Many trainers neglect the muscles on the back-side of their body as they obsess about the ones they can see in the mirror. What they don't realise is while they can't see them, everyone else can. A tiny back on a guy with enormous arms and a huge chest just looks plain weird! More importantly a lack of upper back strength and development will decrease your performance in the bench press and overhead presses. It is no coincidence that powerlifers going after the biggest bench press they possibly can, do heaps of upper back training to provide stability for their bench press thus increasing the amounts they can lift.

Guys who do a lot of bench pressing are normally all too familiar with the shoulder injuries that can come along with it. That nagging pain that you push through eventually leading to a chronic injury that leaves you barely able to press an empty bar.It all comes down to structural imbalances, and this is where the upper back comes in. In order to bench press or overhead press safely muscles of the upper back must stabilise the shoulder blades down and back in order for the shoulder to sit in a position that allows for free movement. However as these muscles are neglected and the pectorals get tight, the shoulder is pulled forward which can cause a muscle impingement.

Now you're probably not that interested in this information because your shoulders feel fine right now. But while your shoulders may not be dysfunctional and injured they may not be performing at their best and as a result you're leaving a lot of weight off the bar you could be pressing with ease! Your body has a protective system of shutting down the power that muscles are able to produce when it thinks it will cause damage.And when the shoulder sits in bad position or is unstable it will do exactly this. However when there is rigid stability in the muscles supporting the shoulder, the body has no reason not to give the triceps, deltoids and pectorals full ability to contract powerfully. The result, a massive explosive bench press.

So what do you need to do to develop your upper back so that it will assist your bench pressing? There are certain muscle groups you especially need to focus on. The latissimus dorsi or lats are normally the first muscle that springs to mind when people think of the upper back and they are important for stabilising pressing especially the bench press where they should be contracted to create a solid base on the bench to press from. However there are other muscles that are probably far more important in this case.

The key to getting your shoulder to sit in the right position is scapular retraction. So it is these muscles that are key to creating the foundations of a solid upper back. The lower trapezius muscles and the rhomboids are the stars of the show here. Most people have trouble actually recruiting these muscles they use them so little. Hours of slouching at a desk or on a couch have left these muscles weak. Initially rehabilitative exercises should be used to activate these muscles. YTWs, Blackburns and Wallslides are all very effective for this. The key to these exercises is to use a very light weight if any at all (wallslides is a non-weighted exercise anyway) and to really focus on retracting the shoulder blades down and back.

Once mastery of these exercises has been achieved you can move on to more traditional upper back exercises. Pullups, Rows and the lesser known Facepull are very effective at building a massive back. The problem is that with weak lower traps and rhomboids proper technique usually goes out the window. The rhomboids particularly are also a particularly fast twitch fiber and fatigue much faster than the biceps and lats that are also being worked. In order to use proper form the shoulder blades should be squeezed back at the beggining of the movement and the bar should touch the upper chest in the case of pullups and the stomach with rows and be held there for a pause. When performed like this you ensure your upper back is being developed in a balanced and functional fashion.

Most people will need to check their ego and work their way up from lighter weights but the result will be an upper back that is as impressively strong as it looks and a bench press to match.