A few pointers on back development one big culprit to blame for lack of back development in bodybuilders, it’s the use of momentum to move the weight, rather than pure lat power. One must keep in mind that there are three types of strength: positive (lifting the weight), static (the peak contraction at the top of the rep where the muscle is fully contracted), and negative (lowering). Your strength is actually the least in the positive and the greatest in the negative. In other words, if you can lift 200 pounds, you can probably hold 250 pounds in the peak contraction and can lower about 300 pounds in the negative. That’s just a very rough example. Most bodybuilders really only perform the positive portion of the rep and completely miss out on the other two possible areas. A quick test to see if this describes you is to see if you can stop each rep at the peak contraction and pause to fully contract the lats, then lower it slowly under control for a good stretch. If you can’t, you’re using too much weight and would actually benefit greatly by reducing the resistance. Studies have shown that the negative portion of the rep causes more muscle damage and stimulates greater gains in strength than the lifting itself. Most bodybuilders fail to grasp the function of the back and never train it properly. The basic function of the lats, without getting overly technical, is to bring the arms down from an overhead position and also to bring the arms back when they are in front of the body. In other words, a pulling down movement as well as pulling back as in any type of row. To work the lats completely, the lower back must be arched, not rounded. Another common limiting factor toward building the lats is that it’s quite easy to let the biceps or momentum do the actual work rather than the lats, and as you should know, the biceps are much smaller and weaker than the lats. Therefore, if your biceps give out first, your lats never receive sufficient stimulation needed to spark growth. The final and perhaps most significant issue working against back development is the simple and painfully obvious fact that the whole muscle group is in back of you, and you can’t see it. Not only does the adage ‘out of sight, out of mind’ prove sadly appropriate in this case, but not being able to see the lats while you work them also makes it much more difficult to establish a strong mind-muscle connection with them, as opposed to ‘mirror muscles’ like the chest and arms. The back is the one area where establishing this connection is the most critical. Just about anybody can stimulate the chest to grow with bench presses, the biceps with curls, or the quads with squats— but stimulating the lats whilst performing pull downs or rows is not quite so simple. Drop your poundage focus on intensely on feeling the lats contract as they pull, hold the peak contraction point and squeeze the lats as hard as possible, and feel them stretch as they lower the resistance. Most are STUNNED by how much the feel their back after they do to such form The other week somebody wanted to train back and I train just like Dorian has taught me, the man was gym fit big and strong but SHY in the back with big arms... After our HIT back session I looked at him and said whats wrong you did good.. He replied I have just realized iv wasted the last 4 years in the GYM training my back by not actually training my back properly and Iv never felt my back so much in all my life .. I said jokingly CHIN UP better late than never welcome to the world of mind muscle connection & DY HIT !!!! All of the above sounds logical and is based upon the knowledge and information gleaned from Dorian Yates
Posted on: Mon, 04 Nov 2013 15:22:18 +0000
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