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Bent-over Barbell RowBENT-OVER BARBELL ROW Taken from Dave Draper's book, Brother Iron, Sister Steel Bent-over rows are a comprehensive exercise like squats, deadlifts and standing military presses. The thing is, they’re the toughest, meanest and most demanding upper body movement. They work large and specific muscles (full back) yet engage the whole system fingers to toes, in their execution. Therefore, systemic growth — whole body growth —is accomplished, along with deep fatigue and an accentuated need for recovery. Rows are a power exercise and are most effective when performed with heavy weight. The movement is basic, and takes practice and conditioning over months to allow you to perform safely with body thrusts that recruit the muscle mass. The bent torso acts as a lever under the resistance of the bar. The lower back (the spinal vertebrae supported by the erectors) provides the fulcrum and bears an extraordinary load. Be careful. To protect my lower back, I assume a relatively close standing position, bend over with my ribcage somewhat supported by my thighs; my back’s flat and my eyes are focused somewhere ten feet before me to position my head correctly. I grab the bar over-grip some six inches from the collars of an Olympic bar. Settling in, major focus on grip and body position as I breathe deeply three or four times in preparation, I pull the bar tightly to the mid-chest. I lower it deliberately to the starting position, the plates just short of or tapping the floor, up again with muscle power, down again with negative focus. Pull the bar to the chest at a medium speed; to the high chest works upper back, to mid-chest works mid-back, low pull toward gut works low back. Find your favorite target or vary as needed. Build your muscle and might over an extended period with minor weight increments and solid, well-formed reps. Small thrusts are okay, but will take their toll on the low back which bears the extreme load of the highly stressed pivot point. Let the lumbar and erectors build in power as you slowly progress. Dave's back was one of the best out there, thick, heavily muscled and flaring like a cobra's hood. His back was a testament to the effectiveness of bent over rowing. However, there are those of us that due to body mechanics and length of torso, find bent over rowing to be an invitation to injury. It is for those people that I offer the following information and modifications. Before you do your first row...you need to pay some conditioning dues. A couple of months worth of hyperextensions, stiff legged deadlifts and/or good mornings should be performed, to ensure adequate lower back strength. Once you've built a foundation, you can begin to contruct the house. How to set up for Rows Stand erect, with your feet comfortably spread apart. (For me, that means shoulder width) While keeping the legs locked out straight, lean forward to about a forty-five degree angle or slightly more. Concentrate on maintaining an arch in your lower back, bending mainly from the hips. Eyes are looking ahead or just slightly upwards. Done correctly, you'll feel a tension in the lower and mid back and the hamstrings. Now, allow your knees to unlock, while maintaining the tension in the back. You should naturally drop into a position with the knees slightly flexed and the tension at your hamstrings should disappear. This is your starting positon for the bent over row. Remember that feeling as you assume the position with the barbell. I prefer the thumb free grip, as it lessens the contribution of the bicep and the forearms. Also, it helps you to "pull with the lats." Imagine your arms to be gaff hooks...retract your shoulder blades and pull with the lats and mid back muscles, your hands merely being hooks to hold the barbell. The feeling is hard to cultivate but worth the effort, otherwise it is possible to turn bent over rows into just another bicep exercise. Your first pulls should see you holding the torso rigidly in position, as the set progresses, you may start to "bob" just a tad. (These are the "thrusts" that Dave mentions...try to keep them under tight control.) As Dave stated, you can vary grip width and locations to where you pull the bar. Pull high and the stress on the lower back is increased...be careful. Pulling to the pit of the stomach is safest for the lower back. Holding elbows wide changes the muscle action to emphasize the rear delts and rhomboids, holding elbows to the rear activates the lats more heavily. Rows are tough...no doubt about it. The bent over position is uncomfortable and breathing is difficult. However, if you want a great back, you gotta do them! Wicked Willie
Keith goes on to explain this more fully in another post, copied here: Bent over rowing is an excellent movement for the upper body. Work this movement hard and don't be surprised if you see increases in the squat, bench press and deadlift as well an increases in muscular development. One of the great aspects of the bent-over row is that there is a wide variety of techniques and variations to chose from which means that just about anyone can find a method of performing this movement regardless of their body structure. The important thing is to ensure that your technique is fairly consistent so that increased poundages are the result of strength gains, not in favorable advantages in the biomechanics of the lift. The width of your hand spacing should be slightly wider than your shoulders, but this will vary with each individual. Your hand spacing and grip should put you into a position where you can strictly row with the greatest amount of weight. You can use either a pronated or supinated grip. The pronated or overhand grip tends to hit the upper back harder, while the supinated grip tends to work the lower lats a bit more. Experiment with both variations and see which one works best for you, or even use both grips in an alternating fashion. I have found that the supinated grip works best when using an E-Z curl bar to take the strain off the wrists. Use plenty of chalk and or resin on your hands to ensure a firm grip. If you happen to train at a commercial gym that does not allow chalk (somebody should really invent flesh colored chalk) then purchase some resin bags and place them in a large colored sandwich zip-lock bag. You can dip your hands into the bag and get plenty of resin and there will be no waste at all. Take a good solid stance, with the feet about shoulder width. Lean forward and bend the knees just slightly so that you nearly settle your abdomen onto your thighs with the hips being the center of gravity. If you have ever played football and had to get into the classic 3-point stance, as similar position will suffice for the barbell row-ie, you want to get into a stance where you can generate the most power. The angle of your upper body can be anywhere from parallel to about 45 degrees though I believe that you should try and get as close to parallel as you can. People with a longer torso tend to do a bit better with a higher angle than an individual with a shorter torso. Make sure the back is flat and stable keeping a slight arch in the lumbar region before the weight is pulled off the floor. There are numerous opinions on the exact part of the torso that you try to pull the bar into. This will vary from individual, but somewhere in the upper abdominal region, just below the sternum is a good reference point. If you are using a supinated grip, you might get want to pull just a bit lower into the abdominal region. Because you are pulling a barbell from a position in which you are bent at the hips, considerable stress is placed on the lower back muscles. You should not attempt to add momentum to the lift by yanking or jerking upward with the lower back muscles and extending the body. Lack of proper form means the targeted area does not receive maximum stimulation and can often lead to lower back injury. Heaving and cheating the weight up is very easy to do as the movement is not very natural to start with and the position makes it difficult to use a mirror to monitor and correct your form. There are a couple of things that you can do to eliminate the heaving aspect of the row. First of all, many books and magazines advise that when the bar is lowered to get as much as stretch as possible-it sounds like good advice, but what happens is that once your arms are straightened, in an attempt to get even more of a stretch, you relax and begin dropping the upper body downwards which causes rounding of the back. This places the body into a weakened condition, so that when you attempt to pull the next repetition, you are forced into performing a body swing in order to compensate for the inadequate position. Just lower the body to arms length and pull it back up. Another way to teach yourself to do the movement correctly is to have a training partner place their hands on your upper back along each side of the spine. Have them hold their hands steady and you will be able to gauge whether you are keeping your back stable or not. I will throw another little tip in here that Marty Gallagher taught me, use straps, but DO NOT wrap your thumbs around the bar---the contraction in the back is incredible and it takes the arms/biceps out of the movement as much as possible. I do 1-2 sets without straps, and then 1-2 with the straps. Keith The following comments are clipped from postings on another forum by an anonymous strength coach: TOPIC 7: ROWS Rows: Well, the best way to do them is to start with the bar on the floor every single rep. Your middle back will have slight bend to it. You pull the bar off the floor quickly with the arms, and by a powerful arch of your middle back. You finish by touching the bar to your upper stomach or middle stomach. At no time is there any movement of the hips or knees, no hip extension at all, all that bends is the middle back and the shoulders and elbows.
This is hard to do and you have to have good muscular control to do it, or you'll end up straightening up at the hips along with the arching of the back. But if you can master doing them this way you will get a big back. This works because the lats actually extend (arch) the middle back in addition to other functions, just like with glute-ham extensions compared to leg curls…you always get a stronger contraction when you move both the origin and insertion of a muscle, flexing it from both ends so to speak.
The bar returns to the floor after each rep. The bent row is actually best done as an explosive movement and the bar is moved fast. I have trained many people who could do this exercise with 350 or more lbs. I myself have done reps with 425, Ed Coan, who also knows how to do them properly, has done reps with over 500lbs without his back ever coming above parallel with the ground. That is stronger than Dorian Yates or Ronnie Coleman, by the way.
I did rows with Coleman once, actually, and I was far stronger than he was. He could not do more than 350lbs strictly although he could do over 500lbs by standing almost all the way up at the completion of each rep. Ed Coan is probably the strongest person on these, although one power-lifter I trained did manage 525 for a double done strictly.
Rows look at an anatomy chart. if the scapula and upper arms are held in a constant position, shortening of the lats WILL result in arching of the middle and upper back. i AM NOT saying that the lats are primarily responsible for upper back flexion... what i am saying is that they can assist in this.
i also HAVE done EMG work on various different rowing techniques... and there is not doubt that rows performed as i describe them will activate the lats more completely than done any other way i have ever seen. i have done EMG work on a large quantity of people for rows... and ive always found that these kind of rows activate the lats most completely. and besides, even if you dont buy the fact that they activate the lats better, hell, you can always be content with the fact that your getting an erector workout.
... almost anyone whom i have gotten to do barbell rows right always comes back to them as the basis for their back routines... they get tired of them after a while and do other things, but always come back because they work so well. deadlifts, chinups, and lots of other things work for back, but in my opinion nothing works quite like barbell rows if they are done right.
... it might interest you to know that we hooked an EMG machine up to people doing various kinds of back work, and NOTHING came close to rows for activating a large amount of motor units. i wouldnt "prescribe" exercises based on this alone, but it does back up the practical experience that i have had.
... keep in mind that i mean rows with the back pretty much parallel to the ground, bar touching the floor on each rep, little or preferably NO hip extension during the row, a pause on the floor if need be, and the reps pulled fast and explosively.
... rows done right are almost like a squat, they involve so much of your bodys muscle mass. you get real tired and hell ive been lightheaded and had to sit down after a set. they are a hard, hard exercise.
... you drop your shoulders and round your upper back a bit at the start, but not the lower back. then in one explosive movement, you pull the shoulders back, "scrunch" or arch your upper back, and pull with your arms. it all happens at once, and the bar hits you hard in middle of the abs. this is not a slow exercise, its a fast and powerfull contraction of all the muscles of the back, which causes all 3 things to happen simultaneously. different people look a little differently, depending on their mobility in those parts of their body. most people can drop the shoulders and round out the upper back more than this kid. no matter how mobile you are in these areas, it is the EFFORT you make to do all 3 of these actions at once, and quickly and powerfully that makes it work really well.
  
 
Rows done in this style - from the floor, with acceleration and arching the upper back - are often referred to as Pendlay Rows, after Glenn Pendlay. Last edited by Laree. Contributors: ccrow, Laree, Wicked Willie, and Wicked Willie |