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You've been told that to create the hourglass shape, you needed to create a wide back, but nobody told you that there is nuance to that. If you work on your physique blindly, you will not get the shape that you want. But, if you
Learn how to fix common back workout mistakes to build a balanced, aesthetic physique with targeted training for lats, traps, rear delts, and erectors.
Ask about this video. Answers come from its transcript only — with the timestamp, so you can check them.
Generated from the transcript and can be wrong — check the timestamp.
Key Takeaways
- Train back muscles with intention and prioritize balance between width and depth for an aesthetic shape.
- Avoid redundant exercises that target the same muscle function; diversify movements for better growth.
- Isolate rear delts and erectors to ensure full back development and avoid strength plateaus.
- Proper form and scapula positioning are critical to effectively target traps and prevent overuse of upper traps.
- Low volume, focused training is superior to high volume for building a balanced back physique.
What the video covers
- Many back workouts focus only on width by overtraining lats, neglecting other muscles that add depth and definition.
- The back can be divided into four main muscles for aesthetics: lats (width), traps, rear delts, and erectors (depth).
- Lats should be trained with varied functions rather than redundant exercises like pull-ups and lat pulldowns that mimic the same movement.
- Proper scapula positioning is crucial for effective trap training; wide grip rows with correct elbow placement target traps better than shrugging.
- Rear delts require isolation work such as cable reverse flys or machine reverse flys to grow, as rowing alone is insufficient.
- Erectors do not grow effectively from compound lifts alone and should be isolated with exercises like hyperextensions to improve strength and back depth.
- Overemphasis on lats can ruin proportions, especially for women without wide hips, leading to an unbalanced physique.
- Low volume, intentional training prioritizing weaker muscles is more effective than high-volume, redundant back workouts.
- Many popular social media back workouts lack balance and neglect important muscles like traps and rear delts.
- Proper execution and understanding of muscle function are essential to avoid overdeveloping some muscles and underdeveloping others.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction to Back Shape and Training Nuance
- 01:04Back Muscles Overview: Width and Depth
- 02:02Lats Training: Avoid Redundancy and Use Different Functions
- 03:09Trap Training: Scapula Retraction and Elbow Positioning
- 04:56Rear Delts: Importance of Isolation Work
- 06:02Erectors: Why Isolation is Necessary for Growth
- 07:09Reorganizing Back Workouts: Prioritizing Weak Muscles
- 09:18Critique of Popular Social Media Back Workouts
- 14:05Summary and Final Recommendations
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
work on your physique to create proportions, so you train with intention, you know exactly what you're doing on each workout, then you will create the shape that you want. And that's the point of this video. Most back workouts today only do width. There
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is probably a few percentage that does depth, but I've seen the videos, and I'm actually really concerned by the amount of bad workouts we have on back to the point where people are underestimating back and just using random things when
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the reality is that back can ruin everything. It all starts with back. I will divide back into four muscles.
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There are much more muscles, but some of them are deeper. The superficial muscles, when they'll grow much more, they will allow you to see those small muscles that gives definition. For example, the rhomboids. First is lats.
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They give you width. Then, what gives you depth is the three next ones. So, the second one would be traps, third, rear delts, and the fourth is erectors.
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Lats are the widest muscle in your body. The biggest problem with lats is that everybody keeps doing only that.
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Everybody keeps sharing bad workout routines, so at some point, yeah, we all have the same physique. We all have the back that's probably too wide compared to our lower body. This will happen especially for the girls who don't have
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wide hips. You don't need to put three different exercises to work on your lats. I don't know where this comes from, and it's driving me insane because I've seen people doing pull-ups, then lat pull-downs. Okay, so watch me.
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Pull-ups. Lat pull-downs. What are you noticing? This is literally the same movement. This same exact same movement. The exact same movement that you're doing twice for eight sets. If you really want to work on your lats, at least select two
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different functions. So, your lats will do this, but they will also do this. This is close grip rows, and this is something like lat pulldowns or pull-ups. If you really want to work on your lats, but I really don't see why
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you would do both because they will essentially do the same thing. So, in my opinion, only pick one exercise for the lats, but if you need to work more on your lats, especially if you just started, then yeah. If you want to do
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more volume, then just select two different exercises. Let's move on to depth. So, traps. Traps are responsible for managing your scapula. So, scapula retraction, scapula depression, shrugging your shoulders, so bringing your shoulders close to your ears. You just need to do something like
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wide grip rows. It's not really about doing wide grip. It's more about your elbows positioning because if your elbows are like this, then you are going to retract your scapula, but if your elbows are like this, then you will be
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forced to just bring your arms back and not really retract your scapula. There are three regions in the traps, but this is something that's completely unnecessary for you at this point unless you have overdeveloped upper traps, but
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even in this specific case, it's probably just a problem of execution. Most people when they do their back workouts, they will shrug their shoulders, do it like this because they want to help themselves with the movement. Now, of course, if you do
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this, your traps are going to help you because they are responsible for shrugging your shoulders. So, if you do something like this and I'm really feeling my upper traps so much, then yeah, it will be very easy for me to
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just do heavy weights on this exercise, but it will also target my upper trap.
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If you're doing close grip rows and you're shrugging your shoulders, then of course, you will also work on your upper traps. And close grip is for the lats.
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So, why are you doing lats and upper traps? Working on your upper traps will also happen for many other exercises.
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Basically, every time you shrug your shoulders, you will also work on your upper traps. You don't really need to bias the upper traps, mid traps, and lower traps. There is a study saying that you can bias them, but there is not
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really a case where you need to bias them if you're intermediate or beginner. But, if you have overdeveloped upper traps, it's just because of bad execution. And that's why I always tell you guys it's not enough to watch execution as a
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demonstration of 3 seconds. It's not enough for the main exercises. That's why on the main exercises on my app, I talk. I talk because I can't explain to you with just a demonstration that you cannot shrug your shoulders at all on
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lateral raises, and you have to lead with your elbows. You I need to explain it because it's important, and it will change your entire physique. Whether you're doing it the right way or the wrong way, it's going to affect the look
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of your back. If you want to work on your traps, you need your elbows to be positioned this way because you need to retract your scapula. Basically, if you want to work on the whole traps, just do something like a T-bar row,
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bent-over row, wide grip. Do something with rowing, but just wide grip. All right? It's really not that complicated when you understand the difference between close grip and wide grip. Now, moving on to rear delts. I know some people say that you are
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already targeting rear delts when you're doing rowing, but I personally had a gap. Like, they did not exist before I started doing rear delt isolation work because rowing wasn't enough. Why? It just comes down to the fact that you
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need to isolate the muscle and reach close to failure if you want to grow it.
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My favorite rear delt exercises are cable reverse fly or reverse fly on the machine, you know, the chest machine where you're doing this. You can just turn around and do it like this for your rear delt. And this is extremely
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isolating. I only feel my rear delts working because your rear delts are responsible for opening your arm like this. So, it's amazing and I also recommend rear delt flies with dumbbells. So, that also works. Last but not least, the
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erectors. Okay, this is a topic that pisses me off because everybody keeps saying that the erectors are going to naturally grow with compounds. The erectors are actually going to become the limiting factor that will prevent you from making
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progress and actually doing progressive overload on compounds like deadlifts. The erectors are not growing with your deadlift. They are the limiting factor to do progressive overload on deadlift.
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If you don't take one muscle and you isolate it to be able to reach close to failure and trigger hypertrophy directly for this muscle, then it will not considerably grow. It will grow over time. Do you want to grow your erectors
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in 3 years or in 6 months? Or even less than 6 months. When I started working my erectors, I went from 60 kg on RDLs to 80 kg on RDLs and I really couldn't do that before because when I was trying to
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lift more, I always felt like my back didn't let me. And when I started working on them, after 6 months I got these crazy results. After 6 months my erectors started being so visible and now every compound exercise is getting
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easier. So, definitely don't neglect them because they not only give you depth, but they also give you something that really looks different. Like the back really looks different. I love wearing backless dresses just because of that. There is not really an exercise
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that's much better than hyperextensions. There are no rules when we talk about training for aesthetics. No rules.
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Meaning that nobody nobody forces you to start with lat pulldowns, for example. So, all the exercises that I showed you, you need to reorganize them by priority, okay? So, what is the weakest muscle for you? If you were doing only lat
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workouts, it means that you were actually deprioritizing other muscles. So now I
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thinking about it. I have no problem building more lats right now because I built more width around my lower body. I don't have wide hips. So I'm just trying to make this whole thing look like what I want, you know? So that's why I needed
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to slow down on the lats, catch up on my lower body, bring the shoulders up. I just needed to work on other things. A lot of people do very bad programming with redundancy, with a lot of volume for nothing. They don't know which
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muscles to prioritize and deprioritize based on your current shape. There are a lot of things to take into account for good programming and it doesn't necessarily need adding supersets and dropsets and all of this just to scare you and let you know that they know
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everything. And this is important for me to share with you because a lot of people confuse a good workout with a complex workout. Actually, a very good workout is very simple because it just comes down to one thing. Reaching muscle
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failure. Like you just need to get close to failure basically, not really reach failure cuz recent studies just mentioned that you just need to get close to failure, but I can guarantee you that most people don't even go close
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to failure. That's why you need to do everything and all of your programming needs to revolve around one thing. It's to reach close to failure. Go get that close to failure. You can get an insane physique in a year. Yes. Like a lot of
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things can happen in a year. I am 100% against high volume, 100% and I base my whole app around low volume. I select one muscle group and I just cut it in multiple pieces if needed, okay? So, for
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example, back, I'll cut it in four pieces and then I'll give you some volume here, some volume here, some here, some here. And I expect you to reach close to failure for each exercise. Adding a lot of exercises,
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adding a lot of redundancy, adding supersets, drop sets when it's not necessary is just generating fatigue and not failure. And fatigue is extremely expensive. When you start really focusing on muscle growth, you realize how fatigue is expensive. It taxes
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performance, it taxes recovery, it taxes more gains. You're supposed to see changes every 2 months, every 8 weeks.
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So, if you're not seeing changes every 8 weeks, maybe start considering low volume. Let's do an activity together.
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You're going to take your phone with you and we're going to open TikTok, for example. Just TikTok because we can just search quickly um the back workouts. I'm not here to snitch or call out names, it's not my
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thing. So, I will not share my screen, but you will also check on your side and you will see that most back workouts are lat focused. I'm going to just put back workout. Okay, just back workout.
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Literally, all I do for back. Let's see what she says. Wide grip pull down.
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Okay, that's for the lats. Close grip pull down, that's also for the lats. It's going to engage your biceps, but it's also for the lats. Then barbell row close grip, so that's for the lats, too.
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Three exercises for the lats. Single arm cable row, that's also for the lats. Then she does weighted back extensions.
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So, she does lats and erectors. Where are rear delts? Where are traps? Okay, nothing is really making traps a primary muscle here. Then another one is your next back workout. Seated row, so this is for the lats. Overlays, so uh
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you know, it's a pull overs, so that's for the last two. The lats are responsible for this. So, every time you're doing rowing like this, bringing your elbows close to your body, it's your lats every time. And also like
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something like a pull down, that's also bringing your elbows close to your body. Lat pull down. So, this is also for the lats.
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Face pulls. Okay, so this is for your rear delts and your upper back. Bicep curl. Okay, so now she stopped doing back. The thing about this is that it's a lot lats. I don't understand why would you do three exercise for the lats. I
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just don't understand. I mean, even logically speaking, if you want to get a balanced back, then why would you do three for the lats and one for the upper back? Exercise you need for a toned back. Rope face pulls, cable rows,
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underhand lat pull down and straight arm pull downs. Okay, three exercises for the lats.
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That's not going to give you the back that you want, guys. And even I know the first argument you will see because I saw a girl saying, "Oh, she obviously knows what she's doing even if another girl said that's too lat focused."
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Someone responded, "Obviously she knows what she's doing because she has a nice back." Guys, don't fall for this trap. I mean, you're not going to get your dream physique if you keep associating the physique of the person and their
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knowledge. Sometimes you just take a random routine from ChatGPT just because you want to create content. I don't know this person. I'm not talking about this person, but I say like, "How can you trust someone you don't know?" Honestly,
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like I'm just asking you to double-check. You can't blindly trust someone when you just open social media.
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Okay, so you open social media, you say back workout, and then the first person you see, you will save their workout just because they have a nice physique.
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You don't even know this person. You don't follow them for a long time. It's not even your favorite creator, so you don't really trust them that much. How can you just trust them with your physique? That's the main question I
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have for you, because most girls who share these toned back workouts are just lean, like extremely lean. When I showed you those videos, I'm bulking, I'm gaining weight, and I'm full of carbs, full of water retention. So, I'm not
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even lean. If I were lean, then I would have a very toned back, much more than what you see here. So, yeah, I mean, if you are toned, then obviously it's going to look nice, but the thing is we all
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have a normal body fat percentage all year round, okay? Like, I personally don't have time to be shredded the whole year, even if you think that I'm shredded. I'm not really shredded. I can be much more shredded. I don't have abs
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right now, you know? So, all year round we are at, let's say, 20 25% of body fat percentage. It depends on your lifestyle, but it will vary between 15, if you are really athletic and fit, 25.
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Okay? So, in that case, your back is not going to look super shredded. It's going to be a mix of fat and muscle. So, you need to make sure that you have a balanced back routine, or it's going to
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get worse with the fat that's going to be added to that back. I also saw a girl talking about how to create a thick back, not a wide one. And when I checked her program, it was two lat workouts. It
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was single arm pull down, and it was lat pull down. Yeah. Okay, that's two different moves, okay?
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That's two different moves. If we're thinking high volume, then that's two different moves. All right, I can accept that, but where are where's the rest, you know? Cuz she has back and chest, but where is the rest? That's the
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problem. Is that if you want to work and get a balanced back, you need to work on everything.
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I don't understand this programming. I'm not against back and chest, but I'm against uh saying that it's back, but it's actually lats. It's a lat day, it's not a back day. There are two problems with back workouts today. Too many lat
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exercises and no erectors. That's like the main things I see. So, yeah, my advice for you guys is just to double-check. If you don't want to double-check and you want to trust me, then take my back workout. It's on
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social media. And what I just explained here, just do four exercises, guys. You don't need more. You don't need more.
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You just need to reach close to failure for each exercise. You don't need to be wasting so much energy for three lat exercises when you can just do the same thing for one lat exercise. So, yeah, you need four exercises, one for each
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that I just explained before. And we're done. Maybe on your back workout you're going to add biceps and abs, so it's already a long session. And yeah, you don't need to do so much to grow your back. You don't even need to do two
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sessions a week. Honestly, I've seen amazing growth from one session a week. That's my back, 1 year, four exercises, and once a week. I've never done twice a week in my entire life because my other session is push to to avoid creating
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imbalances. I hope this video was useful for you. Don't forget to follow and comment to encourage me to create more.
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I will share my links in the description, so my app, but also my fix your back program. If you've been doing these workouts, then my fix your back program will deprioritize the lats so that we can start prioritizing what you
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didn't prioritize before. Okay? So, we also work on bringing the shoulders up, growing your lower body much more. We're working on bringing more balance around your body so that this back that you think is too wide becomes just balanced,
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okay? I made this topic go viral without really wanting to. I just wanted to talk about my own experience, and I didn't realize how many girls were actually struggling all around the world because of the back workouts that we have on
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social media. Start spreading balanced back workouts all over the world so I count on you to share your own routine based on this, and tag me, and I will repost you because we want to get rid of this all lat workouts, okay? We want to
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get rid of lat workouts. We don't want any girl to join the gym and start over developing something just because we have the wrong routines today on social media. I want to I want you guys to clean this, okay? So, how do we clean
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this? You share your own balanced back routine based on the structure that I just shared on this video.
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So, see you soon, bisou, and don't forget to comment and like and subscribe.
Topics:back workoutlats trainingtraps exercisesrear delts isolationerectors strengtheningbalanced physiqueaesthetic trainingmuscle proportionworkout mistakesfitness tips
