The back is such an important part of what makes an impressive physique, but with literally hundreds of different back exercises out there, it's hard to tell which you should do. This is why I got Betty, a muscle activation measuring machine. Today we're using her to test the most popular back exercises on four different people to find which exercises might be best for you.
At the end, we'll use the results to create a perfect back workout you can trust will get you the muscular, powerful looking back you're after. Before we get to testing, let me explain what we'll be testing. So the back isn't just one muscle, and different back exercises will target different back muscles. The slight problem, however, is that Betty, the muscle activation machine I mentioned earlier, only has four sensors. So we first have to figure out what back muscles are worth putting sensors on to measure in the first place.
After talking with a few of our researchers and coaches, here's what we decided. The two main features of a well-developed back are thickness and width. Most thickness comes from the mid and upper back muscles. To represent this area, we put a sensor on the mid traps. But we also put a sensor on an extremely important muscle right below the mid traps, the lower traps.
You'll learn why we did this later on. Now the main muscle responsible for widening your back and building your V taper is the lats. This is the largest muscle of the upper body. Because it's so large, we're putting two sensors on it.
One on the upper lats and one on the lower lats. After testing, we're going to see which exercises come out on top for these two areas, but I'll also run an extra analysis that determines what exercises might be best as overall backbuilders as well. Next, subjects. In our past chest and shoulder experiments, we used three subjects. Myself and coach Alex, the more experienced lifters, and Raza, our operations manager, who although is learning quite a bit throughout the series, is still a beginner.
This time, although it would add even more work, I wanted a female subjects as well because they tend to be underrepresented in fitness research and the more subjects the more reliable the data so we recruited tony the love of my life who was out last experiment because of a shoulder injury luckily she was open to it but to show her some love comment below thanks tony as i'm sure she'll appreciate it it'll be interesting to see how the results compare between the different types of subjects as for the wager after last week and the damage it caused Yo! We decided to take a break to give everyone a well-deserved rest. Plus, it was costing us way too much to send Raza to trauma therapy. After recruiting, it was time to prep the experiment.
There's three variables we had to control for. First, the more challenging an exercise is, the more muscle fibers you use and the higher activation Betty will read. To try to control for this, a few days before testing, we all spent a day in our gym to figure out how much weight we'd use on each exercise to make them equally as challenging. And flex your back like this. Oh, yeah!
The goal was to find the ideal weight that if we did five reps with, we'd only be able to do three more before we reach complete failure. But something unexpected happened. You're ready?
Finally ready. I'm not gonna lie, this hit me hard. I've lifted with these wrist straps for years since the beginning of my journey. So these are my lucky wrist straps. We are cutting it close here.
No matter how close they were to breaking, they never let me down. I may have been smiling, but on the inside I was crying. But I'm taking it as a sign that I've reached new limits and I'm ready to move on from the old. Rest in peace buddy, you're going to heaven to be used by Ziz and many other gym gods. Next, Sense Replacement.
As some of you know from our last experiments, we need smooth hairless skin so the sensors stick and can read well. Usually, Raza is the only one who needs a good waxing, but to my disappointment, there was only a small patch of hair on his lats that needed removing. Finally, before testing, there's one last variable we need to control. Some people may be able to activate their back better than others.
This is why we need a measurement known as MVC, or maximum voluntary contraction. Basically, for each subject, we need to figure out the maximum activation our back muscles can reach. By gathering this before we start testing, we're able to then accurately compare the exercises we do against each of our own maximum values to see how well they work for our individual back muscles.
For our chest experiment, we used an ultra heavy bench press. For back, however, we had to get a little creative. With all that done, we're ready to test. We're sticking to a similar design as our past experiments by doing one set of 5 reps, and then taking at least a 5 minute rest before moving to the next exercise. We also rotated between horizontal and vertical pulling exercises to avoid over- Really fatiguing the same muscles.
Alright guys, I have all the data. I'm going to spend the weekend processing it with some of our researchers. So far we've tested chest, we've tested shoulders, and now we've tested back. But we're testing glutes next.
And we want to give you the opportunity to vote on what exercises you think will make it on top. All entries get a discount code for our Built With Science fitness programs. And anyone who guesses at least five out of the six correct, you get a free Built With Science program.
You can vote over at builtwithscience.com slash vote. I'll also leave a link in the description box down below. Good luck. Okay, so before we dive into the winners, just keep in mind that BED-E and EMG research in general has its limitations. There's many instances where more activation does not lead to more growth, and there's many other variables to consider when trying to determine how well an exercise is built muscle.
This is especially true for back, where you have to be extra careful about correlating activation with growth. That said, after averaging the data across the four of us, I did find some very interesting insights that aligns with other research out there. Let's first talk about overall back builders. These are exercises that consistently across all four subjects showed very high activation in all the muscles that we measured.
There's two exercises that came out on top. The first one actually came as a bit of a surprise to me. In fact, most of you guys voted this exercise to come in almost dead last for the various muscles we tested. What is it?
Deadlifts. Now I always knew these worked the back to an extent, but I wasn't expecting to see such high activation in every single muscle. But it But it makes sense.
Your legs are mostly responsible for moving the weight, but all of your upper and lower back muscles have to work hard to keep your body stable as you lift. Now although they aren't taken through their full range of motion and are only contracting asymmetrically, this is still a stimulus for growth, especially because of the heavy weight used and the deep stretch that some of these back muscles experience. And even though Alex and I used relatively heavy weight during our measurements, Connie used much lighter weight and an elevated platform and still experienced very high accuracy.
activation across the board. The same was true for Raza, who was still just learning how to properly do them. Okay, so before I reveal the second winner, I'm curious. Do you do deadlifts on your back days or leg days?
Personally, I do them on leg days or on a separate day altogether, but I might consider throwing them in with my back training. But comment below and let me know what you prefer. Now the second exercise is a classic bent over rows. Similar to deadlifts you're able to load it relatively heavy and your whole back including the lower back is helping you stabilize and move the weight.
Now we tested this exercise with an overhand versus underhand grip. The overhand grip led to more mid-back activation whereas the underhand grip likely because the elbows could remain tucked close to the sides led to slightly more lats activation primarily in the lower lats which is good to know depending on what area you want to focus on the most. That said, although these two exercises, as well as the T-bar row, another big exercise we tested that performed well overall, are efficient ways to work a lot of your back muscles at once, they do come with a cost.
They're very fatiguing and demand a lot from your lower back muscles, especially as you get more experience and can lift heavier weights. they also don't work certain back muscles as well as other exercises do. This is where some of the next exercises we measured come in handy. Let's first talk about the mid and upper back.
Only 5% of you successfully guessed the exercise that came out on top, the inverted row. But when I took a deeper look into the individual data, I noticed something interesting. It led to the highest back activation for both Tanya and Raza, but didn't do nearly as well for both myself and Alex, even after adjusting the setup to make it a bit more difficult.
So while it is a great bodyweight exercise that I'd highly recommend for most females and beginners, as you get more experience you'll want to consider other movements that you can start adding weight to or save this exercise for the tail end of your workout when your back is already quite fatigued. As for the other exercises that came out on top, generally research suggests that rows where the elbows can be kept angled out wide are best at targeting the mid and upper back. I was impressed to see most of you guys predicted the same based on your voting, but what did we actually find? Well, wide grip seated cable rows and dumbbell chest supported rows with the elbows flared out and shoulder blades squeezed together at the end both led to the highest activation after the inverted row.
And although we didn't test a chest supported machine row, I'd expect to see the same thing as long as you use a relatively wider grip and keep your elbows angled out. Before we dive into the lats, I want to talk about the lower traps. Although not on anybody's list of top five sexiest muscles, it's an extremely important yet often overlooked muscle for overall shoulder health and posture. So important that I'd recommend including at least one exercise in your routine that really focuses on this muscle.
And the one that came out on top during our experiment doesn't even require any weight. Inclined prone y raises. After we go through the lats, I'll explain how exactly I'd go about adding this into your body. back routine. Last but not least, the lats.
Generally, vertical pulling movements are best to hit this region, so it's no surprise all you muscle nerds voted for lat pulldowns and pull-ups to come out on top. But while these exercises did a pretty good job of activating the lats, one move in particular led to higher activation than any of those exercises, the lat focus row. This is something I first got from Coach Kasim of N1 Training. Although it looks like a row, it's very similar to a pulldown because of the way you position your body. By leaning forward slightly and keeping the elbows tucked close to the sides, it puts the lats in a better position.
With proper coaching, this exercise did very well, even for Tawny and Raza who had never tried this move before. So it's a great move regardless of your experience to put a little bit more focus on the lats. Now let's put everything we learned into a back workout that you can start using right away.
I'd recommend picking one exercise from each of the categories we went through and then adding in prone Y raises to the end to give the lower trap some extra love. I've also created a completely free downloadable workout PDF that puts this all together for you, complete with sets, reps, and instructions for each exercise. You can download this over at BuiltWithScience.com back workout. Honestly, after testing chest, shoulders, and now back, it's helped me realize that training doesn't have to be crazy complicated. The best exercises tend to be the most basic, yet these basic exercises have stood the test of time for a reason.
and helped build many incredibly impressive physiques over the years. So rather than trying to seek the next best exercise, I urge you to stick to the basics and focus on consistency, proper form, and training hard, as that's where truly most of your gains will be made. And for a step-by-step science-based program that takes care of all the guesswork for you and shows you how to train and how to eat week after week to help you build the body you deserve, just head over to buildwithscience.com and take our analysis quiz to find the best program for you and your body. and you can give this video a watch next to see what chest exercises came out on top during our experiment.
And I'll see you next time.