reckonerBarbell row
Hinge over, pull a loaded bar to your belt, put it back. It trains the whole back at once and it sends a bill: of three rows measured for spinal load, the standing bent-over row put the most through the lower back by a clear margin1.
Flat back, pull the bar to the belt.
- Pattern
- Horizontal pull
- Trains
- Lats, upper back, rear delts
- Kit
- Barbell
- Loading
- A weight you choose
- Reckoner prescribes
- 4 sets of 6 to 10 reps at RPE 8
- Progression step
- 2.5 kg once the top of the range is clean
- Bar
- 20 kg
- Skill
- Technical
- Recovery cost
- High
- Not prescribed if you have declared
- Lower back
Muscles worked
How to do it
Build the hinge before you touch the bar
Feet hip width, soft knees, push the hips back until your torso is somewhere between horizontal and about halfway up. Flat back throughout, which is the cue on your wrist. Whatever angle you choose, it is the angle for every rep of the set.
Take the bar and pull the slack out
Hands a little outside your knees, palms down, arms straight. Squeeze the bar and pull gently until you feel the plates load. Brace the belly like you are about to be nudged in the ribs.
Row to the belt, elbows in
Drive the elbows back past your ribs and let the bar arrive at your lower abdomen. Shoulder blades pull together at the top. Everything above the hips stays exactly where you set it.
Lower to straight arms, then reset
Control it down until the elbows are straight and the shoulder blades have opened. Touch the floor between reps if that is how you like it, but re-brace before the next one rather than bouncing it up.
What goes wrong
Standing up into every rep
The torso rises as the bar does, so each rep finishes higher than it started and the hips have done the work. If the only way to move it is to stand up, the bar is too heavy for the angle you picked.
Rounding the back to reach further down
The extra couple of inches at the bottom come from the spine rather than the shoulder, on the movement that already loads the lumbar spine hardest of the rows1. Take the range the hinge gives you and no more.
Running it heavy on a day the lower back is already tired
Measured against an inverted row and a standing one-armed cable row, the bent-over row put about 3576 newtons through the fourth and fifth lumbar joint against 2339 and 24571. That is not a reason to avoid it. It is a reason to know what you are spending and on which day.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, from 60 kg, run through the real engine. Nothing below was typed in: the prescription, the decision and the sentence beside it all come from the same code that writes your week.
| Week | Prescribed | What it did |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 4 x 6 at 60 kg | More reps 6 → 7 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 2 | 4 x 7 at 60 kg | More reps 7 → 8 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 3 | 4 x 8 at 60 kg | More reps 8 → 9 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 4 | 4 x 9 at 60 kg | More reps 9 → 10 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 5 | 4 x 10 at 60 kg | Deload 40% of sets offFive weeks of building, then one week lighter. About 40% of the sets come off. The load holds and your reps stay where you earned them, so you keep the strength and lose the fatigue. |
| 6 | 2 x 10 at 60 kg | Load up 60 kg → 62.5 kgYou hit the top of the range at RPE 7, so the bar goes up 2.5 kg to 62.5 kg and reps reset to six. The lighter week is over, so this is back to four sets. |
Real engine output, not an illustration. Every row was produced by running the engine itself when this page was generated.
The full rule, and why the reps move before the load does, is in how Reckoner decides to add weight.
Questions people ask
How far over should I lean?
Far enough that the bar path is vertical and shallow enough that you can hold it still for the whole set. Most people settle a little above horizontal. The angle that matters is the one you can keep, because a torso that rises during the set turns the row into a partial deadlift.
My lower back quits before my back does. What should I do?
Move to a row that takes the hinge out. A chest-supported dumbbell row and a machine row both hold your torso for you, and the inverted row measured the lowest spine load of the rows in that comparison while producing the highest latissimus dorsi activation of the three1.
Will Reckoner give me this if I have a bad back?
No. Lower back is the restriction recorded against it, so declaring one in setup takes it out of your plan and leaves the supported rows in.
Similar movements
Reckoner eases the load first when this lift stalls, and offers one of these only if it stalls again after that. A lift already as light as your kit goes has no load left to ease, so the offer comes straight away. Each of them has a page.
Sources
- Fenwick, Brown and McGill, Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 2009. Comparison of different rowing exercises: trunk muscle activation and lumbar spine motion, load, and stiffness seven men instrumented through three rows, with the standing bent-over row producing the highest measured compression at the fourth and fifth lumbar joint at 3576 newtons against 2457 for the standing one-armed cable row and 2339 for the inverted row, the inverted row producing the highest latissimus dorsi, upper back and hip extensor activation of the three, and the one-armed cable row producing the largest twisting challenge