How To Build A Big Back At Home (NO WEIGHTS & NO PULL-UP BAR)

If you’re familiar with home workouts, you already know that the back is probably the most difficult muscle to adequately train at home without equipment and especially when there’s no pullup bar available. Admittedly, there are plenty of home workouts for back out there that do “target” the back muscles to a certain degree. But they either fail to actually work your back muscles through their full range of motion or they just don’t provide enough load or resistance to enable you to build back muscle without equipment. In this video though, I’ll go through the best back workout at home that avoids those two common pitfalls and will instead enable you to target and build back muscles at home.

The first exercise that’ll help you build back muscles at home is the bodyweight lat pulldowns, which will be a replacement for the pull-ups or lat pulldowns that you’d typically perform in the gym to target the lats. To do so most effectively, you ideally want to use the bed sheet setup I’ve presented in my other home workouts. If these are too difficult, you can regress them by bending your knees like so and then using your legs to help push you up during each rep. And if you aren’t using the bed sheet set up, an alternative is something I’ve shown in my past home workout video, the sliding lat pulldown.

Next, we’re going to move onto a bodyweight row to now shift a little more emphasis to our mid-back musculature like the mid-traps and rhomboids for more back thickness. For the easiest modification, you can perform these with a split stance and use your back leg to help raise your body up during each rep. If you’re not using the sheets though, then ideally you’ll want to find a table sturdy and long enough to safely perform your row, which can be made easier by bending your knees and using your legs for assistance.

Next, we’re going to use an exercise that’ll help you target the lats for more back width (no pullup bar needed). And we’ll use the sheets here again in order to best simulate a dumbbell pullover or straight arm pulldown that we’d typically perform in the gym to target the lats. To start out, I’d recommend doing these with your feet further away from the door. An alternative if you’re not using sheets though are to perform a sliding version of these on the ground. Next, we’re going to use the sheets to now perform face pulls to target the mid and lower traps as well as the various rotator cuff muscles that are all important muscles for postural improvements and overall scapula and shoulder stability. And if you aren’t using the sheet setup, to hit some of these important muscles you can perform wall slides instead.

Next, we’re going to finish the workout that’ll help you build back muscle without equipment off with the prone arm circles (legs elevated) that’ll enable us to not only work all of our upper back muscles but will now target and strengthen the lower back through hip extension as well. If this is initially too difficult for you though, I’d recommend raising your legs and upper body to a lesser degree, and performing the arm circle movement faster. Over time, you can progress by raising your legs and upper body a little more while slowing down the tempo of your arm circles.

So, to sum everything up, here’s the best back workout at home you can do:

Bodyweight Lat Pulldowns: 3 sets
Bodyweight Inverted Row: 3 sets
Straight Arm Pulldown: 3 sets
Bed Sheet Face Pulls: 3 sets
Prone Arm Circles: 3 sets

I’d recommend instead splitting it up into at least 2 days throughout the week by using an upper/lower split for example to better manage the training volume and frequency. And ideally you want to use a rep range of roughly 10-15 reps per set for your home workouts for back, but you should worry less about the rep range and instead focus on taking each set of the workout either to failure or within a rep or two short of failure in order to maximize growth despite having access to heavy weights.

But by executing and progressing this workout properly overtime as you get stronger, you’ll be able to build your back in the comfort of your own home without the need for heavy weights. Just keep in mind though that that’s just one piece of the puzzle. Because pairing your workouts with the right nutrition plan is essential when it comes to seeing results and packing on size. And for a step-by-step science-based program that takes care of all the guesswork for you by showing you both how to workout AND what to eat week after week in order to build muscle as efficiently as possible with science, simply take the analysis quiz to discover which science-based program would be best for you and where your body is currently at below: https://builtwithscience.com

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Filmed by: Bruno Martin Del Campo

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