Back Workouts at Home: Best Bodyweight Exercises

2 min readJul 3, 2024

Long sitting can affect the mobility of your upper back and weaken the back muscles. That’s why it’s important to exercise your back muscles.

Bodyweight exercises are the perfect addition to your home routine to strengthen your back. That’s because strengthening your back muscles — lats, rhomboids, and traps — helps improve muscle imbalances and posture.

Today, we’ll review some of the best bodyweight back exercises for your upper, middle, and lower back.

Best Bodyweight Back Exercises

1. Floor Elbow Lift

This exercise is also known as the reverse push-up. However, “reverse push-up” is also used to describe a bunch of other exercises, including the inverted row.

2. Bent Over Row With Towel

This move primarily targets those all-important back muscles — your lats (the large muscles on the sides of your back), rhomboids (the muscles between your shoulder blades), and traps (the muscles on top of your shoulders).

3. Inverted Row

The inverted row (bodyweight rows) creates a horizontal body position, making it easier to perform. It works the back and shoulder muscles from a different angle and improves upper body strength.

In the gym, most people utilize the Smith machine for this exercise.

You can also do the inverted row at home by lying under a chair and pulling yourself up.

4. Plank Lateral Arm Raise

While regular planks are great for your core muscles, mainly the oblique. This exercise strengthens your core and targets your shoulders and back.

Beyond the core and shoulders, this exercise also activates your glutes, quads, and even your lower back, making it a great full-body move.

5. Pull-Up

The pull-up is an upper-body strength movement that targets your back, chest, shoulders, and arms. They are often a challenge for beginners and even experienced athletes to perform.

It is a great exercise for building upper body strength, improving posture, and increasing muscle mass.

The pull-up increases your back’s strength, thickness, and width, specifically your lats. The lats influence the back width and form the “V” in the upper back.

5. Seated Row With Towel

This exercise specifically targets the muscles in your upper and middle back, including the rhomboids, trapezius, and latissimus dorsi, helping to build a stronger, more defined back.

The Seated Row with Towel can be done anywhere, making it a convenient option for home workouts or when you’re traveling and don’t have access to equipment.

6. Reverse Plank

The reverse plank targets the posterior muscles (those along the backside of the body) and engages the abdominals.

Although this exercise is most commonly seen in yoga workouts, it’s an effective addition to any core strengthening routine.