Published November 8, 2026 07:07AM
If you’re seeking ways to strengthen your back, chances are you won’t find a lot of solutions for how to strengthen your mid back. Yoga teacher and certified personal trainer Amber Sayer, who works with desk workers as well as competitive athletes, explains why the missing mid-back component is so essential and how to effectively strengthen it.
When it comes to strength training and your back, almost everyone talks about thinks about avoiding lower back strain or correcting tech neck. But there isn’t much talk about how to strengthen and improve endurance in the muscles of the mid back.
And that’s a shame. This overlooked part of the body not only contributes to your ease of posture and movement during everyday life, it ensures that all of the muscles in your back can work together effectively. Basically, when any part of the back is underutilized, it creates more work for the other parts. Practicing exercises that challenge and build endurance in your mid back supports functional back strength throughout the spine and helps minimize the risk of forcing the muscles in the lower back to overcompensate. Think of your mid-back muscles as one of those things you don’t tend to think about until there’s a problem.
These muscles attach to the thoracic spine and include the middle and lower trapezius, rhomboids, latissimus dorsi, erector spinae, and serratus posterior. You’re probably already been practicing yoga poses that strengthen the muscles in the mid back in various ways without realizing it. But when you become more intentional about including these poses each time you’re on your mat, you ensure that you target the various muscles and collaboratively, strengthen your entire back.
How to Strengthen Your Mid Back With Yoga
Rather than practicing the entire list of yoga poses all at once, incorporate a couple into your mat time whenever you practice, occasionally changing up which ones you explore. Or try a single pose as a one-off whenever you could use a respite from sitting and staring at your screen.
1. Sphinx Pose
This beginner-friendly pose is your starting point as you’re learning to strengthen the mid-back muscles. Because Sphinx Pose (Salamba Bhujangasana) props you on your forearms to create the backbend, it can be almost entirely passive for the back muscles. But there are a few subtle actions you can take that engage the mid-back in significant yet non-intense ways.
How to: Lie on your belly with your forehead on the mat and your legs straight behind you, hip distance apart, with the tops of your feet on the mat. Bring your palms and forearms on the mat with your elbows beneath or slightly in front of your shoulders. Actively press down through your forearms to lift your chest off the mat. Draw your shoulder blades down and away from your ears and toward the middle of your back. And the important part for your mid-back is to keep your forearms still but feel as if you’re dragging your elbows toward your hips. Keep that action as you stay here for several breaths.
If the backbend feels too intense, inch your forearms slightly in front of you to lessen how much your chest is lifted from the mat.
Practice Sphinx Pose.
2. Cobra Pose
This backbend asks you to lift your chest off the mat by pressing your palms to the mat. But when you hover your hands in Cobra Pose (Bhujangasana), you rely exclusively on your mid-back and core muscles to create the shape. The point isn’t how far you lift yourself off the mat. It’s that you create any lift at all.
How to: Start lying on your belly with your palms beneath your shoulders. Start with your palms pressing into the mat and lift your chest. Then press the tops of your feet into the mat and engage your mid-back muscles to lift your chest any amount off the mat. To intensify the workload on your mid-back muscles, lift your palms an inch or two above the mat and continue to hover them. You can also bring your arms straight out from your shoulders like the letter T, and then turn your thumbs toward the ceiling to increase the strengthening potential for the trapezius.
Practice Cobra Pose.
3. Locust Pose
This shape asks you to actively lift your upper and lower body off the mat, which enlists the mid-back muscles as you counteract gravity. It effectively strengthens not only the mid back but the entire back body, including the upper and lower back, glutes, and hamstrings. Locust Pose (Salabhasana) is not easy but it is one of the best back-strengthening yoga poses that exist.
How to: Start lying on your belly with your arms at your sides, palms facing down. Press down through the fronts of the hips and start to lift your upper and lower body off the mat, drawing the shoulder blades toward each other. Lift only as much as you can. Interlace your fingers behind your back and reach your knuckles toward the wall behind you.
Practice Locust Pose.
4. Chair Pose
This pose is commonly thought of as a quad-strengthening yoga pose, as that’s usually where you feel the burn. But leaning forward in Chair Pose (Utkatasana) without completely collapsing forward and reaching your arms overhead also challenges—and strengthens—the muscles of the mid back. Specifically, the lower trapezius and erector spinae.
How to: From standing, bring your big toes to touch or keep them hip-distance apart. Bend your knees and sit your hips partly back, as if you’re about to sit in a chair. Lean your chest slightly forward and reach your arms alongside your ears. Draw your shoulders away from your ears to strengthen the trapezius and rhomboids.
To intensify the challenge for your your mid back, take any of the following arm variations:
• Take your hands farther away from one another to create a V shape with your arms and squeeze your shoulder blades together
• Bend your elbows about 90 degrees and create a cactus shape with your arms, being careful not to arch your lower back
• Sweep your arms alongside your body, palms facing the mat, drawing your shoulder blades away from your ears
Practice Chair Pose.
5. Warrior 3
This Warrior pose tends to be less common than Warrior 1 or 2 when it comes to most yoga strength routines, yet it is an unsung hero in terms of strengthening not only the legs but most of the muscles in your body. The trick for targeting the mid-back muscles is to reach your straightened arms in front of you with your torso in Warrior 3 (Virabhadrasana III).
How to: From standing with your hands on your hips or at your chest, shift your weight into one foot and slowly start to lean forward as you lift the other foot and reach it toward the wall behind you. Slowly reach your arms straight ahead, with your arms alongside your ears. Alternatively, you can reach them alongside your body, with your fingertips reaching toward the back wall, in what’s commonly referred to as airplane arms. Imagine actively lifting your straightened arms up toward the ceiling.
Practice Warrior 3.
