19 Unique Cable Back Exercises for a Complete Workout

They primarily target the latissimus dorsi and are great for building muscle. Yes, cable pulls are a well-known exercise and are good for the back. Regularly doing face pulls may help you to get stronger at compound exercises such as deadlifts, bench presses, and overhead presses.

Benefits of the Cable Pallof Press

There is a greater focus on the biceps with this grip, which is good if you’re trying to develop better arm and shoulder strength in tandem with upper back strength. However, if the goal is to primarily focus on your upper back, the regular Wide Grip Lat Pulldowns reign supreme. Below, we’ve collected the ten best cable back workouts to add to your workout routine. Kyle Risley founded Lift Vault in 2016 to make finding great powerlifting programs easier. Since then, the site has grown to include hundreds of programs for strength, bodybuilding, Olympic weightlifting, and more. He currently lives in Massachusetts and continues to compete in powerlifting.

Try These Cable Back Workouts for Massive Muscle Growth

Primarily, your back muscles are divided into three sections – Superficial, Intermediate, and Deep. But we highly recommend including both in your gym routine, as they complement each other well. For a different stability challenge, get into a split stance with one foot about three feet ahead of the other one—whichever leg is behind, hold the handle with that side. Cable shrugs offer a unique stimulus for trapezius development compared to traditional dumbbell or barbell shrugs. In contrast, using too much weight could cause you to overcompensate by using momentum, making each repetition less effective. Join 15,000+ readers keeping informed and staying up to date on all of the latest Peptide, TRT, and SARMs news, in only 5 minutes per week.

• From here, draw your arms away from each other until they are flush with the rest of the body.
• Overall, mastering this exercise improves back strength and muscle definition, helping achieve a broader and more sculpted upper body.
• Try to perform each exercise with controlled movement, targeting the specific muscles without relying too much on arm or shoulder strength.
• Doing cable back workouts with a controlled range of motion helps prevent injury and enhances workout effectiveness by allowing for smoother execution of movements.
• This variation keeps tension on the traps throughout the entire movement, even at the bottom position.
• By simply altering your position, you can turn a simple cable row exercise into a total-body move that activates the powerful muscles in your glutes and hamstrings.

Cable Back Workouts Give You Extra Tension

These cable workouts should include an even number of vertical and horizontal pulling movements. By doing cable rows this way, you remove your ability to cheat because you can’t use momentum to lift. This enables you to target the upper back muscles more effectively. Like the straight-arm pulldown, the cable pullover is another great option for isolation exercises for the lats. It’s more effective than a dumbbell pullover because it keeps the lats in constant tension. The single-arm cable row works the lats, rhomboids, traps, rear delts, and biceps to a small degree.

Encourage functional strength.

To shake things up a little, you can try incorporating supersets and drop sets in your routine. You don’t need to use them every workout, but they can be a nice way to change things up, fit more into your workout, or finish hard and strong. Progressive overload is the act of slowly increasing the weight you’re lifting. Aim for 4 to 6 reps if is madmuscles a scam you’re a guy and 8 to 10 reps if you’re a girl. Find a weight you can lift with perfect form for the lower rep count (4 for men, 8 for women) but not to the full rep count.

Best Lat Stretches to Loosen Up Your Back

Effect of amino acid supplementation on muscle mass, strength and physical function in elderly. With 98% pure protein and no fillers https://madmuscles.pissedconsumer.com/review.html or additives, this supplement offers a digestive-friendly alternative to traditional protein powders. Consider adding this to your nutrition strategy to support your muscle recovery needs during intense back training programs.

This is a great cable machine back exercise to isolate your lats. Great list of back exercises you can do using a cable pulley machine. For real gains, aim to work out your back with cables at least twice a week. Remember to give yourself rest days in between so those muscles can recover and grow stronger. Ensuring the right nutrients at the correct time post-workout aids in optimal muscle recovery, while tracking weekly progress maximizes back muscle growth.

Straight-Arm Pulldowns

Then establish your starting position by extending your arms straight ahead of the body and your palms facing down. From here, draw your arms away from each other until they are flush with the rest of the body. The overhead triceps extension is one of the most valuable exercises that can be performed with a cable. Overhead triceps exercises stimulate the triceps long head to optimally grow the muscle. Still, the challenge imposed upon the stability of the shoulder is often the limiting factor when using a free weight.

There’s also some emphasis on secondary muscles like the posterior delts and biceps. Both wide-grip and narrow-grip lat pulldowns are effective but target the muscles slightly differently. The wide-grip pulldown can be a great exercise for increasing lat size and strength whereas the narrow grip variation may work better for targeting the upper and mid-back muscles. The straight arm lat pulldown is one of the best cable exercises for strengthening your lats (back).

The Ultimate Guide to Compound Back Exercises for Strength and Size

You can maintain a neutral position by incorporating exercises like the reverse cable fly with feet shoulder-width apart, knees slightly bent. Keeping your arms straight helps protect the rotator cuff muscles and promotes shoulder health. Cables minimize ‘dead zones’ and make it harder to cheat with momentum. Every pull, especially those targeting the upper back muscles, stays smooth and controlled. This keeps your lats, traps, and rhomboids working the entire time.

Wide-Grip Seated Cable Row

One of the great things about cable back workouts is that the tension holds constant throughout the movement. Whether you’re pulling or releasing, the constant tension is there equally. Facepulls are a phenomenal exercise to attack poor posture, put your shoulders in a healthier position, and reduce upper-body injuries. Cable machines also provide smooth, fluid resistance that challenges muscles differently than the varied resistance curve of free weights. This makes cable work ideal both as a primary training method and as a supplement to your existing gym back workout machines routine. Seated cable rows are one of the best cable back exercises you can include in your /review/madmuscles.com training.

Cable Pull Through

Unlike the traditional lat pulldown, you will require the cable crossover station. Seated Cable Rows are excellent for anyone who wants to develop strength used for rowing—rowing machines, rowing boats, kayaks, canoes, etc. Instead of it being an “up and down pull”, it’s a “front and back pull” with the tension coming from directly in front of you rather than overhead. Reversing your grip changes it from “Pull-Up Grip” to “Chin-Up” grip.

You should also start with fairly simple exercises like the single-arm cable row. When you’re ready, you can then move on to more advanced exercises like the side plank cable row. It’s also one of the best cable back exercises for working on anti-rotation of the spine.

The standing pullback is another cable back exercise that involves pulling your straight arm across your body. But this exercise works your lat and upper back muscles through a different range of motion than the pullover exercise. Lower back exercises using certain gym apparatus such as cable machines help because, when done properly, they can effectively strengthen the lower back with minimal risk of injury. Performing this exercise will target the rear deltoids and the rhomboids. You’ll stand in the middle of a cable machine, and with minimal wrist movement, pull the cables out to your sides.