reckonerSingle-arm cable row
One handle, one arm, and a torso that would very much like to rotate. Resisting that turn is not a side effect of this row. When three rows were measured, the one-armed cable row was the one that put the biggest twisting demand on the trunk1.
Pull to the hip, don't twist.
- Pattern
- Horizontal pull
- Trains
- Lats, upper back
- Kit
- Cable
- Loading
- A weight you choose
- Reckoner prescribes
- 3 sets of 8 to 12 reps at RPE 8
- Progression step
- 5 kg once the top of the range is clean
- Skill
- Some technique
- Recovery cost
- Low
Muscles worked
How to do it
Set the pulley at about waist height
Stand or half-kneel facing the stack with your feet staggered, the same side foot back as the working arm if you are standing. Square your hips and shoulders to the machine before you pick the handle up.
Reach out and let the shoulder go
Straight arm, shoulder blade travelling forward around the ribs, torso still. This is where the twist starts to pull at you, so it is where the bracing starts.
Pull the elbow to the hip
Drive the elbow straight back until your hand reaches your hip and your forearm is close to your side. Do not twist, which is the cue on your wrist, and it is the whole instruction.
Let it back out slowly
Return under control until the arm is straight and the shoulder blade has opened. Finish every rep on one side before you change over.
What goes wrong
Letting the shoulder rotate back with the pull
The working shoulder swings behind you, the range gets longer and easier, and the load moved without the lat doing much of it. Hips and collarbones stay facing the machine from the first rep to the last.
Leaning away from the stack
Tipping the torso to the free side counterweights the handle and quietly halves the work. If you need the lean to move the pin, the pin is one too far down.
Treating the twist as an accident
The twisting demand is the reason to choose this over a two-handed row1. Bracing hard against it is the exercise, and letting it happen removes the only thing that made it different.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, from 25 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 25 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. |
| 2 | 3 x 9 at 25 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. |
| 3 | 3 x 10 at 25 kg | More reps 10 → 11 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 4 | 3 x 11 at 25 kg | More reps 11 → 12 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 5 | 3 x 12 at 25 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 25 kg | Load up 25 kg → 30 kgYou hit the top of the range at RPE 7, so the bar goes up 5 kg to 30 kg and reps reset to eight. 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
Should I stand or kneel?
Standing gives you more range and lets you use more weight. Half-kneeling takes the legs and the lean out and makes any twist obvious immediately. Both are legitimate. Pick the one you can keep square in.
Is one arm at a time better for growth?
No. Across nine studies, training one limb at a time and training both produced no significant difference in muscle growth, while strength gains tracked whichever way each group trained2. Use it for the twisting demand, for a side that is behind, or because the row station is taken.
How much lighter should this be than a two-handed row?
Considerably, and not just by half. You are also holding your torso still against a load pulling it round. If a weight lets you keep square for every rep it is the right weight, whatever the pin says.
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
- Kassiano and colleagues, Sports Medicine, 2025. Comparison of muscle growth and dynamic strength adaptations induced by unilateral and bilateral resistance training: a systematic review and meta-analysis nine studies pooled, finding no significant difference in muscle growth between training one limb at a time and training both, and strength gains that follow specificity, bilateral training favoring bilateral tests and unilateral training favoring unilateral ones