There are many different ways to train the back and I’ve probably experimented with all of them over the years, both on myself and my clients.
I’ve experimented with as many as four sessions per week, where small amounts of volume are distributed more or less evenly over the week. I might do this on a 4-day split for a power lifter where he is Benching on Monday and Thursday and Squat/Deadlifting on Tuesday and Friday. Monday and Thursday might be more “vertical” pulls like pull-ups and pulldowns in order to keep stress off the lower back, and then we might include Row variations on Tuesday and Friday after we squat and deadlift – barbell rows, t-bar rows, dumbbell rows, etc.
I personally didn’t adapt that well to the frequency of training back 4 days per week and I found that after several weeks of this I wound up battling inflammation in the elbows, forearms, and biceps. Overall these movements all felt chronically tired and I found myself in a situation where I was more frequently taking weight OFF of an exercise rather than adding weight to an exercise, in order to get in the volume and frequency each week.
I still use the 4x/week approach with many of my clients however. Females seem to do better with the higher frequency than males, but I have men that use this approach too. It’s essentially a trial and error type of approach. It works well from an “on paper” organizational standpoint but doesn’t always play out like it should in the gym – as is true of many things.
I personally did better with a very high volume back session performed just once per week. Basically like a routine straight out of a muscle mag – you know, the kind we all make fun of? And most of those types of routines are in fact garbage for a natural trainee, but at least for back training this seems to work at least reasonably well.
But this type of approach still has a couple of flaws.
First, it’s hard to do a metric shit ton of volume in a single session and get the most out of every movement.
Everything that giveth, also taketh away.
I love high volume pull ups. I love heavy barbell rows. I love heavy deadlifts and rack pulls and even heavy shrugs. Those are kind of the staple exercises but I also like other exercises like t-bar rows, dumbbell rows, pulldowns, etc. But you simply can’t do it all in a single session just once per week.
Second, I also knew that one of the areas where Research and Experience intersect pretty reliably is the issue of training frequency. With some exceptions – most will agree that a twice per week frequency for a body part is likely superior to a once per week frequency. The research backs that up pretty solidly and the return on investment starts to drop off and the details get quite a bit more murky beyond a twice per week frequency.
So one of the things I wanted to accomplish with my Power-Building split was how to organize a training week that basically trained every muscle group two times per week, without necessarily having TWO fully dedicated days for each muscle group.
What I came up with was my “1.5x per week frequency.”
I applied this approach to just about every muscle group, not just the back.
Basically what I aimed to do was hit each muscle group pretty hard once per week with a session that was somewhat high in both volume and relative intensity. So generally 2-4 exercises for that body part for 2-3 sets each with most sets taken right up to or within 1-2 reps of failure.
Then later in the week I’d hit that muscle group again “indirectly” while training another body part that had some “overlap.” This second session was generally lower in volume but still served the purpose of increasing frequency to two times per week for each muscle group.
For instance, I might have a client train his chest on Monday with anywhere from 6-12 working sets and then on Thursday we do Shoulders & Triceps, but the first exercise for triceps is always either Dips or Close Grip Bench Pressing – ensuring that we get a solid chest stimulus a second day this week while still effectively hammering the triceps.
We could bias this even more towards the chest (if that was a weak point) by making the first shoulder exercise of the day a steep incline press rather than a pure overhead press.
The first thing I did when I created my Power Building system was create two dedicated lower body sessions each week. But I biased one of the sessions towards training the quads and one of the sessions towards training the hamstrings.
On the hamstring emphasis day I always make sure to include a heavy deadlift or deadlift variation (stiff leg deadlift, rack pull, etc).
The Deadlift or Deadlift variation serves as one of the primary hamstring exercises for the day, but also as the second session of the week for the back and traps.
On this day we can train the deadlifts or deadlift variation first in the workout, ensuring that we can apply maximum effort and energy into the movement and we don’t have to worry about the deadlifts zapping all our energy for heavy rows, etc later in the workout since we’ve moved those to another day.
If the Hamstring / Deadlift session falls on a Tuesday for instance, then we’d probably have a dedicated higher volume Back Session on Friday. This higher volume session generally includes up to 5 exercises – usually 4 for the back and then a shrug variation for the traps.
A sample session might look like this:
- Pull Ups – 3 sets 8-10
- Barbell Rows – 3 sets 8-10
- Seated Cable Rows – 3 sets 10-12
- V-Grip Pulldowns – 3 sets 10-12
- Shrugs – 3 sets 15-20
So that’s about 15 sets for Back / Traps at the high volume session, then later in the week we have our Hamstring Emphasis day where we include anywhere from 3-6 sets of Deadlifts / Deadlift Variations and we’ve got a total of about 18-21 sets of back training spread across the week.
This recommendation is probably on the high end of what would be needed for total volume each week and of course you can adjust the total volume, sets/reps, exercises, etc to your needs as this is just an example of what a full week might look like.
If you want to check out my full Power Building routine I lay out the entire process of setting up each body part on a “1.5x / week” frequency as well as a detailed outline of recommended sets/reps and how to progress with my 8/5/2 system for the main “power” exercises of the program.
Full routine is here: KSC Method for Power Building
