By location

Back Exercises You Can Do at Home

Forty-six of the 77 movements in BackMaxx run in a bedroom, a garage or a hotel room. What you own decides which zones you can reach, so start there.

· Written by the BackMaxx team

The short answer

A home back workout draws on the 46 BackMaxx exercises tagged for home: 17 bodyweight, 10 dumbbell, 6 pull-up bar, 6 resistance band, 4 kettlebell, 2 towel and 1 doorway. Lat Width and Lower Back are the best-covered zones at home. Traps, with 5 options, are the thinnest.

Forty-six of the 77 movements travel home with you

BackMaxx tags 46 of its 77 exercises as home-capable. By difficulty that is 37 beginner, 6 intermediate and 3 advanced — and all three advanced ones hang from a bar. That is the honest shape of home back training: the ceiling is set by what you can hang from or hold, not by how hard you are willing to pull.

Three movements are home-only, because no gym stocks them. Towel Row, Towel Pull-up and Doorway Row exist for the room with a door frame and nothing else in it.

Pick by what is already in the room

Find the row that matches your gear, then read the last column before you commit to it.

In the roomHome exercisesLeads onCannot reach
Floor only14Lower Back and Upper Back — Superman, Prone Y Raise, Reverse Snow Angel, Scapular Push-upTraps, and all of Lat Width except the Child’s Pose stretch
Pull-up bar6Lat Width, all six of themAnything horizontal — every bar movement here is a vertical pull
Resistance band6Rear Delts, plus a pulldown you can load at any heightLower Back — no banded movement leads there
Dumbbells10The widest spread at home: 3 Lower Back, 3 Traps, 2 Upper Back, 2 Rear DeltsLat Width — no dumbbell movement in the corpus leads on it
Kettlebell4Hinges, one shrug, one single-arm rowLat Width and Rear Delts, neither of which it touches
Towel or door frame3Improvised rows and, at the hard end, Towel Pull-upEverything not anchored to a door

Bodyweight is tagged on 17 home movements, but three of them — Pull-up, Chin-up and Neutral-Grip Pull-up — still need something overhead. That is why the floor-only row reads 14, and why a mounted bar is really worth 9 movements rather than 6.

Where the home list runs thin

Traps are the thinnest zone at home: 5 options against 8 in the full corpus, and every one of the five needs a load in your hand. There is no floor-only movement that leads on Traps at all.

Lower Back drops hardest in absolute terms, from 21 movements to 11, because every barbell hinge disappears. What survives is the useful half — dumbbell and kettlebell Romanian deadlifts, Superman, Bird Dog, the swing.

Rear Delts hold up better than you would guess: 6 of the 8 run at home. That matches how the muscle trains anyway — “small muscle, high frequency. Light weight, strict form, more sets than you think” — which a band and a pair of light dumbbells deliver fine.

Symmetry keeps 5 of the 8 movements that touch it, and all five are single-side by nature: One-Arm Dumbbell Row, Kettlebell Single-Arm Row, Single-Leg Romanian Deadlift, Bird Dog and Commando Pull-up.

How to order what you find below

The grid under this text holds every home movement. A session that works takes one item per pattern instead of four from one shelf: something overhead, or a banded pulldown if there is no bar; a row; a hinge; one set of Rear Delt or Traps work. The app’s defaults are 3 sets for loaded movements and 2 for the five stretches.

If you own nothing at all, the no-equipment home back workout lays the session out in order rather than leaving you to assemble it — read that one next, and use this page as the index.

Going gear-first instead, the resistance band exercises give six movements across four zones from one piece of rubber, and the pull-up bar exercises are the only route to loaded vertical pulling in a house. To decide which zone should lead, the Back Score rates all six from one photo and points at the weakest. And when a gym does open up, the gym list adds 31 movements this page cannot.

Beginner (37)

Active Hang illustration Active Hang Pull-up Bar · Lat Width · beginner Banded Lat Pulldown illustration Banded Lat Pulldown Resistance Band · Lat Width · beginner Child's Pose illustration Child’s Pose Bodyweight · Lat Width · beginner Dead Hang illustration Dead Hang Pull-up Bar · Lat Width · beginner Negative Pull-up illustration Negative Pull-up Pull-up Bar · Lat Width · beginner Scapular Pull-up illustration Scapular Pull-up Pull-up Bar · Lat Width · beginner Cat-Cow Stretch illustration Cat-Cow Stretch Bodyweight · Lower Back · beginner Dumbbell Romanian Deadlift illustration Dumbbell Romanian Deadlift Dumbbell · Lower Back · beginner Dumbbell Sumo Deadlift illustration Dumbbell Sumo Deadlift Dumbbell · Lower Back · beginner Kettlebell Romanian Deadlift illustration Kettlebell Romanian Deadlift Kettlebell · Lower Back · beginner Superman illustration Superman Bodyweight · Lower Back · beginner Superman Hold illustration Superman Hold Bodyweight · Lower Back · beginner Torso Twists illustration Torso Twists Bodyweight · Lower Back · beginner Band Pull-Apart illustration Band Pull-Apart Resistance Band · Rear Delts · beginner Bent-Over Rear Delt Raise illustration Bent-Over Rear Delt Raise Dumbbell · Rear Delts · beginner Cross-Body Shoulder Stretch illustration Cross-Body Shoulder Stretch Bodyweight · Rear Delts · beginner Rear Delt Fly illustration Rear Delt Fly Dumbbell · Rear Delts · beginner Banded Face Pull illustration Banded Face Pull Resistance Band · Traps · beginner Dumbbell Shrug illustration Dumbbell Shrug Dumbbell · Traps · beginner Farmer Carry illustration Farmer Carry Dumbbell · Traps · beginner Banded Row illustration Banded Row Resistance Band · Upper Back · beginner Doorway Row illustration Doorway Row Doorway · Upper Back · beginner Dumbbell Bent Over Row illustration Dumbbell Bent Over Row Dumbbell · Upper Back · beginner Inverted Row illustration Inverted Row Bodyweight · Upper Back · beginner One-Arm Dumbbell Row illustration One-Arm Dumbbell Row Dumbbell · Upper Back · beginner Prone T Raise illustration Prone T Raise Bodyweight · Upper Back · beginner Prone Y Raise illustration Prone Y Raise Bodyweight · Upper Back · beginner Reverse Snow Angel illustration Reverse Snow Angel Bodyweight · Upper Back · beginner Scapular Push-up illustration Scapular Push-up Bodyweight · Upper Back · beginner Towel Row illustration Towel Row Towel · Upper Back · beginner Bird Dog illustration Bird Dog Bodyweight · Lower Back · beginner Arm Circles illustration Arm Circles Bodyweight · Rear Delts · beginner World's Greatest Stretch illustration World’s Greatest Stretch Bodyweight · Lower Back · beginner Banded Straight-Arm Pulldown illustration Banded Straight-Arm Pulldown Resistance Band · Lat Width · beginner Banded Rear Delt Fly illustration Banded Rear Delt Fly Resistance Band · Rear Delts · beginner Kettlebell Shrug illustration Kettlebell Shrug Kettlebell · Traps · beginner Kettlebell Single-Arm Row illustration Kettlebell Single-Arm Row Kettlebell · Upper Back · beginner

Intermediate (6)

Chin-up illustration Chin-up Bodyweight · Lat Width · intermediate Neutral-Grip Pull-up illustration Neutral-Grip Pull-up Bodyweight · Lat Width · intermediate Pull-up illustration Pull-up Bodyweight · Lat Width · intermediate Single-Leg Romanian Deadlift illustration Single-Leg Romanian Deadlift Dumbbell · Lower Back · intermediate Kettlebell Swing illustration Kettlebell Swing Kettlebell · Lower Back · intermediate Dumbbell Upright Row illustration Dumbbell Upright Row Dumbbell · Traps · intermediate

Advanced (3)

Commando Pull-up illustration Commando Pull-up Pull-up Bar · Lat Width · advanced L-Sit Pull-up illustration L-Sit Pull-up Pull-up Bar · Lat Width · advanced Towel Pull-up illustration Towel Pull-up Towel · Lat Width · advanced

Frequently asked questions

How many back exercises can you do at home?

46 of BackMaxx’s 77 exercises are tagged for home: 17 bodyweight, 10 dumbbell, 6 pull-up bar, 6 resistance band, 4 kettlebell, 2 towel and 1 doorway. Three of those — Towel Row, Towel Pull-up and Doorway Row — exist only in the home list.

Can you train Lat Width at home without a pull-up bar?

With a band, yes. Banded Lat Pulldown and Banded Straight-Arm Pulldown are the two Lat Width movements that need nothing overhead. Without a bar or a band, the only Lat Width entry left at home is the Child’s Pose stretch, and Towel Row or Doorway Row will build Upper Back instead.

What is the hardest back exercise you can do at home?

Three home movements are rated advanced: Commando Pull-up, L-Sit Pull-up and Towel Pull-up. All three hang from a bar, so a mounted bar is the single piece of gear that raises the home ceiling.

Do you need dumbbells for a home back workout?

No, but dumbbells give the widest zone spread of any one item at home — 10 movements across four zones, including three of the five home Traps options. Kettlebells cover four of the same patterns; a band covers Rear Delts better than either.

Is a home back workout enough?

It depends on the zone. Home keeps 6 of the 8 Rear Delt movements and 5 of the 8 Traps movements, so those zones lose little. Lower Back keeps 11 of 21 and Lat Width 13 of 21, so the loaded end of both is where a gym earns its place.

Which of these do you actually need?

BackMaxx scores six zones and eight muscles from one photo, then picks the movements that fix the lowest number — from the same 77-exercise library.

Download on theApp Store

Free to download. iPhone, iOS 26 or later.

Bodyweight back exercises The 20 movements that need no equipment at all, home or gym. Dumbbell back exercises Ten movements, four zones, and the widest home coverage from one pair of weights. Beginner back exercises The 50 movements where the position is handed to you, 37 of them home-friendly.