Muscles worked
With a wide grip and your elbows angled out, more of the work moves to your upper back. Your mid traps, rhomboids and rear shoulders pull your shoulder blades together and draw your arms back, while your lats do less than with a close grip. Your biceps and brachialis bend your arms, and your spinal muscles and abs hold your torso still. The higher your elbows travel, the more the emphasis tends to shift towards the rear shoulders.
Common mistakes
- Your wrists bend. With a straight bar and palms down, your wrists easily curl so your knuckles point at the floor. Keep them straight in line with your forearms, so your elbows do the pulling.
- Sitting too close. If the weights rest on the stack when your arms are straight, your back loses tension on every rep. Sit far enough back that the weight hangs freely in the front position too.
- Your torso rocks. Rocking back and forth on every rep means momentum is doing the pulling. Decide your angle before the set, roughly upright, and hold it.
Variations and alternatives
- The close grip seated cable row, elbows close to your body, when you want more of the pull on your lats.
- The wide grip machine row gives the same angle with a chest pad, so only your back has to work.
- The face pull pulls higher, towards your face, and puts even more on the rear shoulders.
Sets and reps
This exercise suits building muscle and upper back endurance best, and 10 to 15 reps over three or four sets is a good starting point. Heavier sets of 8 to 10 reps work, but below that it gets hard to keep your elbows out. It fits well as the second row in a session, after a heavier free weight row. The guide to sets and reps explains how the ranges fit together.
Make it harder with tempo before adding weight: squeeze your shoulder blades together for a second at the end and let the bar travel back over two to three seconds. Once that feels controlled on every set, move up one step on the stack. That is progressive overload, even when the weight jumps are coarse.