reckonerBarbell upright row
A bar pulled straight up the front of the body, elbows leading, stopping around chest height. It trains the side of the shoulder and the traps together, and it carries a reputation for shoulder trouble that deserves a more careful answer than it usually gets.
Pull no higher than the chest.
- Pattern
- Shoulder isolation
- Trains
- Side delts, traps
- Kit
- Barbell
- Loading
- A weight you choose
- Reckoner prescribes
- 3 sets of 12 to 15 reps at RPE 8
- Progression step
- 2.5 kg once the top of the range is clean
- Bar
- 20 kg
- Skill
- Some technique
- Recovery cost
- Low
- Not prescribed if you have declared
- Shoulder
Muscles worked
How to do it
Take a grip a little wider than your shoulders
Overhand, hands roughly shoulder width or slightly wider, bar resting against the top of your thighs. A very narrow grip forces the wrists and elbows into a harder position for no gain.
Stand tall and set the shoulders
Feet hip width, knees soft, ribs down. Let the shoulders settle rather than shrugging them up before you start. The bar should be close to your body.
Lead with the elbows
Pull the bar up by driving the elbows out and up, keeping it brushing close to your torso. The hands go along for the ride. If your elbows are below your hands, you are curling.
Stop around chest height
Finish where your elbows are roughly level with your shoulders and no higher, then lower under control back to the thighs. The way down is not a drop.
What goes wrong
Heaving with the legs and the back
A small dip and drive gets a much heavier bar moving and looks like a good set from behind. The shoulders and the traps then get a fraction of what the number suggests.
Letting the bar drift away from the body
Out in front, the load on the shoulder rises sharply and the elbows stop leading. Keep it close enough that it almost grazes your shirt.
Pulling as high as you can
Going up to the chin looks like the full version of the movement. Past shoulder height the arm has to rotate inward and the elbow finishes above the hand, which is the position everybody argues about and the one this exercise does not need.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, from 30 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 | 3 x 12 at 30 kg | More reps 12 → 13 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 2 | 3 x 13 at 30 kg | More reps 13 → 14 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 3 | 3 x 14 at 30 kg | More reps 14 → 15 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 4 | 3 x 15 at 30 kg | Load up 30 kg → 32.5 kgYou hit the top of the range at RPE 7, so the bar goes up 2.5 kg to 32.5 kg and reps reset to twelve. |
| 5 | 3 x 12 at 32.5 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 12 at 32.5 kg | More reps 12 → 13 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. The lighter week is over, so this is back to three 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
Is the upright row bad for your shoulders?
The honest answer is that nobody has tested it. The shoulder is the commonest site of resistance training injury, with reviews putting it at up to 36 per cent of documented cases, and the same reviews say the research is mostly retrospective and that no predictive variables for injury have been established1. So there is no trial comparing the upright row against another shoulder exercise for injury rates, and nothing here is going to invent one. What is reasonable is to stop the pull around shoulder height, which costs you nothing, and to leave the movement out if your shoulder complains.
How high should I pull?
To about chest height, with the elbows finishing level with the shoulders. Nothing above that adds to the side of the shoulder, and it is the part of the range people are worried about.
What should I do if my shoulders do not like it?
Use a lateral raise instead. It trains the same side of the shoulder without the internal rotation at the top, and Reckoner has both cable and dumbbell versions in the library.
Similar movements
Reckoner has no other movement in this swap group.
Sources
- Kolber and colleagues, Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 2010. Shoulder injuries attributed to resistance training: a brief review a review finding up to 36 per cent of documented resistance training injuries occur at the shoulder, with joint and muscle imbalance and poor technique identified as trends, and with the authors noting that the available research is mostly retrospective and that no predictive variables for injury have been established