Tuesday, July 20, 2010

T/Bar Rowing w/ Quarters


I'm a huge advocate of having people incorporate both the 25lb and 10lb plates into their T-Bar routine b/c (as demonstrated 20+yrs ago by 8x Mr. Olympia, Lee Haney ) doing the exercise this way provides for greater range of motion and may even give the athlete more control given the lighter poundage.

Although back is second only to legs in terms of overall size and strength, this muscle group also requires fine tuning and shaping exercises that work feed off of repetition and precision, as opposed to bulk weight. For mass, I'd recommend heavy deadlifs, heavy lat-pull downs, and heavy bent-over rows (whether using the straight bar or the dumbbells). For shape, your toughest exercise will be pull-ups (using at least three different grips), next I'd recommend your lighter T-Bar Rows, and lastly I would consider doing light dumbbell pullovers -- which some people might also use to train for chest.

I, personally, do not like to mix my shurgs and/or even Reverse Pec Deck exercises w/ my back workouts. I know both the former and the latter could be easily incorporated for a full-back type workout, I choose to keep them for the shoulders routine (which for many guys isn't a very long workout -- largely b/c like legs -- it's not an enjoyable experience!)