Ryan Terry uses supersets a week into his Olympia prep.
Developing your back muscles is a fantastic way to enhance your appearance, increase overall strength, and fortify your entire physique. A sturdy back provides optimal support to your torso and enhances your form during exercises such as shoulder press and bench press. Moreover, it plays a pivotal role in averting back pain, a common concern among athletes and the general populace. That’s why we’ll review Ryan Terry’s back workout today, including high row and T bar rows.
Ryan Terry is a British professional bodybuilder and fitness model who received his pro card in 2014. He gained recognition in the 2010s by winning Mr. Britain and the Mr. International title. This athlete has an impressive build, and we’ll look at how he trains.
| Full Name: Ryan Terry | ||
| Weight | Height | Date of Birth |
| 185 – 225 lbs | 5’10” | 11/17/1988 |
| Division | Era | Nationality |
| Men’s Physique | 2010s – Till Date | British |
Ryan Terry is a constant competitor on the Olympia stage, getting as high as a second-place Men’s Physique finish in 2016. He also hit at least seventh place every time he participated, including last year. For this year, Ryan Terry already has his qualification by winning the New York Pro, and alongside this back workout, he gives an update on preparations.
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Ryan Terry’s Back Workout
Ryan Terry splits his back workout into two days to ensure the muscles get sufficient work. He believes that free weight movements help to build back density, and incorporating them in his training created a massive difference. But he also mixes in machine movements to help better isolate his posterior upper body muscles.
Ryan Terry incorporates regular and supersets for this back workout. After doing supersets of hyperextensions and deadlifts, he says:
“The pump you get off this, make that exercise, a deadlift, ten times harder, and it’s unbelievable the pump you get.”
Ryan Terry is right; this research says that doing supersets induces muscle hypertrophy and growth (1). Below are his back exercises and a breakdown of what specific muscles they target.
| Exercises |
| Hyperextensions |
| Deadlifts |
| High Rows |
| Lat Pulldowns |
| T-Bar Rows |
| Bent Over Barbell Rows |
Superset — Hyperextensions and Deadlifts
A hyperextension or back extension is an isolation exercise that targets your back and legs. It builds your glutes, hamstrings, erector spinae, and lats, focusing on your upper, middle, and lower back. You can exercise using bodyweight or include additional resistance like weight plates or kettlebells.
Ryan Terry does the weighted version of hypertension using a weight plate. He does a superset of this exercise in combination with deadlifts doing seven sets of 15 reps with each exercise. Terry says,
“I’ve been hitting hyperextensions relatively early but trying to hit them every week. Honestly, I think this has brought a lot of thickness onto my lower back.”
The deadlift is a compound exercise that targets posterior chain muscles like the hamstrings, glutes, traps, lats, erector spinae, and rhomboids (2). Many athletes use barbells to perform deadlifts, and since the lift starts from the floor, it’s a dead weight, giving the exercise its name. Some variations of this routine include the Romanian, sumo, stiff-leg, and trap bar deadlift.
For Ryan Terry, getting older means he can no longer focus as much on deadlifts. Hence, the 34-year-old bodybuilder combines this exercise with the hyperextension above in a superset to make the workout more exhausting without relying on too much weight on deadlifts. He immediately hits 15 reps of this after doing 15 reps of hyperextensions.
Superset — High Rows and Lat Pulldowns
The high row is a back exercise that builds your lats, traps, rhomboids, and posterior delts. This routine also recruits your arms and biceps to some extent. The barbell high row induces muscle growth in your lats, giving your back that V-taper.
Ryan Terry admits that his rhomboids are the weakest part of his back. So he uses a pronated grip when doing them to isolate them during this row variation better. The high rows are part of a superset with wide grip lat pulldowns.
As the name suggests, lat pulldowns work on your lats and help to sculpt your V-taper. Your arms, shoulders, and back benefit from doing lat pulldowns, too. This study shows that varying grip width can change the muscles that a lat pulldown targets (3). Ryan Terry also used a MAG bar for this exercise at a high intensity to push through this superset.
T-Bar Rows
T-bar rows are an excellent way to build lower and middle back muscles. T-bar rows target your traps, posterior delts, lats, rhomboids, biceps, infraspinatus, and teres major and minor. Other muscles this exercise recruits include the lateral delts, core, erector spinae, brachialis, and brachioradialis.
Ryan Terry does regular sets of T-bar rows but with variable grips to focus on different parts of his back. He uses a wide overhand grip for the first set, then a close neutral for the second before increasing the weight and doing them again. Using an overhand grip places more emphasis on the upper back.
Bent Over Barbell Rows
Bent over barbell rows is Ryan Terry’s final back routine. This exercise builds your lats, traps, rhomboids, and delts. This exercise also requires significant strength from the posterior chain muscles because of the bent-over stance.
Ryan Terry rounds up his back workout with a few solid sets of the bent-over barbell row. Experts consider this exercise functional since you can use the movement to pick up heavy objects daily. Bent over barbell rows also helps to improve your posture.
You can watch Ryan Terry’s complete back workout here:
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References
- Iversen, V. M., Norum, M., Schoenfeld, B. J., & Fimland, M. S. (2021). No Time to Lift? Designing Time-Efficient Training Programs for Strength and Hypertrophy: A Narrative Review. Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.), 51(10), 2079–2095. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-021-01490-1
- Martín-Fuentes, I., Oliva-Lozano, J. M., & Muyor, J. M. (2020). Electromyographic activity in deadlift exercise and its variants. A systematic review. PloS one, 15(2), e0229507. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0229507
- Andersen, V., Fimland, M. S., Wiik, E., Skoglund, A., & Saeterbakken, A. H. (2014). Effects of grip width on muscle strength and activation in the lat pull-down. Journal of strength and conditioning research, 28(4), 1135–1142. https://doi.org/10.1097/JSC.0000000000000232
