You should drop the barbell row like a bad habit. It’s a lift that
has been beaten to death, and by now it’s best left to the
bodybuilders. Why, you ask? Below is my case.
The barbell
row is the leg press of the upper body. And as Rip says, the leg
press is great to train – if you’re too weak to squat. As coaches
we help clients to progress on the leg press with the goal of
converting over to the squat rack. Then, once they can squat to
depth, which we define as the hip crease below the top of the
patella, they are off to the races and never look back – ever!
Besides, just like the leg press, the row is an ego lift. No one
cares about how much you can leg press or barbell row. It’s about
what you squat and deadlift; but you already know this.
Okay,
okay, I hear you. Let me back up and say that the barbell row does
have some utility in certain situations. Here are some circumstances
in which it could be useful, along with what to do when it ceases to
be so.
1. You are building to your first chin-up
Negatives are
difficult, and other bodyweight-assisted versions haven’t been
proven very effective. One way to get your chins rolling could be
doing some barbell rows, alongside lat pull-downs during this interim
phase. Then, finally, you hit your first bodyweight chin-up.
Henceforth, drop the row.
2. You have trouble setting your
lower back in lumbar extension
If the lifter doesn’t
quite understand how to pull the slack out of the bar, a barbell row
may help create better low-back proprioception. It doesn’t always
work, but it’s worth a shot when all other roads are dead ends –
when you try all your cues, years of coaching secrets, and other
deadlift variations, and the lifter is still not getting it. For
really stubborn cases, try a pin barbell row, with the bar set like a
heavy rack pull, just below the top of the patella. Come to a dead
stop every rep, and move just like a row from the floor.
3.
You struggle with pinching the shoulder blades back during a bench
press
If you are executing
the barbell row correctly, you can get some good repeatable reps with
your shoulder blades pinched. The correct pinch can help establish
the physical sensation of the isometric squeeze, which is key for the
scapulae in the bench press.
Two more points are also
really useful in relation to your deadlift, so ears open, please!
When the barbell row gets heavy – and by heavy I mean once you
reach 225 lb – the lift requires an emphasis on driving from the
legs. The barbell row is not just a pull with the arms. The initial
drive from a heavy row comes from the legs, an explosive movement off
the floor. This leg drive is vital to learn for heavy deadlifts too.
The deadlift is a smooth push from the legs, not a jerk from the
arms.
Another juicy detail: when performing a heavy row,
usually the first thing a person wants to do is to raise their chest
by extending the hips, making it more like a back extension than a
row. So keeping the back horizontal while the knees extend, with the
load in the mid-traps and rhomboids as the legs push the floor is
important for progress.
Here’s another reason why I’m
often concerned when one of my lifters requests the barbell row: they
are signaling to me that they don’t fully understand their
training. They think tons of rows will improve their deadlift, when
we all know that it’s intensity and recovery-management that is the
secret to strength, especially when it comes to the deadlift. In
these instances, the row can actually derail training and hold people
back. This isn’t CrossFit, remember: it’s not about aimless
sweating. A row isn’t going to get you where you’re thinking it
will – it’s Fool’s Gold.
The barbell row is a
distraction from real training. To refresh: training is the logical,
systematic application of progressive overload to achieve a planned
end result. The barbell row, for the majority of lifters, will
jeopardize your training and reduce it to mere exercise. Exercise is
a hot, sweaty mess that has no end goal other than “feeling the
burn” in that moment.
If the barbell row was important
for strength training, then it would have been a main chapter in the
Starting Strength blue book and not merely included in the catalog of
assistance exercises. Or do you think Rip simply overlooked its
importance? Just a thought.
Chins, on the other hand, are
useful, and a requirement for a general strength lifter. We class
them as an ancillary lift – meaning an assistance lift that cannot
be replicated with a barbell. It aids the main lifts, particularly
the press and bench. Jim Wendler had this to say about chins: “If
you can’t do them, you’re either fat, weak, or injured, and all
of those suck!” If that doesn’t motivate you to train chins, then
nothing will, in my book.
Sure, you can get a brief novice
effect of linear progress on the barbell row. Watching assistance
lifts go up is exciting. I know. I’ve been there. But trust me, you
should save yourself the time and emotional letdown. To me the
barbell row is a red herring, a mostly worthless lift. Although it
can occasionally help with technique, as discussed above, in most
cases it won’t make your deadlift, squat, bench, press, or power
clean stronger. For that simple reason, it no longer interests me. I
only care about what makes a lifter stronger.
In your quest for
pursuing general overall strength, you can live without barbell rows.
You cannot replace the deadlift or chins. If you have an impressive
barbell row, it’s because you have a big deadlift, not the other way
around.
Most of the people
worried about the barbell row are skinny, underweight men who
mistakenly think it’s important to their program. Training is somehow
incomplete if they don’t wiggle their elbows while bent over. Trust
me, your deadlift and chins will train the back just fine. Rows won’t
add something that you’re not already getting. A 600-pound deadlift
will do the job, while a 200-pound barbell row does nothing. I’ve
personally pushed the barbell row up to 375 lbs. It did nothing for
my deadlift, which was very frustrating. When my deadlift went from
500 to 600, my back grew. And doing chins for 3-5 reps while weighing
275 lbs is not too bad.
To some extent, I blame myself for
certain clients’ fascination with the barbell row. I’ll put my hand
up and admit that I have sometimes programmed it for my lifters. I
have, regrettably, let the fox into the henhouse. The issue is that a
client can become fond of this particular lift. It becomes their gym
crush. This means that when I try to eliminate it, they will
occasionally react like a baby having its nipple ripped from its
mouth. If that’s you, then you can take this article as a public
apology for my lack of spine – I should have stood my ground and
not allowed you to row in the first place. Really, it’s for your
own good.
For most lifters, the row is little more than a
great way to introduce sloppy pulling mechanics into the deadlift. A
heavy barbell row encourages jerking with your arms and pulling a
heavy weight with bent elbows. So while it can help train proper
mechanics, that happens only if you focus on correct technique. For
the majority of people, it would be more effective to just keep doing
chins and power cleans. That’s plenty of variety to play around
with, and it’s still productive training. So, one more time with
feeling: fuck the barbell row.
Discuss in Forums
Credit : Source Post
