reckonerElevated-feet inverted row
The inverted row with your heels up on a bench or a chair. Raising the feet moves your bodyweight further into the pull and turns the plank into a much longer lever, so it is a real step up rather than a variation.
Feet up on a chair, chest to the edge.
- Pattern
- Horizontal pull
- Trains
- Upper back, lats
- Kit
- Bodyweight, sturdy surface
- Loading
- Your own bodyweight
- Reckoner prescribes
- 4 sets of 6 to 10 reps at RPE 8
- Progression step
- Nothing to add, so the sets climb instead
- Skill
- Technical
- Recovery cost
- Moderate
Muscles worked
How to do it
Set the bar first, the bench second
Bar at about hip height, then a bench or a sturdy chair placed so your heels land on it with your body straight. The bench should be roughly level with the bar or a little lower.
Build the line before you pull
Heels on the bench, hands a little wider than your shoulders, glutes squeezed and belly braced. One straight line from your heels through your hips to your head, and it holds for the whole set.
Pull the chest to the bar
Elbows down and back, close to your sides, chest arriving at the bar. Feet up on a chair, chest to the edge, which is the cue on your wrist.
Lower under control to straight arms
Come down slowly and let the shoulder blades open at the bottom. Do not let the hips drop to buy yourself another rep.
What goes wrong
Taking it before the flat version is clean
If the hips sag in the last three reps of a flat inverted row, they will sag in the first three of this one. Earn the flat version to the top of its rep range, then raise the feet.
Piking at the hips to shorten the pull
Bending at the waist brings the chest closer to the bar without your back having done anything. It also makes the movement easier as the set goes on, which is the wrong direction.
Putting the feet somewhere unstable
A rolling bench or a light plastic chair moves at the worst moment. Use something that is not going anywhere, and put it where your legs are straight rather than reaching.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, 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 | 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 | 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 | 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 | 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 | 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 | One more set 2 → 5 setsYou hit the top of the range at RPE 7 and there is no weight left to add. When a lift runs out of load, the set is the increment, so it does five sets next week. |
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 much harder is this than a flat inverted row?
Enough that most people drop several reps immediately. Raising the feet shifts more of your bodyweight onto your arms and lengthens the plank you have to hold, and both get harder at once.
Is it better than a weighted row?
It is not better, it is available. The inverted row pattern measured the lowest spine load of three rows compared together while producing the highest latissimus dorsi and upper back activation1, so it is a strong option when there is no loaded row to reach for.
What comes after this?
Rings with the feet elevated, or a loaded row if your gym has one. Reckoner keeps the bodyweight rows in one lane, so moving between the flat and elevated versions keeps your history in a single line.
Similar movements
There is no load to ease on this lift, so Reckoner offers one of these the first time it stalls. 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 inverted row producing the highest latissimus dorsi, upper back and hip extensor activation of the three and the lowest measured compression at the fourth and fifth lumbar joint at 2339 newtons, against 2457 for a standing one-armed cable row and 3576 for a standing bent-over row