Weak Back A Thorn in my side

[eavdr10]

Recently started NLP for the second go around. About a 4 month layoff. Life and business got in the way.

Male, 6’, 225 lbs, 39 yrs old.

As of this morning:
Squat 290 lbs 3 sets of 5
Bench 225 lbs 3x5
Press 150 lbs 3x5
Dead 340 lbs 1x5

My upper back is by FAR my weak spot. Effecting my bench, my press, my squat, and the lockout of my deadlift. I really feel of my back was stronger my lifts could explode. I try and keep a big chest, and squeezed, and scapulas tight on all exercises, but my scapulas (if that’s the correct spelling) are always flattening out. I’ve been deadlifting 3 times per week since I restarted, and have found great overall strength because of this.

I work out at home, I do not have a spot where I can do pull-ups, and I doubt I could even do one. I want to try and continue DLing 3x per week as I feel the odd day off kind of knocks me out of the game and the weight feels real heavy when I DL again. Anything else I could add aside from pull-ups to strengthen that upper back? If I have to find a way to do pull-ups outside I will if you think they will help that much. Thanks in advance...

[Michael Wolf]

Deadlift Mon and Fri, do barbell rows on Weds. Make sure you squeeze up fully, hard, and all the way every rep of every set. Set your back super hard when you squat as well.

[eavdr10]

Will do. Thank you

[Michael Wolf]

As you advance in training, there'll be plenty of time and places to add more work for this. This was meant as short term advice for right now, not for all time. You will hear a lot of things about "upper back work" and from what I gather, most of that is referring to the musculature of the upper back that is involved in shoulder flexion (i.e. upper body pulling exercises). From your description, that's not really your issues, so much as thoracic flexion, which is a somewhat different thing.

[eavdr10]

One more question if I may, and I thank you greatly for your advice, my bench press. This is the one lift I really want to drive up. I was abke to complete 3 sets of 5 this past Monday for 225lbs. It was a grind however. At the end of the routine I decided to do 3 sets of 6 BW dips real strict. I failed 227.5 this morning ( Friday ) on my bench. 4,3,4. Do you think adding in the dips at this point would help or hinder on Mondays and Fridays only? I’ve been bench pressing twice per week and only pressing on Wed since I restarted LP to get my bench some added volume. In the past I usually plateaued at 215 lbs for whatever reason.

Side note, saw your Instagram of the snow storm in the city, I’m also a New Yorker, born and raised in queens, what an absolute mess that storm was yesterday. Talk about being caught with our pants down. The roads were like Armageddon.

[Michael Wolf]

Ya I suspect the dips are more of a hindrance than help at this point. There comes a point in training when you need longer periods of accumulating stress in order to realize an adaptation. When that becomes the case, some of that accumulation can be assistance exercises like dips. But when you're in the LP, the bench and press themselves are the entire stress, from which you at least mostly recover and show an adaptation shortly thereafter - the next workout. So trying to accumulate more stress during a period when you're asking your body to rapidly recover and display a new adaptation is like mixing pickles with chocolate. They both taste good (I mean, at least I think so; my ex-gf didn't like pickles and well, now she's my EX if you know what I'm saying), but each have their own time and place.

Right now, don't do extra stuff. Later, when you're spending multiple weeks accumulating stress, that's when there's much more time and place for various set/rep/% schemes and assistance exercises.