Upper Back zone guide
How to build upper back thickness
Thickness is the depth of your back in profile, and it comes from three muscles that not one of the six pulldowns in the app tags.
The short answer
Upper-back thickness is the depth your mid-back projects behind your shoulder line, scored in BackMaxx as the Upper Back zone and driven by the Rhomboids, Lower Traps and Infraspinatus. Build it with braced horizontal rowing that finishes with the shoulder blades pinned back, plus light prone raises and rear-delt rotation work. Pulldowns do not load it.
What upper-back thickness actually is
Thickness is depth. Width is span. A wide back grows outward — the lats reach further out from the midline, and the silhouette gets broader when you face away from the camera. A thick back grows backward. The mid-back stands off the ribcage, so the whole structure projects behind the shoulder line.
BackMaxx keeps them as two separate scored zones because they are two separate results. Lat Width is described in the app as “The V-taper. Width from the armpit down.” Upper Back is “Thickness and the 3D look from the side.” One photo, two scores, and they rarely land in the same place.
The angle test settles it faster than a mirror does. Width reads from directly behind you, arms flared. Thickness reads in profile, at ninety degrees, as the distance between the front of your shoulder and the furthest point of your back. Backs that vanish when they turn sideways are wide, not thick.
There is a structural reason the two behave differently in training. Width is largely one muscle group doing one job: the lats pulling the elbow down and in toward the ribs. Thickness is three muscles doing three unrelated jobs — pulling the shoulder blades toward the midline, pulling them down, and rotating the upper arm outward. That is why one movement pattern will not cover it, and why a program built on vertical pulling leaves this zone flat. The width-versus-thickness comparison lays out what each one costs you when it lags.
The three muscles that create it
Upper Back is the only BackMaxx zone scored from three muscles that share almost no exercises. Lat Width has Lats and Teres Major, which get hit by the same pull. Upper Back has Rhomboids, Lower Traps and Infraspinatus, and the corpus of 77 movements tags them in wildly different volumes.
| Muscle | Anatomical name | What it gives you | How BackMaxx says to train it | Exercises tagging it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rhomboids | Rhomboid major & minor | “Thickness between the blades, and the ridge down the middle.” | “Grows from rowing where you actually squeeze the blades together and pause. Load second, retraction first.” | 22 of 77 |
| Lower Traps | Trapezius (mid & lower) | “Pulls the shoulder blades down and back.” | “Almost never trained directly. Y-raises and prone work at light load beat heavy rowing here.” | 18 of 77 |
| Infraspinatus | Infraspinatus & teres minor | “The plate under the shoulder blade. Separation.” | “Trains as a rotator, not a puller. Face pulls and external rotation, never heavy.” | 8 of 77 |
The Rhomboids are the muscle most people mean when they say thick. They run from the midline of your back out to the inner edge of each shoulder blade, so their line of pull is horizontal — blade toward middle. Load them and the space between the blades fills in, which is the ridge you see down the middle of a developed back. The Rhomboids page lists all 22 movements that carry the tag.
The Lower Traps are the sleeper. They run down and out from the neck to the lower ribs, and they get almost no direct work, because most back exercises ask the blade to travel toward the midline rather than down toward the opposite hip. Only 5 of the 15 Upper Back rows tag Lower Traps at all: Banded Row, Barbell Row, Chest Supported Row, Inverted Row and Seated Cable Row. The rest of the tag count comes from prone raises and hangs. The Lower Traps page is the argument for keeping light prone work in a heavy block.
Infraspinatus is the rarest tag of all eight muscles — 8 exercises out of 77, fewer than any other. Here is the part that matters for planning: not one of the 19 movements filed under Upper Back as a primary zone tags Infraspinatus. All 8 sit in other zones, 6 under Rear Delts and 2 under Traps. So one of the three muscles behind the Upper Back score is fed entirely by work that never lands on an upper-back day unless you put it there deliberately. The Infraspinatus page covers the face-pull and rotation end of it.
Why rows build thickness and pulldowns do not
The corpus answers this with tags rather than opinion. BackMaxx holds 6 pulldown variants — Lat Pulldown, Wide-Grip Lat Pulldown, Close-Grip Lat Pulldown, Banded Lat Pulldown, Straight-Arm Pulldown and Banded Straight-Arm Pulldown. Every one of them tags exactly two muscles: Lats and Teres Major. Neither of those is an Upper Back muscle.
Widen the check to every vertical pull and the pattern holds. Sixteen movements whose primary zone is Lat Width carry Upper Back as a secondary zone, which looks generous until you read what they load. Thirteen of the sixteen tag only Lats and Teres Major. Three touch a muscle the Upper Back score is actually made of: Scapular Pull-up (Lower Traps and Rhomboids), Active Hang (Lower Traps) and Assisted Pull-up (Rhomboids).
| Movement family | Variants | Muscles tagged | Upper Back muscles hit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pulldowns | 6 | Lats, Teres Major | none |
| Pull-ups and hangs | 11 | Lats, Teres Major, plus Rhomboids or Lower Traps on 3 | 3 of 11 |
| Rows filed under Upper Back | 15 | Rhomboids on 15, Lats on 14, Lower Traps on 5 | 15 of 15 |
The mechanics behind the tags are simple. In a pulldown the resistance runs vertically and the elbow travels down past the ribs, so the blade rotates and depresses but never has to travel toward the midline against load. In a row the resistance runs horizontally, straight out from your chest, and the only way to finish the rep is to drag both blades backward. That backward travel is the rhomboid’s entire job description.
This is also why rows are not optional the way exercise selection usually is. You can build Lat Width with a bar, a cable, a band or your own bodyweight and collect much the same two tags every time. Vertical pulling barely reaches the Upper Back zone by comparison. Sixteen Lat Width movements carry Upper Back as a secondary zone; only 3 of them tag a muscle the score is made of, and not one of the 6 pulldowns does.
Which row biases which muscle
Nineteen of the 77 movements have Upper Back as their primary zone, and 15 of those are rows. Two further rows sit elsewhere in the corpus — Upright Row and Dumbbell Upright Row — and both are filed under Traps, tagging Upper Traps and Rear Delts rather than anything the Upper Back score reads. Across the 15 that do count, the equipment spread is wide: Barbell 3, Machine 3, Dumbbell 2, Cable 2, and one each on Resistance Band, Bodyweight, Doorway, Towel and Kettlebell. Eleven of the 19 Upper Back movements work at home, 2 of them home only. The Pull-up Bar contributes zero — all 6 of its movements are filed under Lat Width.
The useful split is not equipment, though. It is which muscle the corpus lists first, because that first tag is the one the movement biases.
The nine rows that lead with Rhomboids
| Row | Equipment | Muscles tagged, in order | Sets × reps | Level | Where |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chest Supported Row | Machine | Rhomboids, Lower Traps, Rear Delts | 3 × 8–12 | Beginner | Gym |
| Seated Cable Row | Cable | Rhomboids, Lats, Lower Traps | 3 × 10–12 | Beginner | Gym |
| Inverted Row | Bodyweight | Rhomboids, Lats, Lower Traps | 3 × 8–12 | Beginner | Home or gym |
| Banded Row | Resistance Band | Rhomboids, Lats, Lower Traps | 3 × 12–15 | Beginner | Home or gym |
| T-Bar Row | Machine | Rhomboids, Lats | 3 × 8–10 | Intermediate | Gym |
| Machine Row | Machine | Rhomboids, Lats | 3 × 10–12 | Beginner | Gym |
| Pendlay Row | Barbell | Rhomboids, Lats, Erectors | 3 × 5–8 | Advanced | Gym |
| Towel Row | Towel | Rhomboids, Lats | 3 × 10–15 | Beginner | Home |
| Doorway Row | Doorway | Rhomboids, Lats | 3 × 10–15 | Beginner | Home |
Read the equipment column on that table and the rule falls out: eight of the nine anchor the load to something fixed. A pad, a seat, a bar overhead, a band anchor, a door frame, a machine path. Pendlay Row is the only free-barbell entry, and its cue substitutes a strict torso for the pad — “Reset the bar dead on the floor each rep and row explosively with a strict flat torso.” When the torso cannot move, the lats lose their leverage to swing the load, and the blades have to do the work.
Chest Supported Row is the sharpest of the group for this zone. It is the only row in all 77 movements that tags Rhomboids, Lower Traps and Rear Delts together — three of the four muscles behind the Upper Back and Rear Delts scores in one movement — and the pad removes the option of cheating. The cue is exact about it: “Press your chest into the pad the whole set so only your back does the pulling.”
The six rows that lead with Lats
| Row | Equipment | Muscles tagged, in order | Sets × reps | Level | Also scores |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Barbell Row | Barbell | Lats, Rhomboids, Lower Traps | 3 × 6–10 | Intermediate | Lat Width, Lower Back |
| Meadows Row | Barbell | Lats, Rhomboids | 3 × 8–10 | Advanced | Symmetry, Lat Width |
| One-Arm Dumbbell Row | Dumbbell | Lats, Rhomboids | 3 × 8–12 | Beginner | Symmetry, Lat Width |
| Single-Arm Cable Row | Cable | Lats, Rhomboids | 3 × 10–12 | Intermediate | Symmetry, Lat Width |
| Kettlebell Single-Arm Row | Kettlebell | Lats, Rhomboids | 3 × 8–12 | Beginner | Symmetry, Lat Width |
| Dumbbell Bent Over Row | Dumbbell | Lats, Rhomboids | 3 × 8–12 | Beginner | Lat Width |
Four of these six are single-arm, and all four of the single-arm rows also carry Symmetry as a secondary zone — they are the only rows in the corpus that do. Free at one end and unsupported at the torso, they let the elbow drive back and down along the ribs, which is a lat path more than a rhomboid path. They are still worth loading. They are just not what moves the Upper Back number fastest.
Barbell Row is the one to watch in a thickness block. It tags Lats first, Rhomboids second and Lower Traps third, and its secondary zones are Lat Width and Lower Back, so a heavy set is spending recovery across three zones at once. The cue keeps the bar path honest: “Hinge to about 45 degrees, keep your back flat, and pull the bar into your lower ribs.”
The four Upper Back movements that are not rows
| Movement | Equipment | Muscles tagged, in order | Sets × reps | What it covers that rows miss |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prone Y Raise | Bodyweight | Lower Traps, Upper Traps, Rear Delts | 3 × 10–15 | The only Upper Back movement with no rhomboid tag at all — Lower Traps first, Upper Traps second |
| Reverse Snow Angel | Bodyweight | Lower Traps, Rhomboids, Rear Delts | 3 × 8–12 | Blade travel through a full arc, hips to overhead, under no load |
| Prone T Raise | Bodyweight | Rhomboids, Lower Traps, Rear Delts | 3 × 10–15 | Pure retraction with the arms straight — no elbow bend to hide behind |
| Scapular Push-up | Bodyweight | Rhomboids, Lower Traps | 3 × 10–15 | Protraction and retraction with bodyweight, arms locked |
All four are bodyweight, all four are beginner, all four run at home. They exist because heavy rowing under-serves the Lower Traps, exactly as the app’s training note warns: “Y-raises and prone work at light load beat heavy rowing here.” Prone Y Raise carries its own instruction against the usual mistake — “lift from your lower traps, not your neck.” Full list at the Upper Back exercise index.
Scapular retraction: the difference between a row and a rep
A row moves weight from A to B. A rep for thickness moves the shoulder blade. Those are not the same event, and the number on the bar tells you nothing about which one you just did.
The rhomboid training note in BackMaxx is four words long where it counts: “Load second, retraction first.” Blades that stay locked in place while the arms bend turn a row into an arm exercise with a back-shaped setup. The load goes up, the tags stay unpaid, and the Upper Back score sits still.
Three specifics separate a retraction rep from a pull:
- The blades finish, not the elbows. Machine Row says it plainly — “squeeze for a beat at the back.” The beat is the rep. Without it the concentric ends when the handle stops moving, which is early.
- The blades travel on the way out too. Seated Cable Row’s cue is “let your shoulder blades glide — don’t rock.” Glide means the blades travel away from the midline on the eccentric and back on the concentric, while the torso stays still. Rocking swaps blade travel for hip travel and pays nothing.
- The torso stops being a lever. Single-Arm Cable Row asks you to “resist letting your shoulder roll forward on the stretch,” because a rolling shoulder buys range that the blade never controlled.
Scapular Push-up is the cheapest way to learn what retraction feels like without a load argument: “let your shoulder blades pinch together, then push them apart.” Nothing else moves. Once you can feel that in a plank you can feel it under a bar, and the T-Bar Row cue — “pull the handles to your sternum, squeezing your blades together” — stops being an abstraction.
Retraction also explains why the rep ranges in this zone stay moderate. Thirteen of the 15 Upper Back rows start at 8 reps or higher. The two that go lower are both barbell — Barbell Row at 3 × 6–10 and Pendlay Row at 3 × 5–8 — and both are the movements where a strict torso is doing the work the pad does elsewhere.
Inside the four-week Thickness Block
BackMaxx ships 5 focus programs, and the one aimed at this zone is the Thickness Block: 4 weeks, tagline “The 3D look from the side,” no pull-up bar required. Its own description is the whole strategy — “Rows, rows, rows — horizontal pulls lead, with the rear delts picked up on the way.”
The lead-zone pattern is what makes it different from a generic back split. Each session opens with the zone that leads it, and the block defines three sessions: two led by Upper Back, the third by Rear Delts.
| Session | Lead zone | What leads it | Why it sits there |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Upper Back | The heaviest anchored, rhomboid-first row your kit allows — Chest Supported Row at 3 × 8–12, or Seated Cable Row at 3 × 10–12 | Heaviest retraction work goes first, while blade control is fresh |
| 2 | Upper Back | A second rowing angle from a different equipment slot — T-Bar Row at 3 × 8–10 or Inverted Row at 3 × 8–12 | Two Upper Back leads out of three is the point of the block; changing the tool changes the angle, not the tag |
| 3 | Rear Delts | Rear delt and rotation work — the zone that carries 6 of the 8 Infraspinatus movements, the other 2 sitting under Traps | Picks up the third Upper Back muscle, which no row in the corpus tags |
Two things make this block honest about equipment. It needs no bar, unlike Pull-Up Progression, so the 15 Upper Back rows, spread over 9 equipment types, cover it — a band and a doorway included. And 14 of the 19 Upper Back movements are beginner-rated, so the entry cost is low even though the zone needs three movement patterns instead of one. Details and the full session build are on the Thickness Block program page.
Four weeks is also the honest length. Thickness Block and V-Taper Sprint both run 4 weeks; Traps & Rear Delts runs 3 and Pull-Up Progression runs 6. Re-scan at the end and compare the Upper Back number against the one you started with, not against your total.
How thickness shows up in a Back Score differently from width
Both zones feed the same Back Score out of 100, and both get their own zone score plus per-muscle scores underneath. What separates them is how quickly each one moves and what the photo has to show for it to move at all.
| Lat Width | Upper Back | |
|---|---|---|
| Payoff line in the app | “The V-taper. Width from the armpit down.” | “Thickness and the 3D look from the side.” |
| Muscles scored | Lats, Teres Major | Rhomboids, Lower Traps, Infraspinatus |
| Movements with it as primary zone | 21 | 19 |
| Movements touching it at all | 36 | 55 |
| Movement patterns needed | Vertical pulling, then rows | Horizontal pulling, prone raises, rotation |
| Reads best from | Straight behind, arms flared | Profile, at ninety degrees |
The counts are the interesting part. Upper Back is touched by 55 of the 77 movements — more than any other zone, Lat Width included — while only 19 carry it as a primary. Coverage is not the same as loading. A large share of the other 36 are secondary tags on pulls that load Lats and Teres Major and give the zone credit for passing through.
Rank language tracks the same idea. The nine BackMaxx ranks each carry a tagline, and width appears early while thickness appears late: Pro, at 54–61, reads “Width, and the start of the V.” Titan, at 85–90, reads “Stage-ready thickness.” Master, at 70–77, sits between them with “Detail under the skin, from every angle.” Width is what gets you into the middle of the ladder. Thickness is what the top of it is made of.
One practical consequence for re-scans. Width is one pattern and thickness is three, so an Upper Back score that refuses to move is worth checking for a missing pattern before a missing effort — no braced row in the plan, no prone work at all, no rear-delt session covering the Infraspinatus. Find the gap before adding sets to the row you already do.
When the Upper Back number stalls
Stalls in this zone follow a short list, and the corpus makes each one checkable.
The first is a plan that is all vertical. If every session opens with a pulldown or a pull-up, the Upper Back tags barely get paid, whatever the volume looks like on paper.
The second is single-arm rows doing all the rowing. Four of them exist, all four lead with Lats, and all four also carry Symmetry — useful work, and not thickness work. Put a braced row in front of them.
The third is skipping the light end. Lower Traps and Infraspinatus are 18 and 8 tags respectively, and almost all of that volume lives in movements you can do on a floor with no weight. Reverse Snow Angel at 3 × 8–12 and Prone Y Raise at 3 × 10–15 need no equipment at all and cover the two muscles heavy rowing leaves out.
Photograph the profile as well as the back view when you re-scan. Thickness is the zone that shows up at ninety degrees, and a straight-on shot is the angle where it hides.
Key takeaways
- Upper Back is one of six separately scored BackMaxx zones, and its three muscles are the Rhomboids, Lower Traps and Infraspinatus — none of which the Lats or Teres Major can cover.
- All 6 pulldown variants in the 77-movement corpus tag exactly two muscles, Lats and Teres Major, so no amount of pulldown volume moves the Upper Back score.
- Fifteen of the 19 movements with Upper Back as their primary zone are rows, and all 15 tag Rhomboids; 9 of them list Rhomboids first, and 8 of those 9 anchor the load to a pad, seat, bar, band anchor, door frame or machine path.
- Not one Upper Back primary movement tags Infraspinatus — all 8 that do sit under Rear Delts (6 of them) or Traps (2), which is why the Thickness Block leads its third session with Rear Delts.
- Only 5 of the 15 Upper Back rows tag Lower Traps, so prone work like Prone Y Raise at 3 x 10–15 and Reverse Snow Angel at 3 x 8–12 covers what heavy rowing leaves out.
- Width shows up on the ladder at Pro (54–61, “Width, and the start of the V”) while thickness is the language of the top: Titan, at 85–90, reads “Stage-ready thickness.”
What the research says
Thickness comes from rows done hard at moderate reps, rested properly and repeated for enough sets. Here is how the training research lines up with that.
- The rep range is more flexible than people think. A network meta-analysis of 28 studies with 747 adults found no difference in muscle growth between light (more than 15 reps), moderate (9 to 15) and heavy (8 or fewer) loads when sets were taken to failure, although heavier loads built more strength. [1]
- Not every row has to end in a grind. A meta-analysis of 15 studies found no evidence that training to momentary failure builds more muscle than stopping a set short of it. [2]
- Close still counts, though. Exploratory meta-regressions found muscle growth improved as sets were ended nearer to failure, while strength gains were similar across a wide range of reps left in reserve. [3]
- Rest more than a minute between heavy rows. A Bayesian meta-analysis of 9 randomized trials suggested a small growth benefit from resting longer than 60 seconds, and no clear further gain once rest passed 90 seconds. [4]
Sources
- Lopez P, Radaelli R, Taaffe DR, et al. (2021). Resistance Training Load Effects on Muscle Hypertrophy and Strength Gain: Systematic Review and Network Meta-analysis. Med Sci Sports Exerc. PubMed 33433148 · doi:10.1249/MSS.0000000000002585
- Refalo MC, Helms ER, Trexler ET, et al. (2023). Influence of Resistance Training Proximity-to-Failure on Skeletal Muscle Hypertrophy: A Systematic Review with Meta-analysis. Sports Med. PubMed 36334240 · doi:10.1007/s40279-022-01784-y
- 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
- Singer A, Wolf M, Generoso L, et al. (2024). Give it a rest: a systematic review with Bayesian meta-analysis on the effect of inter-set rest interval duration on muscle hypertrophy. Front Sports Act Living. PubMed 39205815 · doi:10.3389/fspor.2024.1429789
Frequently asked questions
What actually builds upper back thickness?
Braced horizontal rowing builds it. Of the 19 movements BackMaxx files under the Upper Back zone, 15 are rows and every one tags the Rhomboids. Nine list Rhomboids first, and eight of those nine anchor the load to something fixed — Chest Supported Row, Seated Cable Row, Machine Row, T-Bar Row, Inverted Row, Banded Row, Towel Row and Doorway Row — leaving Pendlay Row as the only free-barbell entry. Add light prone raises for the Lower Traps.
Do pulldowns build a thicker back?
No. All 6 pulldown variants in the corpus — Lat Pulldown, Wide-Grip, Close-Grip, Banded Lat Pulldown, Straight-Arm Pulldown and Banded Straight-Arm Pulldown — tag only Lats and Teres Major, and both belong to the Lat Width zone. They carry Upper Back as a secondary tag without loading a single muscle the Upper Back score is made of.
Which row is best for the muscles between the shoulder blades?
Chest Supported Row. It is the only row in all 77 movements that tags Rhomboids, Lower Traps and Rear Delts together, at 3 x 8–12, and the pad removes any option to swing the load. Its cue is the whole point: “Press your chest into the pad the whole set so only your back does the pulling.”
How long does it take to see upper back thickness change?
The Thickness Block runs 4 weeks, the same length as V-Taper Sprint, and re-scans in BackMaxx are weekly. Judge it by the Upper Back zone score against the number you started the block with, not against your total Back Score — width and thickness move at different rates and get scored separately.
Can I build upper back thickness at home?
Yes. Eleven of the 19 Upper Back movements run at home, two of them home only: Doorway Row at 3 x 10–15 and Towel Row at 3 x 10–15. Add Inverted Row, Banded Row, Prone T Raise, Prone Y Raise, Reverse Snow Angel and Scapular Push-up, and the Thickness Block needs no pull-up bar.
Why do single-arm rows feel like they hit the lats more?
Because the corpus tags them that way. All four single-arm rows — Meadows Row, One-Arm Dumbbell Row, Single-Arm Cable Row and Kettlebell Single-Arm Row — list Lats first and Rhomboids second, and all four also carry Symmetry as a secondary zone. Unsupported at the torso, the elbow drives back along the ribs on a lat path.
What is the difference between the Lat Width and Upper Back scores?
Lat Width scores the Lats and Teres Major and reads from directly behind you: “The V-taper. Width from the armpit down.” Upper Back scores Rhomboids, Lower Traps and Infraspinatus and reads in profile: “Thickness and the 3D look from the side.” Twenty-one movements lead on Lat Width, 19 on Upper Back.
How much retraction is enough on a row?
Enough that the blades stop moving before the handle does. The Rhomboids training note in BackMaxx is “Load second, retraction first,” and Machine Row asks you to “squeeze for a beat at the back.” That pause is the rep. Thirteen of the 15 rows start at 8 reps or higher for exactly this reason.
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.
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