After a brief warmup on the stepper, Beyeke starts his back workout with wide-grip pullups. Nothing beats this motion for the stretch it grants at the bottom, where Beyeke can hang under his own body weight and feel it in his lats all the way to their lowest insertions. Beyeke will even do pullups in the of-season when he’s close to 300 pounds. He pulls himself up until his biceps and triceps are parallel to the ground, before lowering himself in a steady cadence to the bottom position. He doesn’t torque his body or kick his legs to get himself into the top position. The amount of weight he’s carrying on his frame will dictate how many reps Beyeke can perform on this movement, which serves to warm up his entire back and get the blood flowing.
EXERCISE 2: T-BAR ROW
Beyeke’s typical second exercise will be T-bar rows or bentover rows. He keeps his body at a 60-degree angle and pulls the bar into his upper abdomen, squeezing his lats at the top, stretching them at the bottom. If he’s doing bentover rows (not pictured), Beyeke can work up to four 45-pound plates with an underhand grip, a style made famous by Dorian Yates. Even with that kind of weight his form doesn’t vary from his first set with one plate per side: Beyeke controls the weight; the weight doesn’t control him.
EXERCISE 3: SEATED ROW
Beyeke will perform these on a traditional seated row pulley machine or a plate-loaded low row machine (not pictured). He’s halfway through his workout now, and his lats are fully pumped. Never one to get caught up in the numbers game of how much weight he’s lifting, Beyeke is especially careful now to pause with his elbows drawn back in the concentric (flexed) position, really feeling it before stretching his lats out by letting the handle draw his hands and arms forward.
EXERCISE 4: WIDE- OR CLOSE-GRIP PULLDOWN
He’d do more pullups if he had the energy, but Beyeke has been exhausting his lats and now sits down on a pulldown machine for three more sets of muscle stimulation. As with his seated rows, Beyeke’s pausing at the bottom of this movement with his elbows drawn back, squeezing every ounce of feeling he can get into his lats, knowing this will spark even more muscular hypertrophy and add to an already impressive back.
EXERCISE 5: ONE-ARM DUMBBELL ROW
This is it. Beyeke’s fnal back exercise. Some days he’ll do a one-arm row; others he’ll opt for dumbbell pullovers over a fat bench. Whichever exercise he chooses, his reps are slow and deliberate. He’s drawing his lower arm up against his side, the dumbbell beside his abdomen, the chosen lat contracting and fully extending at the bottom of the exercise.
