Back Exercises: The 10 Best Moves for a Stronger Back

Your back is the biggest muscle group above your waist, and it's the one most home lifters neglect because you can't see it in the mirror. That's a mistake with consequences beyond looks: a weak upper back rounds your shoulders forward, caps how much you can bench and press, and leaves your lower back doing work it was never meant to do alone. Training it properly takes four or five movements, not twenty.

The complication is that "back" isn't one muscle. Your lats run from your armpits down to your lower spine and pull your arms down and back. The traps cover your neck, shoulders and mid-back, the rhomboids sit between your shoulder blades, and the erector spinae run either side of the spine keeping you upright. Each responds to a different direction of pull, which is why a workout built entirely from rows leaves obvious gaps.

The 10 best back exercises

1. Pull-up

Nothing builds lat width faster. Hang from a bar with an overhand grip slightly wider than your shoulders, pull your elbows down and back until your chin clears the bar, then lower under control until your arms are straight. The temptation is to cut the bottom range short; don't, because the stretched position is where the lats do their hardest work.

If you can't do one yet, loop a resistance band under your feet or use the negative: jump to the top and take five seconds to lower yourself. Three sets of those, three times a week, gets most people to their first rep within a couple of months. See our pull-ups guide for the full progression, and a doorway pull-up bar costs about £20.

2. Barbell bent over row

The best single back exercise there is. Hinge at the hips until your torso is roughly 45 degrees or lower, let the bar hang at arm's length, then row it to your lower ribs and squeeze your shoulder blades together at the top. Keep your neck in line with your spine rather than craning up at a mirror.

It loads everything at once, which is efficient and also why form degrades fast. When your torso starts rising with each rep, the set is finished. Full detail in our bent over row guide.

3. Lat pulldown

The pull-up's more adjustable cousin, and genuinely useful rather than merely a substitute, because you can load it lighter than bodyweight for high-rep work or heavier for strength. Pull the bar to your upper chest, elbows driving down rather than back, and resist the urge to lean away from the machine.

Pull in front of your neck, not behind it. High-density EMG work comparing the two found the front pulldown produced greater lat excitation on the way down, and the behind-the-neck version puts the shoulder in an awkward, externally rotated position for no extra benefit (front vs behind-neck lat pulldown study). Grip width matters less than people claim; recent EMG comparison of grip variations found little difference in lat activation between them (grip variation analysis).

4. Deadlift

Not strictly a back exercise, but nothing else loads your erector spinae, traps and lats isometrically the way a heavy deadlift does. Bar over mid-foot, hips higher than a squat, chest up, then push the floor away and stand. Your back's job is to stay rigid while your legs and hips do the moving.

Two or three working sets is plenty given how much it takes out of you. Our deadlift guide covers setup in detail, and if your lower back is the weak link, the trap bar deadlift shifts some load onto the legs.

5. Single arm dumbbell row

One knee and one hand on a bench, opposite foot planted, dumbbell hanging straight down. Row it to your hip, pause, lower slowly. Working one side at a time lets you use a fuller range of motion than a barbell allows, and it exposes strength differences between sides that a two-handed row hides.

This is the back exercise that needs the least equipment: one dumbbell and any sturdy surface. A set of adjustable dumbbells makes progression painless.

6. Chest supported row

Lie face down on an incline bench and row. Taking your lower back out of the equation entirely means you can push the upper back hard without your hips or spine becoming the limiting factor, which makes this ideal for high-rep work at the end of a session or for anyone with a cranky lower back. Full technique in our chest supported row guide.

7. Face pull

The corrective exercise that actually works. Set a cable or band at roughly head height, grip with thumbs pointing back, and pull towards your forehead while spreading your hands apart. Your rear delts and mid-traps do the work.

Go light and chase the squeeze rather than the weight; face pulls done heavy just turn into a bad upright row. Two or three sets of 15 to 20 at the end of every upper body session is a reasonable habit. More in the face pulls guide.

8. Straight arm pulldown

A rare isolation move for the lats. Standing at a cable with a straight bar, arms locked out, push the bar down in an arc to your thighs. Because your elbows never bend, your biceps can't take over, which is the usual problem with rows once you're tired. Details in our straight arm pulldown guide.

9. Inverted row

Bodyweight rowing under a bar set at hip height, or under a sturdy table if you're improvising. Heels on the floor, body in a straight line, pull your chest to the bar. Raise the bar to make it easier, lower it or elevate your feet to make it harder. It's the most underrated back exercise for home training because the difficulty scales without any extra kit. See the inverted row guide.

10. Back extension

For the erectors specifically. On a 45-degree bench or a Roman chair, hinge at the hips and lower your torso, then raise it until your body forms a straight line. Stop there; hyperextending past straight compresses the lower spine for nothing. Hold a plate to your chest once bodyweight gets easy. Our back extension guide has the setup.

A simple back workout

Run this twice a week with two or three days between sessions:

1. Pull-up or lat pulldown: 4 sets of 6 to 10
2. Barbell bent over row: 4 sets of 8
3. Single arm dumbbell row: 3 sets of 10 to 12 each side
4. Face pull: 3 sets of 15 to 20
5. Back extension: 2 sets of 12 to 15

Add weight or a rep when you hit the top of the range on every set with clean form. That's most of what progression is.

How much back work is enough

Ten to twenty hard sets a week across all back movements suits most people training for size and strength. Split across two sessions, that's five to ten sets each, which is roughly what the workout above delivers. The NHS asks for muscle-strengthening work covering all major muscle groups on at least two days a week, and back gets neglected more than any other group when people train once a week and run out of time.

One thing worth saying plainly: if you have ongoing low back pain, strength training is more likely to help than harm. Exercise therapy has consistent support across the low back pain literature (umbrella review of systematic reviews), though you should start light and get pain that radiates down a leg checked properly first.

Recommended reads

1. The best pull up bar in the UK
2. The best adjustable dumbbells in the UK
3. Dumbbell back exercises
4. The best resistance bands in the UK
5. All workout and exercise guides