Back in the game: use this routine to turn around your rear view

IS YOUR BACK PLAYING catch-up with your chest and arms? Then try this back routine on for size. After a few warm-up sets of pull-ups, head over to the power rack, remove the safeties and place a bar inside the rack for dead-lifts. Begin with the bar touching your shins. Keeping your arms straight and back flat, drag the bar up your legs until you're standing upright. At the top, squeeze your thighs and glutes hard before lowering the bar back toward the floor.

After deads, insert the safeties into the power rack so that a bar placed across them rests at or just below knee level. From here, perform bent-over rows, but allow the bar to settle on the safeties between each rep before powering it up toward your abs.

On the next exercise, one-arm dumbbell rows, be sure to pull the weight toward your hip; don't just move it straight up and down. After three sets with each arm, head over to a high bar to perform weighted pull-ups, attaching a dumbbell or weight plate to a belt. Go to failure on each set, and after your last set, drop the weight and continue doing pull-ups until you fail again. Finish up by isolating your lats with the decline pullover, using a lighter weight you can control.

                     BACK ROUTINE

EXERCISE                           SETS    REPS

Pull-Up                              3       10-15
Deadlift                             4   8,8,10,12
Power Rack Bent-Over Row             4   6,8,10,12
One-Arm Dumbbell Row                 3          12
Weighted Pull-Up                     4  to failure
Decline Pullover                     3       12-15

(1) lightweight warm-up sets

(2) On your last set, remove the weight and continue
    doing pull-ups until you reach failure again.

BY JIMMY PENA, MS, CSCS

EDITED BY JIMMY PENA, MS, CSCS, M&F FITNESS DIRECTOR

COPYRIGHT 2008 Weider Publications
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning