The posterior chain is a group of muscles a lot of gym bro’s will forget exists in the first few years of training. I get it, it’s much more exciting to train muscles that you can see working such as the chest, shoulders and arms. The problem is, you have a huge collection of muscles that you can’t see when your training, that actually look damn impressive if you add a few pounds of muscle onto them.
So, what are the muscles of the posterior chain?
The posterior muscles, as you may have guessed are muscles that are located on the back of your body. The main ones include the hamstrings, calves and the biggest muscle in your body, the gluteus maximus, aka your butt. However, there are several smaller muscles that also contribute to posterior chain that shouldn’t be forgotten, such as the rear deltoids, the latissimus dorsi, traps and also the erector spinae muscles.
What is the function of the posterior chain?
The posterior chain has a very simple function, to help you maintain a strong spinal position and keep a healthy posture. It’s incredibly important that you train all muscles equally to ensure you have a healthy posture and correct spinal alignment. I’m sure you have all seen at some point the guy in the gym with huge pecs, small lats and a rounded upper back. This rounded upper back comes from overtraining the chest and not spending enough time developing the lats, it's an imbalance and can lead to long term damage of the shoulders and carries with it an increased risk of injury.
How do you build a strong posterior chain?
Now you know the muscles involved, we can look at the exercises that best develop and strengthen the posterior chain.
Deadlift – the king of exercises when it comes to building strength and size in the posterior chain. The deadlift will work your glutes, hamstrings, lower back, lats, traps and even your biceps as a bonus. There isn’t an exercise that targets more posterior chain muscles at once than this exercise, meaning you can build massive amounts of strength and add slabs of muscle onto your frame if it is performed correctly.
Glute Ham Raise – almost a forgotten exercise that has a huge benefit to your overall posterior chain strength. Different to the deadlift as it is knee dominant, not hip dominant. This means that your hamstrings are loaded in a different way and are used more in the movement. It’s a difficult exercise to perform and most people will be fine with their bodyweight when performing. However, over time you can introduce weight (usually a plate held against the chest) to increase your strength.
Pull-up – A strict pull up is going to build and strengthen your lats like no other exercise. One of the best things about a pullup is it's so easy to perform and no matter how advanced or how new you are to training, progression is quite easy. If you are new training and aren’t strong enough to perform a full bodyweight pull up, most gyms have pull up stations where you can add weight to assist you with the movement. Once you have completed three sets of ten in the same workout, reduce the assisted weight and aim for three sets of ten again. Complete this process until your completing full bodyweight reps!
If you have been neglecting your posterior chain then I highly suggest you start off by adding in the three exercises shown above. Not only will you experience a huge increase in strength across other movements due to the crossover of strength from these compounds, but also an increase in muscle mass and aesthetics across the posterior chain that’s guaranteed to get you some compliments.
