How do you activate your back muscles if they are really underdeveloped?
When doing pullups, even with concentration and focus, the process of pulling up is mainly driven through my arm strength and not the back.
I feel all the burn in my forearms and nothing in my back.
scapular retraction
So I had this problem and what helped me was getting a good shoulder-width grip, comfortable position (bars in the right direction), and then before using any arms, pulling yourself up with your back. What I mean by this is your arms are going to be straight, but your chest will rise as only your back contracts. If this is hard, just so those until you can do those with good form. Then, contract your back and keep pulling with your arms while holding your back tight. Voila, you are now working your lats
Make sure you're starting from dead hang and perform the whole motion slowly until your chin is high above the bar, as high as you can hold a static position. No momentum and no throwing yourself at the top. Concentrate on your posture, use your back and abs to stabalise as you pull.
So until I get that feeling of scapular retraction to become natural, would you say that pullups are a useless exercise?
I have nobody to watch my form.
You have to progress to it, using lat pulldowns or assisted pullups.
Lat pushdowns isolate the back from the arms, so you can do those too
grab the bar, retract scapula, perform the motion. that's all there is to it.
Pullups are a compound exercise, if you're feeling most of the work in your forearms that means you have disproportionally weak forearms compared to your back. Just keep doing pullups until you dont have bitch forearms anymore.
Scapular retraction, and do more chin ups, all that volume will hit your back and help it catch up to your arms.
It is my understanding that the potential actors in the movement partially solve the same task so it is possible to do pullups mostly via back and via arms (the arms pull the body to the hands with a reverse curl over the elbow, the back does the same exact thing pulling the elbows to the body over the shoulder joint)
Damn it, so after reading your tips and watching some vids, it seems I can forget about pullups.
I was just focusing on getting more numbers in...
youtube.com
youtube.com
Gotta focus on activating the proper muscles first, I just don't feel them at all in any exercises.
Dear friend, please don't forget
m.youtube.com
You're on the right track now. Try doing pulldowns and cable rows with light weight and focus on the connection with your mid back and the movement of the scapula. Your mid back is probably extremely weak so you won't be able to do as much weight as you would expect. Literally focus as hard as you can on not initiating the movement by tensing your biceps and forearms - it will be extremely hard and frustrating, but in the long run it will make your shoulders a lot better. This won't happen immediately. Over time you'll develop your proprioception and it will get better.
Also do face pulls - same rules apply. Don't let your shoulders roll forward and up at the start of the movement. Imagine you're 'opening' your armpits rather than letting them close.
Good luck buddeh.
stop being so autistic just do it
1. your forearms likely just aren't strong enough yet, I almost never feel my forearms during pullups and I can't do many.
2. dude in the pic appears to have good form. grip the bar with force and wider than your shoulders. I repeat: with force. squeeze the bar.
3. try to pull the top of your head back and up, the rest of the body follows the top of your head. you're not trying to hump the air or whatever.
(P.S. this is where it gets esoteric: people often describe their pushup technique as pushing the ground away from them, rather than pushing their body up. maybe you're one of those people, then this might help you: rather than trying to lift any part of your body up, try to pull your elbows down. I can have both sensations at the same time, that of the head levitating upwards and of the elbows dropping.)
us the lat pulldown and do 12-15 reps light weight high volume. It will hit your back good and make it grow.
Great channel, I will watch through all the videos.
Another big problem of mine is that I cannot lift my legs laterally properly without too much strain, could only hold the position for a few seconds.
Use an assist band until you progress enough to do it properly on your own.
Do you really think you can reverse curl your bodyweight multiple times?
Damn, this guy is good I think.
youtube.com
My problem is really muscle imbalance and that it leads to massive compensation, this has been going on for decades so it feels naturally to me.
I cannot replicate his exercise without the quads. My quads compensate for my week lower back muscles and all the muscle groups around the pelvic as well.
>How do you activate your _____ muscles if they are really underdeveloped?
The answer is yoga.
Every time.
I guess I just always keep tension on my lats.
But I heard that's for homos
start with pushups with your back 'activated'
overall it is the inferior excercise, but it is better in your case because your back needs more work in comparison to the rest of the muscles.
it's not driven by your arm strength at all. you have weak grip, which is why your forearms burn.
autistically watching youtube videos about "muscle activation" is probably the biggest waste of time i can think of. feeling the "burn" in one part of the chain doesn't mean it's doing the most work, it's likely the weakest link giving out first. does the op even understand what his forearm muscles do? they certainly don't pull you closer to the bar in a pullup
Pull your elbows behind your back, not your chest to the bar.
You usually don't feelnyou back muscles dping pull ups but that's normal, they are being used believe it or not
Sometimes at the end of a set you can feel them, but I myself only felt something in my back when I was able to do 13 reps non stop
Just do scapulla pull ups
Do inverted bodyweight rolls
Stop being autistic. Just do more pull ups. Who cares where you feel it doesn't make a difference.
Pull ups leave you with twig arms and a wide back. You are being delusional.
Do straight arm pulldowns to activate them before or after. Play around with hollow body chinups , they seem to hit lats harder. But also do arched back chest to bar chinups too.
Lat pulldown was how i got good at pull ups even though people say it doesn't carry over if you use a grip you would do pull ups with and not a stupid wide one it will help your pull up. But you still get a forearm pump its normal for back work
Post body
4/10 bait