Chest vs Back Strength Imbalance
nossmf
Posts: 8,967 Member
Ever since I started lifting, I've been quite conscientious about balancing out back work with chest work, trying not to neglect my back muscles. (We'll ignore my lack of hamstring work on leg day, that's already been noted and corrected.) However, I've noticed a trend I somehow missed before. In my early days of lifting I hurt my back a couple times, once almost requiring bed rest to recover. Consequently I feared re-injuring my back, so I avoided lifting very heavy. I'd do just as many sets of back as I did for chest, but where I was lifting for sets of 1-3 on bench press, I'd do sets of 10-12 for rows.
Over time this has caused my chest to become considerably stronger than my back. The most glaring example is when I use a cable row apparatus I find 100# tiring after 10 reps, but when bench pressing that same weight is a mere warmup, easily done for 20+ reps.
Ever since my shoulder injury last summer I've backed my bench-press weights back to sets of five at 80% of what I used to lift pre-injury. I'm sure I could lift heavier, but I haven't tried, and doubt I ever will again. Yet I still do sets of 10-12 for back exercises.
Ok, here's my question: should I be doing back exercises with heavier weights for sets of 5, same as my bench presses? Maybe keep the weights the same but do 3 sets of back for every 2 sets of chest? I can do sets of 15-20 pullups easily enough, and my deadlift is far heavier than my bench, it's more my horizontal pulling which lags. I'm just not sure how much I should worry about the difference, if at all.
Over time this has caused my chest to become considerably stronger than my back. The most glaring example is when I use a cable row apparatus I find 100# tiring after 10 reps, but when bench pressing that same weight is a mere warmup, easily done for 20+ reps.
Ever since my shoulder injury last summer I've backed my bench-press weights back to sets of five at 80% of what I used to lift pre-injury. I'm sure I could lift heavier, but I haven't tried, and doubt I ever will again. Yet I still do sets of 10-12 for back exercises.
Ok, here's my question: should I be doing back exercises with heavier weights for sets of 5, same as my bench presses? Maybe keep the weights the same but do 3 sets of back for every 2 sets of chest? I can do sets of 15-20 pullups easily enough, and my deadlift is far heavier than my bench, it's more my horizontal pulling which lags. I'm just not sure how much I should worry about the difference, if at all.
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