subject: Muscle Building Workouts For Your Back [print this page] Increasing muscle mass and functional strength constitute the two main motivations for adopting a bodybuilding program. Building abdominal muscles, specifically the muscles of the upper, middle and lower back is the key to both of these.
The primary stabilizing muscles of your body are in your back, these are the easiest muscles to injure while lifting weights. Your back consists of the spine, the ribs, the scapula and the ligaments that string them all together, like parts of a mobile or kinetic motion structure.
Compression or rotation injuries are the ones that happens to the back most of the time when the soft tissues that provides flexibility to to the back get damaged. You should always be careful when lifting weights and you should always focus on isolating the muscle so you wont get injured, as a lot of injuries wont show up for years.
Traps, Lats, and Deltoids are some back muscle groups to work on, but take your time. Doing it slowly will prevent injuries. Sure, you are going to get a ripped back by overworking, but you should concentrate more on everyday strength over getting to big when working your back.
The trapezius muscles (traps) are the ones that form the bulk of your back. The basic exercise for Traps is a shrug motion, where you take a pair of dumbbells, one in each hand, and shrug your shoulders as high as they will go and hold them for a breath, then let them down slowly.
A related motion, which helps the traps a bit, but mostly works on your deltoids, is a straight-arm lift. Hold a dumbbell in your hand with your elbow at your side, and your forearm out level with the map. Extend your arm until it's at shoulder height, in one fluid motion, and look down your arm at the dumbbell, like you're sitting on a pistol range. Then bring it down slowly.
When you do any kind of exercise to build up a muscle you should always start out slow and build your way up to more and more resistance. If you start to fast and do to much at once, you can end up hurting yourself before you even get started. This is better than a straight pull up because it isolates the muscle thoroughly.
To work on your lower back, the best exercise you can perform is arches. By doing shoulder arches you will not only gain strength (this is the most important thing), but you will also work on definition of your back as well. Hold a light dumb-bell over the back of your neck and lay down on your front. Clasp your hands, arch your back, lift and hold for three counts then slowly lower. And be aware, because it's very easy to overdo them.
Like all the exercises which help with muscle building, stretching and cardio exercise before and after are a must for maintaining flexibility.
