Barbell row form question

ohiotubagal · June 2015

I've watched videos/read directions on how to do rows, and the most common advice I've seen is to imagine squeezing an orange between your shoulder blades.

I don't have trouble at lower weights, but I'm up to 65lbs and I'm noticing that my forearms are doing most of the work. I don't think that is correct. The elbows are supposed to go back and the shoulders do the work, right?

I would post a video but I haven't figured out how to do that yet without my phone tipping over. lol

Any ideas?

krokador · June 2015

Make sure your butt is squeezed - that takes out the chance of using momentum. Then imagine your elbows are attached to cables and you're pulling back those cables (not your hands. Basically, pull from the elbows. Your hands are just hooks, nothing more). Also make sure your shoulders are pulled back before you start the move (don't start with them rolled forwards and then pull back in. always have your shoulder blades tucked in -- especially if you're doing bent over rows).

And if you really want to feel the contraction, pause at the top for a second or two, as if trying to pull the bar through your chest.

You can omit to wrap the thumb around the bar to get a better ROM. May or may not work depending on where your grip strength is, tho

As for the phone, I typically use a wall, or a medecine ball, or my little accessory bag or chalk bowl to lean it against. Not always the best angles, but it's better than nothing!

Hope one of those tips/cue helps you figure it out. once you've got it, it really does click in, so keep trying!

canadianlbs · June 2015

i'm kind of baffled. how do your forearms do this particular work? forearms don't really do anything. or at least mine don't.

here's a thought though. if it DOES feel that way, try taking a completely loose grip, i.e. just form your hands like you're scooping water, and use them to scoop the bar instead. if your forearms are pulling your rows that ought to keep 'em out of the way.

setting the shoulders is tricky for me. i try not to think of it so much as pulling my shoulderblades back anymore, because there are so many different ways you can do that and if you're me then 87% of them are going to be never-before-invented versions of wrong. what i do is more like pulling my collarbones 'in'. like, how to explain . . . if you put a hand up and check/look in the mirror, there's a position in which you can actually see your collarbones standing out from your body, right? i usually let them drop into that position when i reach down for the bar. so after i get my hands into place, i'm trying to remember now to make my first setup move by fixing that. i pull the collarbones back or 'in' relative to my ribcage until they're flush with the muscles above/below them and i can't see/feel them anymore. that actually takes traps, whereas shifting your shoulderblades around can use all kinds of things.

and then the next thing i do is the same one as the start of a deadlift. taking the 'slack' out of the bar by engaging my lats/showing the front of my shirt. all of these things seem to help so that i feel rows more in my lats and upper back.

krokador · June 2015

canadianlbs wrote: »

setting the shoulders is tricky for me. i try not to think of it so much as pulling my shoulderblades back anymore, because there are so many different ways you can do that and if you're me then 87% of them are going to be never-before-invented versions of wrong.

Ah, right, the collarbone thing is a valid way of doing it. The whole chest up and out, back straight thing. Basically, what you want is take the "perfect" posture that we new-age generation has completely lost sitting with shoulders slumped so much. IE - also the same position you want for bench press. It's not as much shoulder blades retracted as it is shoulders in a neutral position with the lats contracted. If you think of it as standing super upright and then expanding the top of your ribcage out, it might make it easier to feel? And then when you bend over, your shoulders stay static in this position no matter what.

Make sense?

ohiotubagal · June 2015

Thank you @krokador and @canadianlbs - these descriptions help a lot. I will re-read them a few times before I do my next row workout.

I think what happens is that instead of my elbows/shoulders pulling the bar back towards my chest, I end up pulling the bar up towards my chest with my forearms. Does that make any sense?

canadianlbs · June 2015

ohiotubagal wrote: »

I think what happens is that instead of my elbows/shoulders pulling the bar back towards my chest, I end up pulling the bar up towards my chest with my forearms. Does that make any sense?

well, i'll tell you. if you're overhand-curling 70lbs while bent over with a horizontal back, then you're boss in a whole new and different way

that's about the only way for me to visualize what you mean.

i just tried it out though and i think i get what you're saying. skip this if it's boring or meaningless or just plain wrong, because i'm basically just hijacking your thread to do some pondering/figuring out of my own.

rows are exactly like squats in one sense: both of them are moves that involve two separate joints. in squats it's your hip and your knees, and with rows it's your shoulder/elbow. so it's like when you use your knees and quads to get out of the hole from a squat, instead of your hips and posterior chain - you're using the wrong joint as the principal fulcrum.

with rows, it sounds like you're using the muscles that cross the elbow joint more than the ones that attach to your upper arm. i don't know if this will help you, but i found that it helps me with rows: if i worry less about my lats (which i can never feel anyway) and think more about those little muscles that start on the flat part of my shoulderblades and lead to somewhere on the back of my upper arms, then i pull more from my back lats anyway. it's kind of a psychout move.

and of course, if you set your shoulderblades before you pull then you're 'loading' them, compared with if you just let them drop downwards towards the bar. so that helps. those muscles are little, but they're surprisingly strong.

indianarose2 · June 2015

I like the Scott Herman video on YouTube where he demonstrates the regular bent over row. Helped me a ton (visual learner :P ) He keeps his chest up, flat back & really pulls his shoulder blades together before the lift. He has a video for the Pendlay row also that touches on the muscles that are being trained in that lift but I like the regular bent over demo better for seeing general row body position.

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Barbell row form question

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