Can you work out your back without working out your biceps? Whether you want to fix your muscular imbalances or achieve a certain aesthetic, maybe even try a new exercise, not many people know that you can actually isolate your back without using your biceps. My general training philosophy is time under tension, high volume, short rest time, moderate repetition tempo, and taking the muscles of failure nearly every set. However, I do this with a lightweight to isolate the muscle, so the rep range is usually 15 to 20 for the lighter sets and 10 to 12 for the moderate weight sets. With this technique, you can even perform compound exercises without using accessory muscles, but we will focus on exercises that most people can execute without advanced training knowledge. The most important aspect being that you are feeling the muscle contraction during the movement. If you want to work out your back, make sure you feel it in your back, not your biceps or forearms. So we have the rhomboids and inner back and the lats, which are sometimes referred to as the wings of the back, then we have the lower back, lumbar spine area. Some people include trapezius, the muscles near your neck, but that is not what we are covering today. The main exercise is a pull-through. This can be done with different machines. The first is just a straight bar. To perform this exercise, you want to keep your arms static and bring the bar down, rotating your shoulders, squeezing your back at the end of the movement. Overhand grip tends to work the upper back, rhomboids, inner back, and an underhand grip focuses more on the lower back and lats. You can do this on a lat pull-down machine with a much larger bar, with a wider grip as opposed to a tricep machine. One variation of this is on a cable crossover. The same principles applying to both an overhand and underhand grip. This is better for symmetry and you can even do one arm at a time if you wanted to. Really make sure to stretch out the lats during the negative and squeeze your back at the end of the positive repetition to flex the muscle. The rope pull-through is great as well. A closer rope grip will stimulate the lats, whereas the wider rope grip works the inner part of the back. When using the closer grip, you should feel more of an intense stretch in your lats during the negative repetition and an almost sharp contraction of the lats when performing the positive repetition. The wider rope grip focuses on the rhomboids mostly and is a great isolation exercise. I'm a huge fan of hyper extensions. If you make sure to really squeeze your back at the top of the movement, they don't just work your lower back, which is what most people believe. You can stimulate the middle, upper back, and even some of the lats very effectively. Usually I will use a 45 pound or 25 pound plate to do this, but make sure you aren't stressing your glutes, hamstrings, or biceps. A heavy weight also makes it difficult to really bring your arms back and squeeze the upper back. It's why I'm holding my arms up in the air, really pulling my shoulders back to try to get that upper back contraction. Deadlifts and partial deadlifts, aka rack pulls, are great for this as well. Although they tend to stress the lower back more than hyper extensions, if you restrict the deadlifts to the upper half of the movement, it puts more stress on the upper back as opposed to the lower back, glutes, and hamstrings. I usually do these with 30 to 50 pound dumbbells, really trying to squeeze my upper back and pull my shoulders back at the top of the movement. There is one exercise I decided not to show here. It's a dumbbell row that is done with a very light weight. If you are using a light enough to moderate weight, you are able to take some stress off the biceps, but this can really apply to any exercise. You could do that with just a lighter barbell row as well. That being said, those exercises will always stimulate the biceps to some degree. So if you guys are looking to take some stress off of your arms during your back workout, perhaps you have some muscular imbalances, maybe your biceps are big. Definitely give these exercises a shot, especially if you've never done them before. Thank you guys for joining me. If you could please like the video, subscribe, hit that bell icon, and share the video if you can. If you guys would like to support me further, definitely check out Frankie's free range meat, providing you with high quality nutrient dense animal foods at an affordable price. You can also go to Franky's naturals.com for minimal ingredients, minimally processed hygiene and cosmetic products. If you'd like to reach out to me for one-on-one consultations pertaining to fitness or health, you can shoot me an email, Franka to finalatgmail.com. Everything is linked down in the comments for you guys.