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Why row?

The benefit of rowing is bigger and stronger lats.  Rowing movements isolate the lats in a way that chinning movements don’t.

Why are stronger lats important?  Well, if you ask any strong person which muscle groups are the most important for whole body strength, they’ll say the lats and the glutes.  So if you want functional strength, you need stronger lats.

And for those of us who feel that our chins are being held back by (relatively) weak lats compared with strong deltoids and trapezius muscles, rows are a good way to develop those muscle fibres futher (not that I’m obsessed about chins or anything).

Finally, if you’re looking to increase the size of your back, you need to hit the lats directly.  This means rowing.  You can try doing it with chins if you want but you’ll be waiting around quite a long time. 

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Why I don’t do the bent-over  barbell row

The most well-known row is probably the bent-over barbell row but it’s also probably the hardest to do correctly.  I tend to avoid it, largely because my lower back goes mental whenever I pick up a bar in the bent-over position.  Luckily for me, however, there are quite a few other options that do the same job but don’t put any stress on my lower back.

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So what rows do I do?

I tend to rotate through three different rowing movements:

• the one-arm row
• the chest-supported row
• the supine row

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The one-arm row

The one-arm row does exactly what it says on the tin.  You pick the dumbbell up with one hand and row with it.  I tend to kneel on a bench with one leg out to the side.

For most of the early part of my strength training, I didn’t do them properly at all.  But the problem wasn’t in how I was doing the movement but in the mind-muscle connection.  I just wasn’t activating my lats properly while rowing.  As soon as I realised that I should feel my lats working, I made a conscious effort to engage them and overnight it became a different exercise.

To help engage your lats while doing this exercise, squeeze your shoulder-blade towards the spine at the top of each rep, do them slowly rather than explosively and concentrate on feeling the muscle contract.

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The chest-supported row

This is like the one-arm row but you will need an incline bench.  You will find that the weight you can use for these is slightly less than for the one-arm row.  I tend to do slightly higher reps on this exercise as higher weights tend to become a bit snatchy.

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The supine row

I have read many people commenting on forums, saying that the one-arm row makes a definite difference to their posture and how their back feels.  I can relate to that to a certain degree but I think the supine row has been more effective in rearranging my upper back from Neanderthal to normal (not that I have succeeded yet).

I use my bench rack with some foam blocks to bring the bar out a bit.  If I don’t use the blocks, I tend to bang my head on the back of the rack on the way down, which is not conducive to good posture (and tends to make me swear a lot).  I use one of my (homemade) plyometric boxes to rest my feet on.

For some reason, I find that a good grip placement makes all the difference on this exercise.  I try to remember not to just grab the bar and row away but to wrap my hand right over it as if preparing to do a heavily weighted chin.  I grip with my hand rather than my fingers, in other words.  (If you look carefully at the picture below, you’ll see that my fingers are wrapped quite a long way over the bar).

The top part of the row is the hardest, as this is where leverage is weakest. 

So these are my favourite rowing movements.  If you have any other movements that you find useful, please let me know!  I can always add another row to my rowing repetoire!