Rhomboids (shoulder blade muscles), are essential in creating good posture by pulling shoulders towards spine for correct posture. When they are weak or tight, you could experience poor posture as well as backache in between shoulder blades.
When your levator scapula muscle isn’t working as it should, your rhomboids often compensate by overworking and creating pain and trigger points (muscle knots). Rhomboids stretching exercises may help alleviate some of these problems.
Inverted Row
Addition of the Inverted Row to your upper body workout can be an effective way to build strength and size without lifting additional weight. From improving pull-ups, shoulder stability or simply adding an additional back exercise, the Inverted Row can be one of the most valuable movements. However, to reap its full benefits it must be performed correctly; Men’s Health offers this video that can guide you through these essential bodyweight exercises, helping avoid errors that could impede results.
At the core of this movement lies your latissimus dorsi, more commonly referred to as your lats, lies your core strength – stretching from your lower spine all the way out to your arms. They connect adducting, extending and internal rotating of shoulders while your rhomboids play a secondary role by pulling shoulders back towards spine while your biceps brachii assists elbow flexion; with pronated grip used during inverted row placing a heavy emphasis on this muscle.
The inverted row can serve as an effective alternative to standard pull-ups for beginners who lack sufficient upper body strength, as well as being an excellent warm-up exercise before more challenging back and arm exercises. For an additional challenge, place your feet on a raised platform for extra difficulty.
As when performing any movement, one common misstep when performing Inverted Row can be shortening its range of motion by stopping short of fully retracting shoulders and extending elbows at the top of movement. This can create unnecessary stress on joints and connective tissue as well as hinder its effectiveness.
Relying solely on momentum to complete repetitions instead of engaging your back and arm muscles can cause tension to decrease during each repetition, ultimately decreasing its effectiveness over time. Instead of striving to complete more reps quickly, focus on perfecting your technique so each rep maximizes effectiveness and maximizes effectiveness for maximum workout benefits.
Single-Arm Cable Row
The Single-Arm Cable Row is an effective back exercise designed to strengthen rhomboids with constant tension. Furthermore, this exercise creates an angled pull from high to low that accentuates downward scapular rotation and T-spine rotation during peak contraction – perfect for targeting any left/right imbalances in strength or muscular development. Performing one arm at a time also makes this an effective exercise for correcting any left-to-right discrepancies that exist in strength development or muscle balance.
Rhomboids are medium-sized muscles nestled between your trapezius and scapular tissues of your upper back, making them harder to target than larger muscle groups like lats and shoulders. Therefore, some rowing movements may not effectively work them.
To maximize the effectiveness of rows and other exercises that target the rhomboids, add isometric contractions into your workouts. Isometric exercises involve contracting muscle in a static state. Chow explains that isometric training provides an analgesic effect and increased blood flow for quicker healing of injured muscle fibers.
Start the Single-Arm Cable Row by attaching a cable attachment to any machine. Stand tall while facing the cable stack, gripping one handle in each hand using carabiners – your working arm should be on your right while non-working arm should be on your left; arms should be set out so they’re straight out in front of you at an slightly horizontal angle and focused on pulling together shoulder blades into “back pocket.” As you row, keep spine perfectly straight while pulling your shoulder blades together into “back pockets”. Throughout each rep.
At the top of each rep, rotate your working shoulder outward to really work your rhomboids in that downward rotation, before slowly returning back to starting position. To ensure you’re working your rhomboids to their maximum capacity, don’t rush the process by using too much weight – doing so could prevent you from reaching the correct range of motion and really squeezing shoulders during movement. Furthermore, avoid slouching or rounding shoulders during rowing which could place extra stress on both neck and shoulders.
Single-Arm Band Row
Your rhomboids are mid-sized muscles located beneath the trapezius and other scapular muscles in your upper back, playing an essential role in maintaining posture and maintaining scapular stability; both of which are essential components of powerful pulling movements such as rows. But as they lack the same muscle size and force output potential as larger muscles in your upper back, you can’t count on them alone to perform high volume rows. Exercise that utilize various angles of motion will help keep the rhomboids working without overworking or injuring them, one such exercise being single-arm rows – these work your rhomboids and upper back very efficiently while giving additional core work as well.
To perform the single-arm row, anchor a resistance band below you on a flat bench or other stable structure and assume a sitting position. Grab both handles of the band with an overhand grip (for improved targeting of rhomboids). Extend arms straight in front of you as you pull the band down towards your chest; engage core muscles as shoulders protract in an anatomical rounding motion, contracting rhomboids as your shoulder round back out; once arm has reached about 90 degrees to body, squeeze it then release while lower it back down again.
Another effective method for performing this exercise is to incorporate a slight rotation at the top of each movement by twisting your working shoulder slightly away from your body at its highest point. This adds extra retraction and contraction of rhomboids while still working your upper back, traps, and rear delts efficiently.
If you own a barbell or weight on a gym rack, adding more of a squat can increase the difficulty and challenge of rowing exercises. Doing this requires more coordination from you but will put a bigger demand on your rhomboids – so balancing weight evenly through each movement helps maintain muscle tension efficiently and keeps strain evenly distributed within each muscle group.
Resisted Row
Most people who are serious about building their physique tend to focus heavily on upper-body pressing exercises like bench presses and dumbbell shoulder presses, such as bench presses and dumbbell shoulder presses. Though these movements are important, it’s equally vital that smaller muscles like rhomboids (muscles between your shoulders and spine) be trained. Too many lifters neglect these muscles that work together with larger ones in controlling movement of shoulder blades and spine; when their strength wanes too soon other muscles must shoulder too much of the load leading them overuse injury.
Rhomboids can be easily trained. Simply begin with basic dynamic stretches to mobilize the muscle, then progress to more targeted exercises like the seated row or single-arm rows for further training of these vital muscle groups. Doing this will not only help with posture and neck/shoulder pain relief, but will also balance out other larger muscle loads to prevent injuries and enhance performance.
For the seated row exercise, you will require access to either a smith machine with low pull-up bar or suspension trainer. Assume a tall stance and grip the bar with an overhand grip greater than shoulder width – then pull towards chest level while compressing back and shoulder blades into retraction position until reaching upper-chest level and stopping briefly at its peak position; return slowly down towards starting position and repeat with reps until complete.
The Face Pull Exercise is an all-in-one workout, targeting not only your rhomboids but also rear deltoids and trapezius muscles. As close to an isolated rhomboids exercise as possible, it makes an ideal warm-up or between sets of pressing movements. To perform it effectively, set up a cable machine with an elevated handle; stand facing it with arms extended forward and palms down; grab hold of its shoulder-width grip handle with shoulder squeezed arm movement until reaching your face; pull slowly back until – repeat for repetitions!
