BODYWEIGHT BACK TRAINING is never easy. The gold standard movement is the pullup—which can be devilishly hard to do for even seasoned gym-goers—and there are sparingly few other exercises that hit your upper body's posterior muscles without an external load. Thankfully, you can shift your approach for another, less challenging (but still effective) move to train your back sans weight: the inverted row.
You might think the inverted row is easy, since you won't be tasked with lifting your entire bodyweight off the floor, like the pullup. The exercise is super scaleable—but it's more technically demanding than you'd expect to do it right.
Make sure you're not just sliding your body under a bar and pulling up. Let Men's Health fitness director Ebenezer Samuel, C.S.C.S. and senior editor Brett Williams, NASM guide you through proper inverted row form, saving you from the bad habits that will result in energy leaks and wasted reps.
How to Do the Inverted Row
- Start with a bar placed in a rack or Smith machine, lying on your back underneath. Adjust the bar to a height just above your reach with your arms extended.
- Reach up and grab the bar with an overhand grip, with your hands just wider than shoulder-width apart. Put your feet together, forming a straight line from your feet to your shoulders. Pull yourself up off the floor, squeezing your shoulder blades, abs, and glutes to create full body tension.
- Pull yourself up, imagining that you're pulling the bar down to your chest. Pause for a count at the top of the movement.
- Lower yourself back down under control.
Take note of these additional cues from Samuel to shore up your inverted row form:
Squeeze Your Glutes
Eb says: The inverted row is more than a back exercise; it's a total-body move, and a great way to teach your body proper posture. You're focusing on attacking your lats and mid-back with the row motion, but you need to create tension throughout the rest of your body too.
When you set up for the row, you want to create a straight line from torso through feet, and that requires more work than you think to keep your entire midsection in proper position. You know by now to keep your abs tight, but in truth, that's not going to give you that straight line. You'll need to squeeze your glutes too, to drive your pelvis and hips into a neutral position. Keep your glutes and abs tight for the entire life of the set.
Squeeze Your Shoulder Blades
Eb says: Before you start rowing up, make sure you squeeze your shoulder blades. That's going to pull your shoulder joints back into the sockets and create proper room for your rotator cuff tendons to work. You're also honing our pushup form when you do this—an inverted row position is essentially an upside-down pushup.
Pull the Bar to Your Chest
Eb says: Once you begin to row upwards, your goal is to touch the bar to your lower chest. Notice how I said that: You're pulling the bar to your chest, not pulling your chest to the bar. Work to think of it this way, because that'll help keep you focused on owning that tight, board-like body position.
Your overall goal is to connect chest and bar, but if you think of pulling your chest to the bar (instead of the way I'm suggesting), you'll find yourself doing too much to get to the bar and taking the emphasis off your back. You'll start to arch your back to cheat towards the bar, or you may use a "mini-kip," using a hint of hip action to create some momentum towards the bar. Neither of those things is helping you really attack your rhomboids and lats. Think of keeping your entire body tight (and squeezing those glutes!) and then pulling the bar to your chest, and your form will be tighter.
Go As High As You Can
Eb says: Don't chase the random standard of bar touching body. Not everyone will get their torso to the bar on the inverted row; if you're a few feet short, that's okay. Touching your chest to the bar is as much about back strength as it is about chest flexibility and shoulder mobility.
If you have a desk job, even if you're strong as heck, the "full"motion here may be harder than you think. But don't push it; if you're pushing past your natural range, you run the risk of the head of the humerus gliding forward to complete the motion (instead of your muscles actually doing the work). Instead, go as high as you can, and once you've reached that point, pause and squeeze your back muscles. Then focus on regularly stretching your chest when you're not doing inverted rows; gradually, your functional range of motion for the inverted row will improve.
Play With Grip Position
Eb says: The inverted row should be fun. It's an exercise with a ton of applications, and you can do it almost anywhere and on anything (think barbell, tree branch, etc.).
Work to learn a standard double-overhand grip at about shoulder-width, but integrate other bits too: Try mixed grips, underhand grips, wide grips, and narrow grips. You'll hone forearm strength, add shoulder mobility and slightly alter the overall core demands and mid-back demands on your body.
Benefits of the Inverted Row
The inverted row is a valuable bodyweight back exercise, giving you a useful tool for training when you don't have traditional weights available (and even when you do). The exercise builds muscle and strength, and it's especially scaleable for beginners. If you work from a higher angle or bend your knees to shorten the lever you're working with, it won't be as difficult.
Muscles Worked By the Inverted Row
The inverted row is a back exercise. Since it's a row, you'll be recruiting your lats, traps, rhomboids, and even the rear delts. When you use good form and create full-body tension, you'll also hit your ab muscles and glutes when you engage those muscles.
Common Inverted Row Mistakes
The most important aspect of the inverted row is maintaining full-body tension. You'll fight energy leaks if you slack off and relax your abs and glutes. When you perform the reps, you shouldn't rush through the rows. Also avoid arching your back to cheat to touch your chest to the bar.
How to Add the Inverted Row to Your Workouts
The inverted row is a simple way to add pulling to your workout. Start with 3 sets of 8 to 10 reps with good form.
