Road Map to a Massive Back | Dennis Wolf’s 7-Point Plan
Road Map to a Massive Back
Dennis Wolf's 7-Point Plan
“DENNIS, HOW CAN I IMPROVE MY BACK?”
If you have half a brain, you wouldn’t ask Phil Heath for arm-training advice. He puts an inch on them every time he wipes his ass, presumably with $100 bills (just jokes, Gift … just jokes!). You wouldn’t ask Branch Warren for leg-training advice either. He’s worked very hard for his legs, but the fact is that they were much bigger by the time he was 18 and training only a couple of years than most men’s thighs would ever be even if they trained them hard for literally decades. When it comes to back, that’s a body part that not many men these days really shine in. If you are having trouble with building your back, the wisest person to seek advice from would be someone who has transformed it from a mediocre muscle group to one that commands respect. Dennis Wolf is both surprised and pleased to be that man now.
“It’s funny, because for so long guys want to ask me how to get their shoulders bigger, and I was the wrong person to ask about that,” he begins. “My shoulders just grew and grew from day one no matter what I did for them. But my back is an area that nobody ever wanted to talk to me about years ago, and now they do. They want to follow my routine, and that’s satisfying because it tells me how much better my back has become since I started out as a pro.”
But it’s not any specific routine that made the difference, or even any particular exercises. On paper, Wolf’s back training hasn’t changed a whole lot over the years. But in bodybuilding, it’s often not so much what you do that matters, but how you do it. “It took me years to get that perfect connection between my mind and the muscles in my back so I was really feeling my lats contract with each rep,” he points out. “Like so many other guys, my form looked good if you saw me, but my lats weren’t really doing the work.”
His most productive advice to the many who now seek it is to stop worrying about how much weight they are using. “They will ask me how much weight I use on this or that exercise, and I tell them it doesn’t matter. If you think so much about how you need to go heavy, there is no way you will get the right feeling and stimulation so your back will grow. Other things like your biceps and shoulders will do too much of the work.”
He also feels it’s his responsibility to warn younger bodybuilders that going mega heavy at the expense of form is something they will regret later on. “They don’t worry about it now, because when you’re 22 years old and you get hurt, you feel fine a week later,” he notes. “But all the damage you do as a young guy builds up over time and then you really pay for it later on. Look at Ronnie Coleman, who was the biggest and strongest bodybuilder ever and now he’s had all these back surgeries.” With all that being said, we here at MD know you still want to know all about what Dennis Wolf does for his back— we hear and obey! Let’s start with his most productive back exercises.
1) Reverse-Grip Lat Pulldowns
Dennis usually starts his back workout at the lat pulldown station using a straight bar with a reverse, or underhand grip. He found out several years ago that it does a better job of targeting the area he needed to improve on the most. “The wide grip you feel more in the upper back, but then when you flip your hands over you are able to reach those muscle fibers in the lower lats better.”
I’ve said this probably a couple of dozen times in print before, but Dorian Yates, who is legendary for having had one of the best backs the sport has ever seen, strongly believed that the underhand shoulder-width grip was far superior a choice. The reverse grip allows a more complete range of motion due to the full supination of the biceps. “For me, it was all about where I felt the exercise and how well I was able to contract my lower lats,” Wolf says. “Once I knew how productive this type of pulldown was for me, I started doing it first while I was fresh at every workout.”
Dennis also wanted to make sure we knew how critical perfect form is to him on the reverse-grip pulldowns. “I keep my torso perfectly straight, and it doesn’t move at all while I do the sets,” he said. “I pull down and squeeze the lats hard, with no rocking or leaning back. That’s how I found this works the best.”
2) Wide-Grip Lat Pulldowns
This movement has fallen into only occasional use by Dennis over the last year, only done at the very end of a workout if he feels he still hasn’t got the full-blown pump in his lats he was seeking. “Instead of the cable version, I get more out of the same grip but using an assisted pull-up machine.”
When the question was posed about whether or not he ever does regular pull-ups, he had a chuckle. “You try doing those at 300 pounds sometime!” he replied.
When he does do the wide-grip pulldown, you can see he uses a grip so wide it would cut the range of motion in half for most of us. Then again, most of us are only about half as wide as Dennis, so it’s all relative.
Occasionally, Dennis will use the same bar and do wide-grip behind-neck pulldowns, but pulls only to the top of his head. “You can hurt your rotator cuffs pulling behind the neck if you go way down and pull the bar to your neck,” he cautions. “I go only about halfway down, and the weight I use is never heavy. I’m really just going into the rear double biceps pose with some resistance. This is just for muscle quality and detail in the upper back.”
3) Close-Grip Pulldowns
Yet another variation of the lat pulldown Dennis likes to use is the attachment normally reserved for seated cable rows. This allows him to yet again target the lower regions of his lats, the area that’s improved the most but which he will never feel is quite “finished.” As Dennis explains, "I keep my torso perfectly straight with no leaning back, and I pull down to the tops of my abs. This shifts the stress down lower for the lats, and this is always my goal.”
4) T-Bar Rows
Dennis does some type of free-weight row at every workout. He admits that T-bar rows, as seen here, are done only about every third workout, while barbell rows are more of a mainstay. He actually credits them with giving his back most of the mass we see today. Wolf also likes T-bar rows, though he considers them more of a partial movement due to the width of 45-pound plates interfering with a full contraction. “In both the barbell and the T-bar row, you always need to be careful not to stand up too much and start making it like the top part of a deadlift,” he advises. To that end, he doesn’t ever go as heavy as he could if he didn’t care about a full range of motion and quality contractions. “I lifted heavy weights with my back for years and didn’t see much improvement,” he tells us. “Once I stopped worrying about using a ton of weight and made the feeling in the muscle the most important thing, my back finally started getting better again.”
5) Barbell Rows
You know how we often ask a pro, “What’s the absolute most effective exercise for this or that body part?” Dennis didn’t hesitate in naming the barbell row as the one exercise that has given his back the most mass. Though he doesn’t use the underhand grip like Dorian, you’ll notice that he does pull the bar to a very low point on his torso, lower than his navel. “My upper back has good size now, so I focus everything I can on the middle and lower lats to get those areas thicker.”
Wolf is a stickler for strict form on his rows and won’t normally use any more than 365 pounds. For a man who tips the scales at over 300 pounds most of the year, that’s really not so heavy. “I don’t care about how heavy the weight is,” Dennis states. “I only care about making the muscle grow, and I need to have good contractions and feeling in the lats for that. I could put 500 pounds on the bar and bounce it up and down, but that would be stupid.”
6) Hammer Strength Machine Rows (not shown)
This part of the workout alternates between dumbbell and machine rows from week to week. One thing he likes about machines is the fact that his torso is fully braced and immobilized, making for a stricter rep. Dennis can also hold the contraction for a beat, something that a dumbbell isn’t as suited for. “Hammer makes a few different types of rowing machines, and I don’t always use the same one,” he points out. “They all have you pulling at slightly different angles, so you can work different parts of your back. That’s very important.” He also likes to do the machine rows one arm at a time, just as he would the dumbbell row. “Working the back with one arm at a time lets you put even more focus into what you are doing and concentrate better on the feeling inside the muscle as you pull and squeeze.”
7) Cable Rows (not shown)
A final type of rowing Dennis does regularly is with a cable, and as with the machines, he infuses variety into his choices in the form of different grip attachments. Sometimes he uses the more standard close grip seen here. At other times he will use the long bar and an underhand grip as seen here, but far more often he hooks up a single D-ring and does his cable rows one arm at a time for extra concentration. At other times he sits down at a machine row and does the same thing. “I really love some of the Hammer Strength rowing machines I have tried, but we don’t have any of them in the gyms I train at in Germany,” he says with regret. “But with a cable or a machine I can do a very good job of getting a perfect pump in the lat. I am able to hold the contraction for a couple of seconds if I want to, which is a lot harder to do with free-weight rows.”
Bringing That Back to the O Again
Dennis is currently in super hungry mood preparing for the Mr. Olympia contest in September. The past two years he’s finished third (2013) and fourth (2014) so is he ready to crack that top two for the first time. It’s still too far off to speculate. The only thing that we can definitely be sure of is that his back will be even better than ever. Who will be afraid of the Big Bad Wolf when he turns around this year? Pretty much everybody!
Dennis Wolf’s Training Splits
Off-Season Training Split*
Monday: Chest and biceps
Tuesday: Legs
Wednesday: OFF
Thursday: Shoulders and triceps
Friday: OFF
Saturday: Back and traps
Sunday: OFF
*Calves are trained every other day
Pre-Contest Training Split*
Monday: Chest
Tuesday: Quads
Wednesday: Arms
Thursday: Delts
Friday: Hamstrings
Saturday: Back
Sunday: OFF
*Calves are trained every other day, and abs are trained every day.
Back Workout
Underhand Lat Pulldown* 4 x 10-12
Pullover Machine 4 x 10-12
Assisted Pull-Up Machine 4 x 10
Barbell Rows 4 x 10
Seated Cable Rows 3 x 10
Standing Low Cable Rows With Rope 3 x 10
Lat Pulldowns With Individual Handles 3 x 10
Deadlifts or Hyperextensions 3 x 10-12
*Dennis pulls to underneath his chest to target the lower lats more.
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