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Place a stretch-based back movement before any big pulling movements on back day or any pull-emphasis lifting. This primer reverts your body into a normal posture by getting you into the opposite positions you most likely spend most of your day in. The single most effective movement to prime the back is the straight-arm pulldown and its variations. This movement involves isolating the latissimus dorsi. In most cases, it's functionally shortened. Doing both an end-range stretch along with a peak concentric contraction works wonders. Doing a static hip hinge hold to pre-stretch the lats and practice one of the most butchered foundational movement patterns is also highly advantageous. Hinging over at the hips also allows for a greater overhead range of motion to really tap into the end range for the lats at the top of the movements.

The straight-arm pulldown is based on internal tension. If you're using a cable stack, it's less about the external load you're placing on the tissues and more about how you're building and bracing your tension throughout a full range of motion throughout the set. As you'll see, this movement will be humbling, so make sure you set your ego aside and train this exercise for the feel and pump. – Dr. John Rusin

Pillar chins require that you establish a strict vertical body orientation from head to toe so that every muscle in your body fires up. What's unique about this exercise is that the glutes and hamstrings have to really step up their game. – Travis Hansen

By applying an external load in the form of chains around the posterior cervical spine, you subsequently fire the deep neck flexors and retractors that are almost always weak and underdeveloped for the majority of lifters. The chains create a feed-forward mechanism and activate the target muscles through a process called "reactive neuromuscular training," espoused by Gray Cook and Mike Boyle. By driving your neck muscles into protraction and a more pronounced forward head alignment, you engage the opposing muscles and correct any faulty posture. This exercise is another valuable tool you can add to your corrective training arsenal to correct common postural defects throughout the kinetic chain as alignment "up top" partially feeds positioning down below. – Travis Hansen

This one is great because it trains more of the speed-strength and power side of the force-velocity curve, which is generally deficient in the pull training category. Switch-ups accomplish this without directly exposing the shoulder complex to the extreme amounts of mechanical stress and overload common in the muscle-up. – Travis Hansen

• To set up, hold two moderately heavy dumbbells at your side and hinge forward about 30 degrees.

• Keep your shoulder blades depressed and retract them together.

• Hold this position and squeeze for as long as you can.

• Really focus on the mind-muscle connection with this one. – Calvin Huynh

This is one of my favorite back exercises even though the back does an isometric hold the whole time. Muscles don't need to create movement in order to be worked, become exhausted, and require recovery that can lead to hypertrophy.

In fact, isometrics done in the right way can actually help enhance our growth potential by targeting specific ranges of motion, and thus muscle fibers, that we are weaker or underdeveloped.

Anything like a farmer's carry, a well-executed deadlift, or even isometric row hold will do wonders hit the outer lats, the rhomboids, posterior deltoids, and traps. – Kevin Mullins