Resistance Band Exercises For Your Back
Resistance bands have become very popular in recent years. They are portable, they are easy on your joints, and can provide tension in many directions to hit every major muscle group.
Are Resistance Bands Useful for Back Exercises?
Back exercises have gained notoriety more in recent years. A growing amount of people suffering from poor posture has worsened in recent years thanks to our poor tech habits (see this article of what they are and how to combat them).
Poor posture exudes low confidence and self-esteem. Even worse it’s a sign that your muscle strength is out of balance.
Weak upper and lower back muscles are usually the culprit. It is not necessarily always the case that they are weak.
It could be that they are just weaker or than the antagonist muscle, meaning their opposite muscle group. In this case the front shoulder and chest muscles.
Why is it beneficial to exercise back muscles?
As stated, increasing strength in your back muscles not only will help your posture and balance your body, but it will help to prevent injury.
Preventing Injury
Shoulder injuries come in many forms. Shoulder impingements, torn rotator cuffs, bursitis, amongst many others, can be directly or indirectly related to a continued strain placed in and around the shoulder joint.
Our bodies are very good at adapting. When we need to perform a task, our body will figure out how to do it given the resources that it has.
When we exercise, if our back muscles and rear shoulders are not strong enough to support the weight, other muscles that are stronger will be more involved.
Given that more people train their chest and front shoulders, that often times takes over as a dominant muscle group.
Although there are a total of 40 muscles that make up the back muscle, the major muscles are as follows:
trapezius (upper section), levator scapulae, rhomboid minor and major, and latissimus dorsi (lower back). Refer to picture below of where each muscle is located:
Here are the best resistance band workouts to hit your back. These moves will especially engage more muscles within the back because of the effort spent in keeping the Tension Toner bar pulled apart while doing the exercise.
Top lower back
https://www.tensiontoner.com/tension-toner-bent-over-row
Top upper back
https://www.tensiontoner.com/tension-toner-back-raise-with-shrugs
Top overall back exercise:
We have a full set of negative tension exercises that is designed to overload your muscles during the eccentric portion of the workout. The eccentric portion is basically the lowering phase of a move.
For instance, if I picked up a weight and pressed it over my head, that would be the concentric portion. When I lower the weight that’s called the eccentric phase.
Eccentric exercises focuses just on that part of the move. Tension Toner is the first company to show how you can do this with resistance bands.
Overloading your back muscles only in the eccentric phase ilhelps them get stronger and more defined. Check our this video of how to do the negative tension back row:
https://www.tensiontoner.com/tension-toner-negative-tension-back-row
Are there any common mistakes people make when using resistance bands?
You should keep in mind that your results are only good as the pace of the exercises. In the videos we provided above, you will get a better understanding of the rythm of each exercise. Keep in mind that before you change out the resistance band for a heavier option, consider the tempo of the rep first. Slow up the lifting and lowering portion of each repetition.
Learn to control the weight through the entire movement. Doing this increases the time your muscles are under tension to deliver better outcomes.
Is there a way to make resistance band workouts harder? How about easier?
The great thing about resistance bands is that you can change the resistance levels in seconds making minimal disruptions switching bands between sets.
When using resistance bands on the Tension Toner bar, you also can change how much resistance you want to pull against within the bar. If you want to make it even easier, you can perform each movement above just using the bar. This will help to dust off the cobwebs so to speak if you’re finding it difficult to start.
Once you build up strength and endurance in these muscles, you can progressively make it harder by clipping on resistance bands.
Resistance Band Back Exercises- Conclusion
We discussed how resistance bands can be useful tool for your back muscles, why it’s beneficial alongside what exercises to perform, and what to do/not do.
