Back Volume

[Xpiro]

I do a pretty significant amount of sets for what I count as “back”—29 sets per week—and I’m feeling that I might need to cut down because I’m not doing too hot with pull ups and straight arm pulldowns, and rows might be approaching a standstill. So 29 is a lot, but I’m including all of lats, mid and lower traps, snd upper traps. Should that all be lumped into a single category?

Also, it should be noted that I hit back 4 days/week, taking care of pull-ups at home and doing pulldown variations on leg days at the gym. With 6 sets of straight arm pulldowns per week at 3 sets per leg day, I’m thinking about scrapping half of those. I’m running ULPPL so it goes Upper (pull ups), Lower (SAPD), rest, pull (pull ups), push, legs (SAPD snd close grip PD). If I got rid of SAPD on lower day, I’m never working back two days in a row, and volume goes down. But then I’m still at 26 sets for back, unless we consider lats/vert pulls their own category, in which case I’m at 12. Thoughts?

[coachcalande]

28 sets (even more) in an 8 day period is certainly doable if you have three days of rest between each 14 set session.

Otherwise….I’m not sure you’re gonna recover.

[Darkius]

Lats, traps, rhomboids, spinal erectors.

I treat lower back as a separate group.
I treat lats and rhomboids as separate groups that overlap depending on the exercise. I do 3 wide grip pulls and 2 lat pull downs 3x per week.
Traps I'm not sure of, since the fibers change directions as you look up and down it. I'm not even sure how to work traps besides shrugs, with forward leaning being best.


If a muscle group is not brought near failure during the exercise of another group that is, then it is a supporting group and does not count.

Biceps are tricky, since they might fail with back, before back, or after. You have to know how close each got.

[Darkius]

28 sets (even more) in an 8 day period is certainly doable if you have three days of rest between each 14 set session.

Otherwise….I’m not sure you’re gonna recover.

Depends how long someone built up adding more sets. Not everyone can just dive in and do that. I'd need at least 1 more day to recover, and would still think it was more than optimal.

[Xpiro]

@coach problem is I can only get to the gum 2 days/week for legs, so I do basically all of my upper body stuff at home, and of course pulldowns are only possible at the gym (pullovers not possible due to two shoulder impingements). So there’s not a lot of room for recovery there.

I guess I could do more sets of pulldowns on leg day 2 so I can maintain volume while getting rid of them on leg day 1, but even then, I’m still working back 3 days/week and only have a single 72 hour stretch between sets within a week and two 48 hour stretches.

I could do more sets of pull-ups at home (like, a lot) and just nix pulldowns altogether, but I’d rather not. Close grip (unilateral) pulldowns are improving smoothly, even. And I’m struggling but damn I love me some straight arms.

Tl;dr more than one 72 hour rest windows impossible with my exercise choices due to equipment limitations....

@jax for traps I do barbell shrugs and incline DB Kelso shrugs.

Low back didn’t even cross my mind tbh, I’ve injured it so many times over the years the fact that I can still deadlift at all is a miracle. I’ve indefinitely disposed of barbell rows (subbed Pendlays) and low bar squats (subbed fronts and high bar). I just recovered from a bad flare up and don’t intend to **** with adding sets there... like... ever.

As for how long it took me to build up to back sets, if I’m not including the aforementioned trap stuff, I started with (well anyway when I started Viking’s, before stripping the program down to its skeleton and remodeling and personalizing it) and have maintained this volume for a couple of years. I’ve always tiptoed around adding back volume because it always seemed like a lot already and I didn’t want to fall into overkill. Trap sets came along like a year ago and I didn’t notice any intrusion on my general back work.

[coachcalande]

@coach problem is I can only get to the gum 2 days/week for legs, so I do basically all of my upper body stuff at home, and of course pulldowns are only possible at the gym (pullovers not possible due to two shoulder impingements). So there’s not a lot of room for recovery there.

I guess I could do more sets of pulldowns on leg day 2 so I can maintain volume while getting rid of them on leg day 1, but even then, I’m still working back 3 days/week and only have a single 72 hour stretch between sets within a week and two 48 hour stretches.

I could do more sets of pull-ups at home (like, a lot) and just nix pulldowns altogether, but I’d rather not. Close grip (unilateral) pulldowns are improving smoothly, even. And I’m struggling but damn I love me some straight arms.

Tl;dr more than one 72 hour rest windows impossible with my exercise choices due to equipment limitations....

@jax for traps I do barbell shrugs and incline DB Kelso shrugs.

Low back didn’t even cross my mind tbh, I’ve injured it so many times over the years the fact that I can still deadlift at all is a miracle. I’ve indefinitely disposed of barbell rows (subbed Pendlays) and low bar squats (subbed fronts and high bar). I just recovered from a bad flare up and don’t intend to **** with adding sets there... like... ever.

As for how long it took me to build up to back sets, if I’m not including the aforementioned trap stuff, I started with (well anyway when I started Viking’s, before stripping the program down to its skeleton and remodeling and personalizing it) and have maintained this volume for a couple of years. I’ve always tiptoed around adding back volume because it always seemed like a lot already and I didn’t want to fall into overkill. Trap sets came along like a year ago and I didn’t notice any intrusion on my general back work.

This is a tough split in my opinion but there was a time when it was fairly popular:

Based on you equipment needs at the gym:

Gym days:

Legs, back, bis.- give yourself 90-120 min.


Home :
Chest, shoulders, tris.

[BeginnerGainz]

I do 4 hard sets of rows and 4 hard sets of pulldowns a week. Seems to be working OK.

[TAWS6]

I’m just finishing a 6 week back specialization cycle. Simple and effective and only 4 days in the gym with the upper lower setup.

Upper back spec- Monday / Thursday
Pendlay row 5x5
Lat pulldown 4x12
Everything else maintenance for 2-3 heavy sets

[Tommy W.]

Volume and intensity will always be relative to recovery

[Filmbuff81]

Personally I’d just spread some of the work to your leg days.

If you’re stagnating on lifts consider swapping some exercises, vary the rep range, or ramp the volume over the course of a meso.

I think 2 versions of shrugs on top of deadlifts and rows is pretty pointless so you could save some volume just from dropping to 1 shrug variation.

I can’t even remember the last time I did shrugs and my traps have no problem continuing to grow and kinda fall into the helms school of thought that unless traps are an obvious weakness there’s no point wasting resources on shrugs.

[Xpiro]

Well as far as straight arms are concerned I think a form tweak may have been what was needed( tho I’m not sure about the longevity of progression past yesterday’s success) I think I’ve been trying to keep my arms too straight, eliminating the bottom part of the lift where elbows go back in favor of pulling it literally straight down and failing to get a proper contraction. So I’ll see how it goes now.

On too much shrugging, BB shrugs made my upper traps about as soon as I implemented them, whereas Kelsos I introduced as an upper day finisher with reps in the 15-20 range to target the lowers, but I brought them in around the same time as I started doing Pendlay rows, and I did see an increase in back thickness around that time, so I’m not 100% certain what did it. Love the feel on both of them, but maybe I could eliminate Kelsos if I might be over my MRV.

And ah yeah volume ramping is a rabbit hole I tried going down once and it didn’t do anything but make my workouts way too long, but I may have a) not started with low enough volume and/or b) tried to run the block for too many weeks. It’s something I want to try to do properly, maybe starting next week, one back off set per body part per week except for back which can either remain stable or come down until after my next deload.

[Filmbuff81]

Well I just mean you’re already doing like 20+ sets of back work, so starting under that and then ramping up to 20ish or whatever is better than trying to hammer over 20 every week I’d think.

So your workouts wouldn’t really get longer, if anything they’d be shorter on average.

And I’d say drop the Kelsos for a months and see what happens.

[coachcalande]

Xpiro.

This is what I do every four days.

I vary the order of these three movements.

Seated chest supported row 5-6 sets to failure typically 6-8 reps. Occasionally as high as 12 or so or as low as 5 maybe. Sometimes a pyramid
Wide grip lat pulldowns 5-6 sets 6-10 reps. Occasionally as high as 12 or low as 5…sometimes a pyramid
Narrow grip lat pulldowns 4-6 sets …usually 8-10 reps but often 6-8 or a pyramid.

*I would say 12 is kinda the sweet spot for sets, but I have been forcing 18 sets for months. When I first started pushing the volume up I questioned if I was overdoing it but I got used to the work pretty fast. I was also driving up volume everywhere else.


Every set is done until I know I couldn’t get another rep without a long pause. One thing I will say, I like a quality squeeze of 8-10 but also that big crazy heavy pull around 6. I think my back responds well to HEAVY and high volume with tense squeezes.

I don’t do any direct trap stuff other than upright rows (I train back with chest, shoulders immediately afterwards)

I’m a lifetime natural, too fat but I am happy with what I have built at age 55.

[Xpiro]

Failure training doesn’t work for me anymore unfortunately (?). I got away with it for a long time but these days my progress just gets crowded and stops, leads to injury at worst.

12-18 sets is so few compared to what I do, but that could be a good idea for a reset after a deload. A major volume tolerance break after spending so long with so much, always jumping right back in after easy weeks.