reckonerPendlay row
A barbell row where every rep starts from the floor. Your back is flat and close to level, the bar comes up to your lower chest, and then it goes back down and stops dead. The dead stop is the whole lift: no bounce, no rocking, the same start every rep.
Flat back, row from the floor every rep.
- Pattern
- Horizontal pull
- Trains
- Lats, upper back, rear delts
- Kit
- Barbell
- Loading
- A weight you choose
- Reckoner prescribes
- 3 sets of 8 to 12 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
Set up over the bar
Bar over the middle of your feet, feet about hip width. Hinge until your back is flat and close to level with the floor, knees bent, and grip the bar a little wider than shoulder width. A back near level is what makes this a Pendlay row and not a shrug.
Brace before the pull
Take a breath, tighten your trunk and set your back flat. It stays at that angle for the whole rep, because the pull is only clean if the torso is not moving under it.
Row the bar to your lower chest
Pull hard and fast, elbows going back past your body, until the bar touches the bottom of your chest. Your torso does not rise to meet it.
Set it down and let it settle
Lower the bar to the floor and let it come to a stop. Reset your back, then pull the next rep from dead still. The dead stop is the whole lift: every rep starts the same way.
What goes wrong
Standing up as you row
Lifting the chest to meet the bar lets heavier weight touch, so it feels like a strong rep. It turns into a shrug with a hip drive. Hold your back angle and let the arms and upper back move the bar.
Bouncing off the floor
A bounce feels smooth and lets you use more weight. It also takes away the dead start that makes this a Pendlay row. Let the bar stop every time.
Rounding to reach the bar
Curling down to the bar feels like the quickest way to grab it. If you cannot reach it with a flat back, bend the knees more instead.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, from 50 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 8 at 50 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. |
| 2 | 3 x 9 at 50 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. |
| 3 | 3 x 10 at 50 kg | More reps 10 → 11 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 | 3 x 11 at 50 kg | More reps 11 → 12 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 | 3 x 12 at 50 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 50 kg | Load up 50 kg → 52.5 kgYou hit the top of the range with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7), so the bar goes up 2.5 kg to 52.5 kg. The weight went up, so the reps come down to ten. You are now working 8 to 12. 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
Pendlay row or barbell row?
Both are bent-over rows that work the whole back. In one lab study the bent-over row produced large activation across the back from top to bottom1. The Pendlay row starts each rep from the floor with your back near level. The barbell row keeps the bar in the air. Reckoner keeps them as separate lifts.
Does my lower back do much?
Yes. Holding a flat back bent over is work for the muscles along your spine, and they were measured working hard in the bent-over row1. If you want the back trained without that, a chest-supported row takes it out.
Will Reckoner put this in my plan?
Not by itself. It is a lift strength athletes choose for position, and placing it automatically would take plans from the barbell row. Choose it in the lift picker or as a swap, and it is logged and loaded on the barbell's own steps. Lower back 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
- 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 across three rows, with the standing bent over row producing large muscle activation symmetrically from the upper to the lower back. Over five years old, a bent over row rather than a Pendlay row, and still the study that measured it