled really tight?
You kind of just pull it straight down like this with your elbows coming back and you're getting a bit more upper back
Engagement instead of really isolating and targeting those lats, and it's because of one simple movement that you're skipping
once you get into the stretched position you still have to kind of retract and
retract and pull your scapula down like this in
Order to re-engage your back so your biceps don't take over the movement, and it's that it's one simple thing guys look from here
to here and
Then pull and you can see there's a lot more back engagement happening even as I come up from the bottom position
So we're tracked and then pull
Go to the top
we're tracked and
Then pull and if you guys look from the side angle over here
You can clearly see a difference if I don't retract first, so I'm up in the stretch portion of the movement
And if I pull down I'm almost pulling more towards my chin and my elbows are coming behind me whereas if I
compress and pull my scapula down first and retract and
Then bring it down my elbows are more in line with my hips
And I'm able to bring the barbell down to the bottom portion of my chest
So it's a big difference, and if that big difference
That's gonna make all the difference when it comes to being able to engage your back and your back
Workouts and the same thing goes for reverse pull down as well
the last thing you want to do is turn the reverse pull down into a bicep exercise or a
weird-looking bicep curl, but unfortunately
that's what happens if you don't know how to get back into the position over tracting your scapula and
Pulling your shoulders down so you might want to come up like this
To get that nice deep stretch at the top of the movement
But before you bring the weights back down you need to first retract and then pull
So if you have a hard time with the skies it might even be worth going a bit lighter on the weight and then
Focusing on this being two movements where you retract and then pull on
Every single repetition and as you get better at it
You'll be able to do in one solid smooth motion like this
It just takes time once you build that mind-muscle connection
And you have full control you'll be able to do it no problem and the same thing goes for pull-ups
Pull-ups obviously is much easier to sit in the stretched position
Because it's literally the bottom of the movement where most of us get stuck, but once you're here
You first need to be able to retract by pulling like this
and then coming up and that's how you really engage your back and try to take your biceps out of the movement as much as
Possible so retract and then pull obviously we're still working our biceps
But if we don't do this little bit of retraction here
We're not going to hit our lats as hard as we want to and obviously the same thing goes for chin-ups
And then over here guys if we're doing like a t-bar row
Or any kind of row and to be honest with you
This was probably the easiest exercise to teach your body this movement
Once you get into position
What you want to do?
Get your shoulders neutral like this come forward to get a nice stretch
And then pull back first like this so this is the movement from here to here and then once you're here
Then you pull in and something you'll notice happen is that you actually pull this this teba closer to your bellybutton
When you retract your shoulders first a lot of times
We don't retract your shoulders you end up pulling it higher
Like this and getting more upper back engagement if your goal is to hit your upper back then that's fine
So if you're really trying to smash your lats you want to retract and then pull
so start it off as doing two separate movements to where you retract and
Then pull your arms back, and then as you get better and better with it. You'll be able to make it
one movement and hit your back as
Hot as possible and then just because I have it available to me
I want to show you one more exercise and it's the barbell bent over row and remember guys when doing a barbell bent over row?
If we're using an overhand grip we're hitting more posterior deltoids
And upper back when we do the movement if we use an underhand grip
We're actually getting a lot more lat engagement so
with that being said
On this exercise if I hold it like this, and I'm trying to hit my lats if I don't do any kind of retraction
I'm gonna bring it up a bit higher like this, okay
And I'm still gonna be hitting a bit more upper back even though I have it underhand grip
But if you get that nice deep stretch, and then we're tracked first
And then pull see how it brings it right to my belly button
That's gonna maximize your back engage when your lat engagement when doing this exercise so retract pull retract
pull
So to wrap this up when it comes to training your back
Obviously biceps are a secondary mover, but we have bicep workouts to Train biceps for doing a back workout
We want to make sure that we're hitting our back as hot as possible and if lats are a lagging area for you
It's probably because you're making this simple mistake, and it says it's as easy to correct
It as I just showed you on all these different exercises, so be sure to smash that like button if you enjoyed the video
Subscribe if you haven't already and as always more good stuff coming soon. See you guys