Home back training
The back workout you can do at home with no equipment
Twenty of BackMaxx’s 77 movements need nothing but floor space, a towel or a door frame — and four of the six back zones have no-equipment movements that lead with them.
The short answer
A no-equipment back workout at home is built from 20 movements: 17 bodyweight, two using a towel and one using a door frame. They cover Upper Back, Lower Back, Lat Width and Rear Delts, reaching all eight back muscles. Traps is the gap — it needs load, so a band or a dumbbell fills it.
You can train four of the six back zones at home with nothing but floor space. BackMaxx tags 46 of its 77 movements as home movements, and 20 of those need no equipment at all: 17 bodyweight, two that use a towel, one that uses a door frame. Between them they reach all eight back muscles — Lats, Teres Major, Rhomboids, Lower Traps, Upper Traps, Rear Delts, Infraspinatus and Erectors. What a bare room will not give you is a loaded vertical pull or a heavy shrug.
Everything below is the real tagged list, with the app’s own cue, set count and rep range for each movement. Nothing here is padding to reach ten exercises.
| Equipment tag | Home movements | What you have to own |
|---|---|---|
| Bodyweight | 17 | Nothing |
| Dumbbell | 10 | A pair of dumbbells |
| Pull-up Bar | 6 | A bar in a doorway or frame |
| Resistance Band | 6 | One long band |
| Kettlebell | 4 | One bell |
| Towel | 2 | A bath towel |
| Doorway | 1 | A door frame |
Add those up and you get 46 movements tagged for home, against 31 that are gym-only. The whole tagged set sits on the at-home exercise list if you want to sort it yourself.
What you can and cannot build at home, honestly
Look at the 20 movements that need no equipment and count which back zone each one leads with. Upper Back gets seven. Lower Back gets six. Lat Width gets five, Rear Delts gets two, and Traps gets zero. Not one of the 20 has Traps as its primary zone.
That zero is the honest headline of home back training. Traps is the frame around your neck and shoulders, and Upper Traps respond to heavy, simple loading — shrugs and carries — which is exactly what an empty room cannot supply. Only one of the 20 no-equipment movements tags Upper Traps at all, and that is the Prone Y Raise.
The second thing worth knowing is that the equipment tag and the real-world requirement are not the same. Three of the 17 bodyweight movements are pull-ups, and a fourth is the Inverted Row. Those need a bar or a table edge, whatever the tag says.
So the set splits in two. Thirteen movements need a patch of carpet and nothing else. Seven need something to hang from, lean off, or loop a towel around.
| Zone | Primary-zone movements in the no-equipment 20 | Honest verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Upper Back | 7 | Fully covered. Rowing, prone raises and scapular work. |
| Lower Back | 6 | Fully covered. Erectors take load from bodyweight alone. |
| Lat Width | 5 | Covered only if you can hang. Four of the five are pull-up variants; the fifth is Child’s Pose. |
| Rear Delts | 2 | Thin. Arm Circles and the Cross-Body Shoulder Stretch, both light. |
| Traps | 0 primary, 4 secondary | No movement leads with Traps; Prone Y Raise, Reverse Snow Angel, Scapular Push-up and Arm Circles carry it as a secondary tag. Leading with it needs load — a band, a dumbbell or a bell. |
| Symmetry | 0 primary, 1 secondary | Bird Dog is the only no-equipment movement that carries Symmetry, and it carries it as a secondary zone. |
Symmetry works that way everywhere in the corpus, not just at home: no exercise anywhere in the 77 lists it as a primary zone, and eight touch it as a secondary. Left equals right is trained by single-side work, not by a movement of its own.
Strip the seven anchored movements out and the ceiling drops again. On a bare floor, Lat Width has exactly one movement — Child’s Pose, a stretch — and Teres Major, the small bulge under the armpit that makes the V read wider, gets nothing at all. Floor work builds thickness and the lower back. Width comes from hanging.
No-equipment back exercises
These 13 need a floor and nothing else. Five are stretches, eight are working sets, and every one of the 13 is tagged beginner. Sets and reps are the app’s defaults, not a range invented for a blog post.
| Movement | Zone | Muscles | Sets × reps | Cue |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prone Y Raise | Upper Back | Lower Traps, Upper Traps, Rear Delts | 3 × 10–15 | Lie face down, thumbs up, and raise your arms into a Y — lift from your lower traps, not your neck. |
| Prone T Raise | Upper Back | Rhomboids, Lower Traps, Rear Delts | 3 × 10–15 | Arms straight out to the sides like a T — squeeze your shoulder blades together to lift. |
| Reverse Snow Angel | Upper Back | Lower Traps, Rhomboids, Rear Delts | 3 × 8–12 | Lie face down and sweep your arms from your hips to overhead, hovering the whole way. |
| Scapular Push-up | Upper Back | Rhomboids, Lower Traps | 3 × 10–15 | In a plank with straight arms, let your shoulder blades pinch together, then push them apart. |
| Superman | Lower Back | Erectors, Lower Traps | 3 × 10–12 | Lift your arms and legs together, hold one second at the top, and lower slowly. |
| Superman Hold | Lower Back | Erectors, Lower Traps | 3 × 20–30s | Raise arms and legs off the floor and hold steady — keep breathing, don’t crane your neck. |
| Bird Dog | Lower Back (+ Symmetry) | Erectors | 2 × 8–10 | Reach the opposite arm and leg long, keep your hips dead level, and pause a second before switching sides. |
| Arm Circles | Rear Delts | Rear Delts, Infraspinatus | 2 × 30–40s | Small circles growing to big ones, both directions, shoulders down and away from your ears. |
| Cat-Cow Stretch | Lower Back | Erectors, Lower Traps | 2 × 30–45s | Move slowly between arching and rounding your back, matching each shape to a breath. |
| Torso Twists | Lower Back | Erectors | 2 × 30–45s | Rotate gently side to side from your waist, letting your arms swing loose. |
| World’s Greatest Stretch | Lower Back | Lats, Erectors | 2 × 30–45s | Lunge, drop the inside elbow toward your foot, then rotate the same arm to the ceiling and follow it with your eyes. |
| Child’s Pose | Lat Width | Lats, Lower Traps | 2 × 30–60s | Sink your hips to your heels and walk your hands forward until you feel the stretch down your lats. |
| Cross-Body Shoulder Stretch | Rear Delts | Rear Delts, Infraspinatus | 2 × 20–30s | Pull your arm across your chest with the opposite hand and keep the shoulder pressed down. |
Five of the 13 are stretches, and they are not there to pad the count. Child’s Pose is the only Lat Width entry on the floor. World’s Greatest Stretch is the only one that tags both Lats and Erectors, and its cue asks you to rotate an arm to the ceiling and follow it with your eyes, which is a movement rather than a hold.
Four of those 13 are prone raises, and they are not interchangeable. The Y puts your arms overhead and is the only floor movement in the corpus tagged to Upper Traps. The T holds them at ninety degrees and leans on the Rhomboids. The Reverse Snow Angel sweeps between the two positions, which is why it earns its own entry rather than being a rep style of the T.
Scapular Push-up is the odd one out in that group, because it happens in a plank rather than face down. Your arms stay locked and only the shoulder blades travel. It is the cheapest way to teach retraction before you own anything to pull against.
The Lower Back six do the opposite job. Superman and Superman Hold are the same shape at different tempos — one is 3 × 10–12 reps, the other 3 × 20–30 seconds — and Erectors recover slowly, so two hard sessions a week is plenty even at bodyweight.
Bird Dog is worth singling out. It loads the Erectors with your hips level and one limb reaching, which is why it is the only floor movement carrying Symmetry as a secondary zone. If one side wobbles and the other does not, you found something the mirror was hiding.
Then there are the seven that need an anchor. All of the real Lat Width work lives here, along with both towel movements and the door frame.
| Movement | Equipment tag | Level | Sets × reps | What it hangs on |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Doorway Row | Doorway | Beginner | 3 × 10–15 | A door frame |
| Towel Row | Towel | Beginner | 3 × 10–15 | A towel around a sturdy anchor |
| Inverted Row | Bodyweight | Beginner | 3 × 8–12 | A low bar or table edge |
| Pull-up | Bodyweight | Intermediate | 3 × 6–10 | A bar |
| Chin-up | Bodyweight | Intermediate | 3 × 6–10 | A bar |
| Neutral-Grip Pull-up | Bodyweight | Intermediate | 3 × 6–10 | Parallel handles |
| Towel Pull-up | Towel | Advanced | 3 × 4–6 | Two towels over a bar |
The full bodyweight roster, gym movements included, is filterable at the bodyweight exercise index.
Both towel movements, and what they hang on
Two movements in all 77 use a towel, and they sit at opposite ends of the difficulty scale. Towel Row is tagged beginner at 3 × 10–15. Towel Pull-up is one of only three advanced movements in the whole home set, at 3 × 4–6.
For the row, the app’s cue is to loop a towel around a sturdy anchor, lean back, and row your chest to your hands under control. Primary zone is Upper Back, secondary is Lat Width, and the muscles tagged are Rhomboids and Lats. The towel is doing one useful thing a bar cannot: it lets you pick your own lean angle by walking your feet, so the same setup covers a first working set and a much harder one. Full setup detail is on the Towel Row page.
Towel Pull-up is a different animal, and the cue says so plainly: squeeze the towels hard, because your grip gives out before your lats, so build up gradually. Two towels over a bar turn a pull-up into a grip event with a neutral, slightly unstable hand position. It tags Lats and Teres Major, which is the pairing that widens the V.
The anchor decides whether either movement is worth doing. A towel over a closed door, hinged side, gives you a fixed point at hip height for the row; a towel over a bar gives you the pull-up. Anything that moves under load turns a 3 × 10–15 row into a set of half reps, and half reps do not tag the Rhomboids.
Neither movement gets its own equipment page here, because two exercises is not enough to earn one. Anything longer than two, on this equipment tag, is padding.
Doorway Row, the only door-frame movement
Doorway Row is the only movement in the corpus tagged to Doorway equipment. One exercise, one page, and it is the single best return on zero dollars in the home set.
The cue is short: grip the door frame, lean back with straight arms, then pull your chest to your hands. Primary zone Upper Back, secondary Lat Width, tagged to Rhomboids and Lats, 3 × 10–15 at beginner difficulty. It is the same pulling pattern as a cable row with your own bodyweight as the stack and your foot position as the weight selector.
Two details matter more here than in a gym row. The frame is narrow, so your hands end up close together and the pull tracks toward the sternum rather than wide to the ribs — that biases the Rhomboids and the thickness between the blades. And the further forward your feet, the more of you the frame has to hold, so the progression is measured in shoe lengths rather than plates. The Doorway Row page has the frame-by-frame version.
Resistance-band back work
A single long band adds six movements and fixes the biggest hole in the no-equipment set. All six are tagged beginner, and they cover four zones: Lat Width twice, Rear Delts twice, Upper Back once, Traps once.
| Movement | Zone | Muscles | Sets × reps | Anchor |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Banded Lat Pulldown | Lat Width | Lats, Teres Major | 3 × 12–15 | High |
| Banded Straight-Arm Pulldown | Lat Width | Lats, Teres Major | 3 × 12–15 | High |
| Banded Row | Upper Back | Rhomboids, Lats, Lower Traps | 3 × 12–15 | Belly height |
| Banded Face Pull | Traps | Infraspinatus, Rear Delts, Lower Traps | 3 × 15–20 | Face height |
| Band Pull-Apart | Rear Delts | Rear Delts, Rhomboids, Lower Traps | 3 × 15–20 | None — held in both hands |
| Banded Rear Delt Fly | Rear Delts | Rear Delts, Infraspinatus | 3 × 15–20 | Under your feet |
Banded Face Pull is the reason to own a band. It is the only Traps-primary home movement that is not a dumbbell or a kettlebell, so it turns that zero in the zone table into something. The cue: anchor the band at face height, pull toward your eyes, and finish with your hands beside your ears.
The two pulldowns look similar on paper and train different things. Banded Lat Pulldown has you kneel tall and drive the elbows down and back, which is a real vertical pull. Banded Straight-Arm Pulldown keeps the arms almost locked and sweeps the hands to the thighs — the app’s cue ends with “lats only”, and that is the point, since the elbows never bend and nothing else can help.
Rep ranges tell you how to use the rest. The three rowing and pulldown movements sit at 12–15. The three rear-delt and face-pull movements sit at 15–20, because Rear Delts are a small muscle trained with light weight, strict form and more sets than you think. Band tension is easy to cheat with momentum, so the higher range is doing real work.
What bands do not give you is erector loading or a heavy shrug: none of the six tags Erectors or Upper Traps. Keep Superman and Bird Dog in the week even after the band arrives. All six are listed with cues on the resistance-band exercise page.
A three-day home back week
The week below runs three sessions and 38 sets with nothing bought. Each day leads with a different zone, the way the app’s focus programs rotate a lead zone per session — thickness, then the lower back, then the detail work — and each day finishes on a stretch.
| Day 1 — Upper Back lead | Sets × reps |
|---|---|
| Doorway Row | 3 × 10–15 |
| Prone T Raise | 3 × 10–15 |
| Scapular Push-up | 3 × 10–15 |
| Reverse Snow Angel | 3 × 8–12 |
| Child’s Pose | 2 × 30–60s |
| Day 2 — Lower Back and Symmetry | Sets × reps |
|---|---|
| Superman | 3 × 10–12 |
| Superman Hold | 3 × 20–30s |
| Bird Dog | 2 × 8–10 |
| Cat-Cow Stretch | 2 × 30–45s |
| Torso Twists | 2 × 30–45s |
| Day 3 — Rear Delts and the Upper Traps slot | Sets × reps |
|---|---|
| Towel Row | 3 × 10–15 |
| Prone Y Raise | 3 × 10–15 |
| Arm Circles | 2 × 30–40s |
| Cross-Body Shoulder Stretch | 2 × 20–30s |
| World’s Greatest Stretch | 2 × 30–45s |
Count the sets by muscle and the week reads like this: Lower Traps 22, Rhomboids 15, Erectors 14, Rear Delts 13, Lats 10, Infraspinatus 4, Upper Traps 3, Teres Major 0. That distribution is the truth about equipment-free training, written in numbers.
Lower Traps lead because almost every prone raise and every scapular movement tags them, and they are the muscle almost nobody trains directly once there is a barbell available. Home training accidentally specializes in exactly the thing that gets skipped once there is a barbell in the room.
Teres Major at zero is the price. Nothing on the floor, in a door frame or on the end of a towel row reaches it, because it is hit by wide-grip pulling and straight-arm work that drives the elbow down and back. That is a bar job or a band job.
Day 1 is the heaviest pulling day, so put it after a rest day. Day 2 is the cheapest to recover from and can go anywhere. Day 3 is the one people skip and the one that changes how a back looks from behind, because Rear Delts and Upper Traps are the two zones a shirt cannot hide.
If you own a band, the substitutions are close to one-for-one: Banded Row into Day 1’s second slot, Banded Face Pull and Band Pull-Apart into Day 3 in place of the Arm Circles. That takes the week from 38 to 42 sets and gives Day 3 a Traps-primary movement for the first time. Upper Traps still sits at 3, because not one of the six band movements tags it.
Beginner, intermediate and advanced versions
Difficulty in the home set is lopsided, and the ratio is worth seeing before you plan anything. Of the 46 home movements, 37 are beginner, six are intermediate and three are advanced. Narrow that to the 20 no-equipment movements and it is 16 beginner, three intermediate, one advanced.
Every single intermediate and advanced no-equipment movement is a pull-up variant. The floor has no advanced tier at all, which is not a flaw in the corpus — it is what bodyweight back work is.
| Level | No-equipment movements | Where the progression actually comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Beginner | 16 | Reps, tempo and foot position. Walk your feet in on Doorway Row, hold the top of a Superman longer. |
| Intermediate | 3 — Pull-up, Chin-up, Neutral-Grip Pull-up | Hanging. All three are 3 × 6–10 and all three need a bar. |
| Advanced | 1 — Towel Pull-up | Grip. 3 × 4–6, and the towels fail before the lats do. |
Progress the beginner tier by lean angle first. Doorway Row, Towel Row and Inverted Row all share the same variable: how much of your bodyweight the anchor has to hold. Feet under the anchor is easy, feet walked forward is hard, and those three movements alone can carry months of training.
Progress the prone raises by pause length, not by adding reps past 15. Rhomboids grow from rowing where you actually squeeze the blades together and pause — load second, retraction first — and the same logic runs the T raise and the snow angel.
Towel Row and Doorway Row stay useful for a very long time, but there is no bodyweight route to an advanced Lat Width session. That is the boundary, and no amount of lean-angle progression moves it.
One more thing about the tiers: difficulty in this corpus describes the skill the movement demands, not how hard the set feels. A 3 × 10–15 Doorway Row with your feet a long way forward is far more taxing than a 3 × 6–10 Chin-up for someone who can already do ten. Read the tier as a prerequisite, then set the intensity yourself with foot position, pause length and how strictly you hold the shape.
When you actually need a bar
A bar changes one thing and it changes it completely: vertical pulling under load. Six movements in the corpus are tagged Pull-up Bar, and three more bodyweight pull-ups plus the Towel Pull-up need the same hardware, which is ten home movements gated behind one purchase.
| Pull-up Bar movement | Level | Sets × reps | Why it exists |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dead Hang | Beginner | 3 × 20–40s | Full hang, relaxed, breathing — the lat stretch nothing on the floor gives you. |
| Active Hang | Beginner | 3 × 15–30s | Blades pulled down away from the ears and held. Lats and Lower Traps. |
| Scapular Pull-up | Beginner | 3 × 8–12 | Arms never bend. Only the shoulder blades travel. |
| Negative Pull-up | Beginner | 3 × 4–6 | Step to the top, then three to five seconds down. |
| Commando Pull-up | Advanced | 3 × 4–8 | Grip lengthwise, alternate shoulders. Carries Symmetry. |
| L-Sit Pull-up | Advanced | 3 × 4–6 | Legs parallel to the floor for the whole set. |
Note that four of the six Pull-up Bar movements are tagged beginner. A bar is not an advanced-only purchase — Dead Hang and Scapular Pull-up are entry points, and the Negative Pull-up exists so that a first strict rep has a route.
The reason to bother is Lat Width and Teres Major. Lats need a full stretch at the top and a long range, with vertical pulling first and rows second, and no amount of prone raises substitutes. If width is the goal, the six-week Pull-Up Progression is the only one of the five focus programs that requires a bar, and it is built around hangs, negatives and assisted reps rather than around hoping.
Skip the bar if your priorities are thickness, the lower back or the rear delts. Buy it if your Lat Width score is the one dragging your Back Score down.
If you own dumbbells or a kettlebell
Dumbbells and a kettlebell fill the two gaps the floor leaves, and the corpus tags ten dumbbell movements and four kettlebell movements for home. Traps first: Dumbbell Shrug at 3 × 10–15, Kettlebell Shrug at 3 × 12–15, Farmer Carry at 3 × 30–45 seconds, Dumbbell Upright Row at 3 × 10–12. Those four are the entire Traps answer outside of a band.
Loaded hinges are the second gap. Dumbbell Romanian Deadlift, Dumbbell Sumo Deadlift, Kettlebell Romanian Deadlift and Kettlebell Swing all lead with Lower Back and tag Erectors, and the Swing is the only one of them that also tags Upper Traps.
Single-side rowing arrives with the dumbbells too, and that is where Symmetry gets trained. One-Arm Dumbbell Row, Kettlebell Single-Arm Row and Single-Leg Romanian Deadlift all carry Symmetry as a secondary zone. Three of the five home movements that touch Symmetry need a weight in one hand.
As for a bench: of the 14 dumbbell and kettlebell home movements, exactly two cues mention one, and one of those two offers the alternative in the same breath — brace on a bench or your knee. So a bench is optional, and 13 of the 14 run without it.
How to tell the home version is working
Photograph it, do not guess. BackMaxx takes one photo of your back with the selfie camera and a five-second self-timer, scores six zones, and gives you a Back Score out of 100 plus a rank. Re-scan weekly and the zone map fills out.
The rank bands are fixed: Newbie under 38, Starter 38–45, Semi-Pro 46–53, Pro 54–61, Elite 62–69, Master 70–77, Grandmaster 78–84, Titan 85–90, GOAT 91 and up. The scores are visual estimates for training motivation, and per-zone scores are the useful part of them at home — if Upper Back climbs while Traps sits still across a run of weekly re-scans, that is not a mystery. It is the zone table above showing up in your own photos.
Every one of the 46 home movements shows three line-art frames rather than stock photography — 41 have their own set and five reuse a near-identical movement’s. The art is adapted from Everkinetic under CC BY-SA 4.0 and credited on the attribution page. Before and after photos stay on your phone.
Key takeaways
- BackMaxx tags 46 of its 77 movements for home training, and 20 of those need no equipment at all: 17 bodyweight, two towel, one doorway.
- Of the 20 no-equipment movements, seven lead with Upper Back, six with Lower Back, five with Lat Width and two with Rear Delts — and none with Traps.
- On a bare floor with no bar and no anchor, only 13 movements remain, Lat Width is represented by a single stretch, and Teres Major is not trained at all.
- Doorway Row is the only Doorway-tagged movement in the corpus: 3 × 10–15, Upper Back primary, and your foot position is the weight selector.
- One resistance band adds six beginner movements and supplies the only Traps-primary home exercise that is not a dumbbell or a kettlebell — the Banded Face Pull.
- A three-day equipment-free week runs 38 sets and lands 22 of them on the Lower Traps, the muscle almost nobody trains directly.
What the research says
A home back session swaps heavy iron for bodyweight, bands and higher reps. The question is whether that still builds muscle, and the research is reassuring as long as the effort is real.
- Light loads grow muscle too. A meta-analysis of 21 studies in which every set was taken to failure found similar muscle growth from loads of 60% of one-rep max or less as from heavier ones; heavy loads still won on maximal strength. [1]
- Bands are real resistance. A meta-analysis of 8 studies found training with elastic bands or tubes produced strength gains similar to training with weight machines and dumbbells, for both upper and lower limbs. [2]
- The price of light loads is effort. Exploratory meta-regressions found muscle growth improved as sets finished closer to failure, which is why the home sets here should end with only a rep or two left in the tank. [3]
Sources
- Schoenfeld BJ, Grgic J, Ogborn D, et al. (2017). Strength and Hypertrophy Adaptations Between Low- vs. High-Load Resistance Training: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. J Strength Cond Res. PubMed 28834797 · doi:10.1519/JSC.0000000000002200
- Lopes JSS, Machado AF, Micheletti JK, et al. (2019). Effects of training with elastic resistance versus conventional resistance on muscular strength: A systematic review and meta-analysis. SAGE Open Med. PubMed 30815258 · doi:10.1177/2050312119831116
- Robinson ZP, Pelland JC, Remmert JF, et al. (2024). Exploring the Dose-Response Relationship Between Estimated Resistance Training Proximity to Failure, Strength Gain, and Muscle Hypertrophy: A Series of Meta-Regressions. Sports Med. PubMed 38970765 · doi:10.1007/s40279-024-02069-2
Frequently asked questions
Can I do back workouts from home?
Yes — 46 of BackMaxx’s 77 movements are tagged for home, and 20 of them need no equipment. That covers four of the six back zones properly: Upper Back with seven movements, Lower Back with six, Lat Width with five and Rear Delts with two. The one zone a bare room cannot train is Traps, which needs load rather than bodyweight.
What is the best at-home back exercise?
Doorway Row, if you own nothing. It is the only Doorway-tagged movement in the corpus, runs 3 × 10–15 at beginner difficulty, leads with Upper Back and tags Rhomboids and Lats. You grip the frame, lean back with straight arms and pull your chest to your hands — and you scale it by walking your feet further forward.
Are dumbbells or a bench necessary for an at-home back workout?
Neither is necessary. Of the 14 dumbbell and kettlebell home movements, exactly two cues mention a bench, and one of those — Kettlebell Single-Arm Row — offers your knee as the alternative in the same sentence. Dumbbells add ten movements, and their real value is Traps: Dumbbell Shrug, Farmer Carry and Dumbbell Upright Row are work the floor cannot replace.
Can you build lat width without a pull-up bar?
Only partly. Four of the five Lat Width movements in the no-equipment set are pull-up variants and the fifth is Child’s Pose, a stretch. Lats need a full stretch at the top and a long range, with vertical pulling first. A resistance band gets you closest with Banded Lat Pulldown and Banded Straight-Arm Pulldown, both 3 × 12–15.
What back exercises can I do lying on the floor?
Eight working movements and five stretches. The working set is Prone Y Raise, Prone T Raise, Reverse Snow Angel, Scapular Push-up, Superman, Superman Hold, Bird Dog and Arm Circles. Prone Y Raise is the only floor movement in the whole corpus tagged to Upper Traps — thumbs up, arms into a Y, lifting from the lower traps rather than the neck.
How many days a week should I train my back at home?
Three sessions cover it. The week in this guide runs 38 sets across Upper Back, Lower Back and Rear Delts leads, and finishes each day on a stretch. Erectors recover slowly, so two hard Lower Back sessions a week is the ceiling; Rear Delts are the opposite and take high frequency at light load.
Do resistance bands actually build back muscle?
They cover four zones and six movements, all tagged beginner: Lat Width twice, Rear Delts twice, Upper Back once and Traps once. Bands are the cheapest fix for the Traps gap, via Banded Face Pull at 3 × 15–20. What they do not do is load the Erectors or the Upper Traps heavily, so keep Superman and Bird Dog in the week.
What is the hardest back exercise you can do with no equipment?
Towel Pull-up — one of only three advanced movements in the home set, at 3 × 4–6. Two towels over a bar give you a neutral, unstable grip, and the app’s cue is blunt about the failure point: squeeze the towels hard, because your grip gives out before your lats. Build up gradually rather than testing it cold.
Find out where your back actually stands
One photo, a Back Score out of 100, six zones and eight muscles ranked — then a plan built on whatever came out lowest.
Download on theApp Store Download on the App StoreFree to download. iPhone, iOS 26 or later.