Back and bicep workout: pull down, row, then curl

Back and biceps share a day because they share the work: every row, pulldown and pull-up bends your elbows, so the biceps helps with every rep. That decides the order. Back first, while you're fresh, then curls for what the pulls leave out.

This page is one session, written twice: for a gym and for a pair of dumbbells at home. The back workout is the menu of pulls and the grip questions; the arm workout counts the biceps. Where the session sits in your week is below.

The gym session

In this order. "3 × 8–12" is three sets of eight to twelve reps; the sets and reps here are a practical starting point, in the ranges the other plan pages use, not a finding from one study. Every set stops with two or three good reps left, and the curls can go a little closer.

Sixteen working sets with the back extension, about 50 minutes with two or three minutes of rest after the first row and a minute on the curls. Warm up with one or two lighter sets of the first pull. (The full warm-up.)

The dumbbell session, at home

Same slots, same order, with a pair of dumbbells and a doorway bar or a band.

Fourteen working sets. With no bar and no band, swap the pull-up for three more sets of one-arm rows. The ACSM's 2009 stand recommends that strength programs put large-muscle and multiple-joint exercises before small-muscle and single-joint ones,¹ which is why the curls come last in both sessions, and why tired biceps shouldn't be the reason a row stops short.

Why two pulls and a hinge

The ACSM's 2026 position stand didn't compare body regions. Its authors' view is that the upper body can also be split into horizontal and vertical directions, which for a back day means a vertical pull and a horizontal pull.² They shift the work a little. In a 2004 study of 12 men with more than six months of weight training, who held each pull still for ten seconds, the wide-grip pulldown and the seated row had the highest ratio of lat activity to biceps activity, and the seated row had the highest activity in the muscles between the shoulder blades.³

Don't spend time on the grip. In 15 men, lat, trapezius and infraspinatus activity was similar with grips one, one and a half and two times the biacromial distance (the width across your shoulders).⁴ Pull the bar to the front of your chest: a 2026 review of 23 studies found a bar path in front of the head the setup most consistently linked to higher lat activity, and the pullover seemed to work the chest more than the lats.⁵ (These studies measure muscle activity during a set, not growth over months.)

The hinge is the third slot. A 2020 review of deadlift studies found the muscles along the spine and the quadriceps more active than the glutes and hamstrings, while the Romanian deadlift worked the spine muscles less than the hamstrings.⁶ A back extension is the lighter way to fill the slot; a Romanian deadlift is the heavier one.

Do you need the curls?

The trials split. In 29 untrained young men, adding curls and triceps extensions to bench presses and pulldowns for ten weeks added no significant benefit to elbow flexor thickness or strength.⁷ In another ten-week trial of 29 untrained men, training the elbow flexors only with pulldowns or only with curls gained 6.10% and 5.83% in muscle thickness, which the authors found equally effective.⁸ But in 10 untrained men who trained one arm with one-arm dumbbell rows and the other with curls for eight weeks, the curl arm's elbow flexors grew 11.06% against 5.16%.⁹ Two curl exercises are a cheap hedge.

Which curl matters little. In 21 untrained adults training one arm with incline curls and the other with preacher curls for 12 weeks, total elbow flexor growth didn't differ: +17.6% and +19.2%.¹⁰ Pick the one you can load and keep adding to. And if you want the biceps working harder in the pull itself, turn your palms toward you: in 25 people, the biceps was significantly more active in a chin-up than in a pull-up (activity, not growth).¹¹

What one session adds up to

The gym session gives the back eleven hard sets: three each on the pulldown and the two rows, two on the extension. For the biceps it gives five direct sets plus the nine pulling sets at half a set each, about nine and a half. A 2026 meta-regression of 67 studies found the strongest support for counting a set that trains a muscle only indirectly as half a set.¹² Run once a week, that is near the ten sets per muscle that how many sets per week uses as a marker, and plenty for someone new to lifting. Run it twice a week and two sets of each exercise reaches about 16 back sets; one set each, about 8.

How it fits a week

• On a body-part split, this is the back day. Chest and triceps is its mirror: the chest and tricep workout. A five-day week with both is written out on the 5 day split page.
• On push/pull/legs, it is most of a pull day. Add face pulls and a deadlift and you have the pull session in the routine.
• On upper/lower, the back and biceps slots are two of the upper day's: the upper body workout puts them next to the presses.

If your leg day has a heavy Romanian deadlift or deadlift, take the back extension here, or leave the hinge out, rather than putting two heavy hinges on back-to-back days.

Common mistakes

• Curls first. Tired biceps stop the row before the back is done. They go last.
• Swinging the weight. Leaning back on a pulldown or heaving a row hands the work to momentum. Go lighter, keep the range.
• Only pulldowns, or only rows. One of each.
• Pullovers as your lat exercise. The 2026 review's pullover finding points at the chest. (The pullover page has the rest.)
• Pulling through a sharp pain in a shoulder, elbow or back. Effort and soreness are part of it; a sharp or lasting pain isn't. Stop that exercise, and see a doctor or a physical therapist.

Common questions

Is a pull-up a back exercise or a bicep exercise?

Both. In the 25-person study both the lats and the biceps were active in every pull-up and chin-up, and the biceps more so in the chin-up.¹¹

How many sets of back and biceps?

The gym session is sixteen: eleven for the back and five direct for the biceps. Two sets of each exercise is a fair start if you're new.

Is it different for women?

The session is the same; the weights differ. Strength training for women covers the research in women.

If you'd rather have it built for you

The session is the easy part. Which pulls suit your gym and your shoulders, how many sets your back needs this month, and where the pull days fall in a week that keeps changing are the parts a page can't settle. Coaching is the version where your workouts live in Trainerize, built around the days you actually have, and a weekly call goes over the week you just had and sets the next one. Coaching to build muscle explains how that works, and apply is where you tell me about your training. Otherwise: run the gym or the dumbbell session this week and write every set down.