Say Goodbye to Back Pain with This Back Workout with Dumbbells

Often people are not aware of how important their back muscles to overall fitness. Especially, when somebody is working out at their home, they can’t hit their back muscles efficiently. In this article, we’ll present an effective back workout with dumbbells you can do at home.

Before we get to our workout, let’s discuss why back workouts are important.

Why Back Workout is Important?

Think about your back muscles such as lats, rhomboids, and traps. What would be the benefits of improving those muscles? First of all, the muscles we listed in our back have a function of improving our posture and muscle imbalances.

Posture is one of the most important aspects of living a healthy life. If you have a bad posture—you probably do if you earn your life sitting 8 hours a day—your life will be affected negatively. Weak back muscles make you more prone to injuries, so, it would be in your best interest to make a back workout with dumbbells a priority!

Weak back muscles also hurt the mobility of your upper back, due to that you’ll face problems regarding the movement of your shoulder blades. So, even if you only exercise your shoulders and chest, your weak back muscles will hurt your progress in those muscles too!

Again and again, we are showing how critical balance is to life and exercise. For example, you should also do accessory ab workouts to improve your deadlift because if you don’t, your lower back will start to round and mess up your form.

Let’s get “back” to the pushing exercises that target your shoulders and chest. You may bench quite heavy for your size by only doing bench presses, that’s right. However, even though you make progress if you do complementary workouts; that will improve your progress significantly and also make you less prone to injury.

Back Muscles

Lower Back

The lower back supports your upper body and keeps you balanced. Strong lower back muscles, lessen back pain and soreness you’ll face during your lifetime. Also, your mobility will improve drastically because lower back muscles engage whenever you bend, rotate, or extend your body.

People hurt their lower back more than other body parts. When you face problems regarding your back, your life quality and length get worse.

If you are into exercising and fitness, you can’t neglect lower back muscles.

Mid Back

Muscles on your mid-back protect your spine and let your body turn and twist.

Now, we’ll talk about one of the most important and major muscle groups on your body, that’s your latissimus dorsi, also known as lats. Especially men should focus on lats to achieve a thick and wide look.

Upper Back

The upper back retracts your shoulder blades, stabilizes the shoulders, and helps you retract your scapula. Your lats are also on your upper back, besides them, we can include traps and rear delts as upper back muscles.

Rear delts are often neglected even though they have a crucial role in your back health. Don’t worry, our back workout with dumbbells have exercises that target your rear delts.

So, in short by doing our back workout;

• You’ll achieve a better posture,
• Reduce your back pain,
• Help the stability of your shoulders and,
• Improve your overall balance and mobility.

Back Workout with Dumbbells

“Can’t we do back workouts with machines or a barbell?” Well, you can but they all have different pros and cons. Also, we have designed this workout imagining you are exercising at home and only have a pair of dumbbells.

So, let’s get to the pros of exercising with dumbbells. First of all; they offer a lot more versatility than machines or a barbell can ever offer. With machines, your range of motion is fixed; they are not free weights like barbells.

However, you can’t bend a barbell to change the way your palms are facing. This is where dumbbells come into play, they offer more control over your movement which means you’ll be able to contract your muscle fibers in more than one way.

That’s super important regarding back workouts because you have to hit your back muscles in different ways to make real progress.

Before we get to our back workout with dumbbells, also check this abs workout to complement your back muscles and abs, we suggest you do both workouts: “Lose Fat Quick with this Intense Workout for Lower Abs”.

For this workout, you’ll only need dumbbells. However, we suggest that big exercises such as deadlifts need heavier dumbbells. There are two routes to choose from, either you choose fixed or adjustable dumbbells. Check our guide, “Are Adjustable Dumbbells Good for You? Find Out! 2021 – Ultimate Guide”.

Do this work out two times a week to squeeze out most of the gains.

Dumbbell Row

Dumbbell row works both your lats and rhomboids. Do this exercise with heavy dumbbells as long as it doesn’t hurt your form. Also, don’t round your back.

Step by Step:

• Your feet should be hip-width apart.
• Hold dumbbells in each hand and engage your core.
• Push your butt back and bend your knees.
• Don’t round your shoulders.
• Keep your back long. Look down to not hurt your neck muscles.
• Pull the weights close to your lower chest, keep your elbows close to your body and squeeze your shoulder blades at the top of the movement.
• Lower the dumbbells slower than you pulled to keep your muscles contracted.
• 3 sets of 12 are enough for this exercise.

V-Taper Dumbbell Row

Remember that, rear delts are super important to your back muscles? This exercise is exactly what you are looking for and it’s only a slight variation of the dumbbell rows.

Also, it builds your outer lats too. Imagine the dumbbell row, but this time you flare your elbows outward instead of keeping them close to your body. Thanks to this exercise you’ll improve your bench significantly and make your shoulders less prone to injury.

Step by Step:

• Get into position just like the dumbbell row.
• Flare your elbows outward.
• Pull the dumbbells to your upper chest, squeeze for a moment.
• Slowly release the weights to keep the tension on your back.
• 3 sets of 12 are just right.

Dumbbell Deadlift

“Alright, deadlifts are super cool and effective but can you do them efficiently with dumbbells?” You absolutely can, in fact, doing dumbbell deadlifts can improve your form better than a barbell deadlift.

Let’s talk about the possible rewards and threats of deadlifts;

The deadlift is one of the main big exercises in fitness and everyone should learn how to do it; if they want to build their leg and back muscles efficiently and simultaneously. So, why some people say that deadlifts are dangerous?

They actually claim that they are dangerous because if you mess up your form you can seriously hurt your lower back. Yes, some exercises are a bit complicated to do. However, this applies to every exercise in fitness.

Well, by doing dumbbell deadlifts, you’ll focus on your form and improve muscle imbalances significantly.

Step by Step:

• While standing, grab dumbbells in your hands.
• Bend your knees and hips to lower the weights below your kneecaps.
• Keep your spine long and your neck in a comfortable position.
• Pull yourself up to bring dumbbells to your sides again, pull your shoulder blades together to squeeze.
• Breathe in while lowering and breathe out when you get back to standing straight.
• Do 4 sets of 10.

Reverse Fly

We are continuing to hit our lats and rear delts with the reverse fly.

Step by Step:

• Stand with your hip-width apart while holding dumbbells.
• Bend your knees and bow.
• Let your arms hang and make your palms face your body.
• Lift your arms to your sides and squeeze your shoulder blades together.
• Imagine a bird flapping, you are basically doing that with this exercise.
• Don’t forget to control this movement at all times.
• 3 sets of 12 is enough.

Upright Row

By doing upright rows you are targeting your traps and deltoids. The form is super important to master for this exercise, so you don’t hurt your shoulders.

Step by Step:

• Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, while holding dumbbells in front of your body.
• Your palms should face you.
• Pull your shoulder blades back and raise dumbbells close to your chin.
• Lower dumbbells in a controlled tempo.
• Do 3 sets of 12.

Renegade Row

Remember that improving your core muscles also helps your progress on your back and makes you less prone to injuries. Well, renegade rows are an innovative way to both exercise back and core muscles at the same time.

Step by Step:

• Put dumbbells on the ground and hold the handles.
• Get into a high plank position.
• Extend your arms, your palms should be facing each other.
• Engage your core and butt.
• Raise the dumbbell on your right to your chest level.
• Lower the weight and repeat the same with the other one.
• That counts as one rep, do 3 sets of 12.

Lat Pullover

This exercise targets your lats, rhomboids, read delts, and triceps.

Step by Step:

• Lie on your back on a bench or a chair. Also, you can create elevation by putting two pillows on top of each other and put them under your upper back.
• Bend your knees and put your feet flat on the floor.
• Grab a heavy dumbbell or hold two dumbbells in your hands.
• Press the weight over your chest, allow your elbows to bend slightly.
• Keep your back flat and lower the weight slowly behind your head until you feel the stretch on your upper back.
• Pull the weight back to the starting position.
• Do 3 sets of 12.

Good Morning

Let’s finish up our workout with good mornings! This exercise helps you strengthen your lower back muscles and looks super similar to the deadlifts, however, this exercise focuses on your hamstrings a bit more.

Step by Step:

• Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart while holding dumbbells with your hands and place them on your shoulders.
• Keep your knees slightly bent and your spine long.
• Slowly hinge from your hips and bend over.
• Use your glutes to get back to position and once you reach the starting position squeeze your buttocks.
• Do 3 sets of 12.

Conclusion

So, we’ve finished our back workout with dumbbells. How long will it take to see results? Be patient, as long as you do this exercise two times a week and do an accessory ab workout; you’ll eventually achieve an aesthetic look!

Have you enjoyed our workout? Let us know in the comments, what’s your favorite back exercise?

Thank you for reading.

Also, if you want to help us, please share this image!