Mark Sayer

Some muscle groups you can occasionally “accidentally” build, a strong powerful back is not one of them. It takes repeated effort and calories… time to eat some tacos after this pump.

The best backs are a combination of the results of heavy compounds like squats and RDLs, vertical and horizontal pulling, and then fine tuning with prone-Y’s/Trap-3 moves.

Um, actually “no.” Unless you suck.

“If the graphics are AI, count me out.” If you’re programming is AI/ChatGPT with no experienced guidance have fun with that.

The serratus anterior muscle, which looks kind of like a fish scale on the side of your trunk when lean and developed, helps stabilize the shoulder joint when you throw a punch or any other end-range movement.
The barbell bench press can be a good athletic development tool, although it’s not my favorite, because it has less range of motion than the incline press or pressing with dumbbells.

People can develop shoulder pain from focusing on the bench press without including movements that build the serratus. The pecs and front delts become out of balance with the serratus. This might look like shoulders that are less stable or painful when going from the weight room to the dojo, for example.

If the barbell bench press is the focus, I always make sure to include other movements that target the anterior serratus. This might be dips, a DB or KB press, or something as simple as ending a bench workout with push-ups.

Note, this does not mean YOU ARE NOT WORKING HARD, but it means that there are no measurable incremental increases in impactful exercises.

SORENESS IS NOT AN INDICATION OF A GOOD TRAINING SESSION, now a good training session can make you sore, sure, but a movement being new is the biggest causational factor to whether or not you are sore the next day.

In fact, if you are constantly sore, especially from exercises that are continuously changing, your muscles are not going to 1) get stronger 2) get leaner, since your body can’t lay down new muscle tissue till the motor learning phase of training is surpassed 3) you will actually unnecessarily cause more stress than is productive while failing to achieve points 1&2.
Here I am progressing pin presses by the weight staying the same, 275lbs, but I’m moving from 8 pins up to 7 pins up, thus moving the weight through a greater range of motion.

This is one of my favorite progressive overload techniques, especially deadlift variations for men who have previously had back pain.