You may highly need this article for skills to use to build ‘the predator’s’ back.
Even though Kai Greene has hardly participated in competitions in some few years, it has not changed his reputation about building most fabulous backs in the society of bodybuilding. Taking this to the bank, his mass and width is visibly unparalleled, and this is the major reason he turned victorious on Olympia competition for 5 years, that is from 2009 to 2014.
The Predator ensures that he keeps his fitness shape irrespective of not gracing a stage competition since 2016. His physique has maintained a good look year-round and he probably expected by his fans to be back to the Olympia stage very time soon. There were stealth rumors about Mr. Olympia 2019 from earlier months of this year.
However, we will do with his bulletproof tactics to build a much grown back that wins admiration – until he makes his appearance back with something new.
The Ten Advanced Workouts for the Back
- Warm-up Effects
Considerably, this is the most unorthodox technique of Greene’s back training. It is always observed prior to the workout warming up for about 15 minutes with tri-sets from various exercises such as dumbbell rear laterals, upright rows, and dips. In a workout we had observed, he worked six warm-up as follows; the trisets of wide-grip pull-ups, parallel-grip pull-ups and dips, and followed this by trisets of rear laterals, straight-arm pull downs and upright rows. However, weights are kept lighter and the sets fall well just before failure.
Greenes says that warm-up just gets the blood to flow and engage the mind to start-kick things out. He adds that he never thought of one body part being in isolation. He has always been focused on his physique’s complete picture. He would include dips together with pull-ups and string together rear delts and traps with lats in a workout. He says he has always been thinking of different techniques of contracting his muscles and gotten the most effective rear lat spread and rear double biceps.
- Selection of Exercise
His other aim of warm-up trisets is to test the effectiveness of his muscle integrity. It helps him to determine which exercises to select and the respective order he would perform them. So, before he enters the iron house, it finds him with a rough idea of how the workout should be. It exactly come to focus when he his engaging his warm-up exercises. He says, he does not do warm ups just to pass through motions but he is focused on the task ahead of him. He takes a mental inventory too to work his back from top along the spine to glutes.
That feedback he receives from his body is what determines what exercises he does and what order he takes to do them. Just lately, he has been choosing more rows than pull downs and chins for width. This can be because of his low-hanging lats which fan out like a golf umbrella and he doesn’t need any more width but wants more upper-back density.
- Weight Effect
Having watched Greene rep out about 495 pound bench presses, we can say that he is tightly strong. But when it is about his back, he gets more concerned how he feels his muscles working rather than the movement of the metal he carries. Him, he goes by the feel. And rather than having to lift a house or the entire gym he figured it better for him to be led by the feel and try to sense the muscles he is trying to hit.
Weight is but a tool. Therefore, if you are hammering a nail, what do you focus on, the hammer or the nail? Your focus should better be where you are hitting, which is the nail, and not the hitting tool or hammer. The same applies in the bodybuilding club. One ought to focus on that thing they are trying to hit e.g. their muscles, and not their weight.
- Reps Effect
The amount of reps Greene does each set is largely based on show he feels. In essence, he rarely drops to under 10 but may do more than 20. He says it depends on how he feel and further adds that he does not go into a set having known how many reps he wanted to get because he never wanted to set limits on what to achieve. He basically goes by feel and he lets his muscles to determine how many reps he gets he gets without his mind telling the muscles what they can and can’t do. He says a person’s muscles are so capable of so much more than the imaginations of the mind.
- The Contractions
When Greene is doing machine rows he always think about the contractions. He can control that machine rows better and even focus more on the contractions than he can when he performs the barbell rows. He does barbell rows but has been emphasizing machine rows recently because he needs to isolate his inner lats, rear delts and middle traps more. Those are his great target areas which he hits by the more pulling of elbows backwards and as far as possible on rows while getting those really strong contractions down in the deeps of fibers.
- The Stretch of Each Rep
He also made an emphasis on the stretches of each rep. It is true with a one-arm dumbbell row, where he has no regard how much weight he might be using but instead does turn it to a super isolation exercise. So, he stretch it fully on each rep and feels a tug on his middle back tug.
- Connection to the mind muscle
Being a crucial aspect of all Greene’s workouts, he has majored it to training back because he typically can’t see the muscles at work. Instead, he says one has to feel them at work. He states that mind-muscle is the number one consideration in training. You may develop it in the process of time by posing your muscle and paying attention to the feeling of your muscles when you work with them.
- The Iso-Tension
Greene would often flex his muscles in between sets. The iso-tension effect does let him impact a hit on muscle fibers such that the set may miss and let him focus on the muscle fibers of his next set. If you pose, it is not about something you may be doing on a stage before the audience. Rather, it should be a part of your bodybuilding schedule for hitting areas like rear delts, inner lats, and rhomboids. Sometimes the best approach to activate those muscles is just by flexing them on pre-set, during the set and on a post-set.
- Synergy Effect
Greene normally ends his back workouts with a deadlift. Because it is the time when his back is already pre-exhausted by the other workouts, and also that he does 12 to 15 reps per set, he will need to go up to 405 pounds on deadlift exercises. He says he is not trying to lift the entire gym but he attempts working his muscles that he targets that day. He thinks about his spinal erectors and lats and traps and rear delts.
- Visualizing
Also a vital aspect to every Greene’s workout. He does majorly visualize how sets will progress as well as how he wants his muscles to be enlarging as time goes by. He says, visualization is a basic bodybuilding tool and also essential for success for a general life and in order to achieve something big, one has to be able to see the process of them achieving.