Get On Your Back: These 3 Exercises Are Better Lying Down

There comes a time when we all need to lay on our backs and enjoy the best parts of life.

Staring up at the stars on a cool summer’s night, taking a nap on the beach with a towel over your face, getting a sweet chest tattoo, or taking a break from your typical position and letting your lady take over for a night, giggity.

When it comes to the gym, typically, you lay on your back while pressing weight off your chest. Bench pressing is not the only exercise where you can lie supine, that means lying with your face upward. Actually there are some typical variations to exercises where you can benefit from lying on your back and taking the gains like a man.

Supine Face Pull

We all know how badass bench pressing is, hence why many of us start the week off with chest. Problems and imbalances can occur when we press too much and we forget about antagonist muscles which help provide support to the major muscles performing a movement.

The most common overlooked muscle lifters tend to forget about are the rear deltoids. Your rear deltoids support the action of the pectorals and triceps as you lower the weight and help in pushing the bar off your chest. If they are too weak, you won’t be able to get the bar off your chest. Your brain will tell your muscles that those stabilizers muscles can’t handle the heavy weight and then give you and your hopes of a new PR the middle finger.

Face-pulls are a great exercise that not only helps build shoulder stability but also targets your rear delts better than Luke Skywalker targets a 3 meter exhaust port.

Why are they better on your back?

Lying supine on a bench and doing face-pulls gives you far more stability than if you are standing. More stability means you can pull more weight and thus level-up those rear delts and finally get through your sticking points on the bench.

Plus, well developed rear delts will make your shoulders stand out and help you build those massive boulder looking shoulders that we are all after.

Explosive Dead Stop Inverted Rows

Barbell rows, one arm dumbbell rows, hell even seated cable rows are great ways to build an impressive back. Minus the seated rows, barbells and dumbbell rows have you standing or slightly bent over thus engaging some of your legs.

Inverted rows are a great way to isolate the back and really hammer home some reps.

You can do these with TRX ropes or in a squat rack holding onto a barbell.
At the bottom of the movement, make sure to come to a complete stop with your back on the floor and arms fully extended. Pull your chest to the bar as explosively as possible, pause for 1 second at the top, slowly return to floor and pause for an additional second once your back is completely touching the floor. Complete 3 sets of 8-10 reps.

I high suggest using a box, bench, swiss ball, or chair if you’re at home to prop your feet up meaning that your body will be on a slight angle from your toes to your head.

Dumbbell Pullover

Every bro in the world loves using the lat pulldown machine to build a wider back. Red Bull may advertise giving you wings but if you want real wings, build your lats

To build lats that will make the ladies swoon try giving Arnold’s favorite lat targeting exercise a try.

I should also mention that stronger lats mean better deadlifts and bench numbers and we all want that right bromigo?

There is one key here with dumbbell pullovers, start light to moderate. The reason for this is you want to make sure you really feel your lats engaging and working. Focusing your mind and connecting it to your muscles while lifting is the best form of meditation.

If you are looking for a few ways to add some spice to your workouts or to target specific muscles more intently, get on your back. These exercises are great at the end of a long workout. Assuming a supine position provides more stability and will help you target your weak points more effectively. Implement these exercises to blow your weaknesses away and bring back the gainz.