BACK & BICEPS

After months of making me take my “medicine” my trainer Steve Wrona is finally letting me have fun again! That is, he’s getting back to my bread-and-butter bodybuilding training style—at least for a little while.

Back and biceps go together perfectly, kinda like cookies and milk. Why? Because the biceps are a synergist or helper muscle in every back movement. To do machine rows and pullups and pulldowns the right way, you need to think of your upper body as a crane; your back muscles are the motor, while your arms are just cables. This visual should get you to focus most of your attention on your back muscles (I know a lot of people who have trouble with this) but your biceps are always getting some work in throughout the session.

That’s why when you take a look at the workout below, you want to do it in exactly this order. If you start with the curls first, your biceps will be too gassed to do the pulling moves effectively, and your back muscles—lats and rhomboids—will get shortchanged in the process.

Have a look at the video here to watch Steve explain it in more detail.