reckonerChest-supported T-bar row
A row lying face down on an angled pad, pulling a lever arm loaded with plates. The pad holds your trunk, so your back muscles can row without your lower back holding you bent over. Machine and free weight training built muscle alike across the trials1, so this is a row to take seriously.
Chest on the pad, pull the elbows back.
- Pattern
- Horizontal pull
- Trains
- Upper back, lats, rear delts
- Kit
- Machine t bar row
- Loading
- A weight you choose
- Reckoner prescribes
- 4 sets of 6 to 10 reps at RPE 8
- Progression step
- 5 kg once the top of the range is clean
- Skill
- Simple to learn
- Recovery cost
- Low
Muscles worked
How to do it
Set the foot plate
Adjust the foot plate so your chest sits on the top of the pad and your arms hang straight down to the handles. The pad is only useful if it is under your chest, so set this before you load it.
Reach long at the bottom
Let your shoulders drift forward and your arms straighten fully between reps. That reach is part of the range, so do not cut it.
Pull the elbows back
Row the handles toward your ribs by driving your elbows back past your body. Keep your chest on the pad the whole way, because the pad is what lets the back muscles row without the lower back holding you up.
Squeeze, then lower slowly
Pinch your shoulder blades together at the top for a moment, then lower the weight under control to the long reach again. The pause at the top makes the upper back finish the rep rather than momentum.
What goes wrong
Lifting your chest off the pad
Rising off the pad lets the torso jerk the weight up, so heavier sets feel possible. That puts the work back on your lower back, which is what the pad was there to stop. Stay down.
Short reps at the bottom
Stopping with the arms half bent keeps the weight moving and the set feeling smooth. It skips the stretch. Let the arms go straight every rep.
Pulling with the hands
Squeezing the handles hard feels like effort. Curling them turns it into an arm exercise. Think of the hands as hooks and lead with the elbows.
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 | 4 x 6 at 30 kg | More reps 6 → 7 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 2 | 4 x 7 at 30 kg | More reps 7 → 8 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 3 | 4 x 8 at 30 kg | More reps 8 → 9 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 4 | 4 x 9 at 30 kg | More reps 9 → 10 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 5 | 4 x 10 at 30 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 30 kg | Load up 30 kg → 35 kgYou hit the top of the range with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7), so the weight on the machine goes up 5 kg to 35 kg. The weight went up, so the reps come down to six. You are now working 6 to 10. 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
Is a chest-supported row as good as a barbell row?
For muscle, machines and free weights came out alike when compared directly across trials1. The chest-supported row trains the back without your lower back holding the position, which is the reason to choose it.
Does the weight include the lever?
No. Reckoner records the plates you add, not the lever arm, so compare the number with itself and not with another gym's machine.
Will Reckoner put this in my plan?
It can, when your gym has one. It is not on any gym preset, so tick it in your equipment checklist. It sits in the supported row group with the seated and machine rows, and no restriction is recorded against it.
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
- Haugen and colleagues, BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation, 2023. Effect of free-weight vs. machine-based strength training on maximal strength, hypertrophy and jump performance: a systematic review and meta-analysis thirteen studies and 1016 participants, with no difference between free weight and machine training in direct comparisons of strength or hypertrophy