Fix Your Barbell Row Form (The Mistakes Killing Your Back Gains)

In this video, I am going to be showing you the perfect setup for a barbell bent-over row and what to do if you're unable to achieve the right position. In this video, we're going to be breaking down the details and nuances of training back using the barbell row. Hi, my name is Mark Ottobre. I've worked with thousands of clients transforming their bodies— Olympic athletes, world champions, Commonwealth Games gold medalists, even world leaders. We have Kay here. Kay, I'm gonna get you to do a barbell row the way you would normally do a barbell row. And we're going to have a look, we're going to break down what Kay does, and from that we're going to offer some insights in how to improve it, and then also show you some sticking points for some people. So Kay, grab the bar, let's have a look at how you do it. Barbell bent over row. So first thing is there's hip extension in barbell bent over row. So there's a couple things that need to happen. This is where a barbell bent over row is a really great exercise for a more advanced lifter. And the reason why I say that is to stabilize in this position, you do need to have a presence of lower back strength. If you're not able to stay in that position, the person is going to be rounding. You're going to be rounding and you're not going to be achieving what you want to be doing. I'll let you rest that for a sec. Okay. So the position on a barbell bent over row is the high hips and it is a depression of the lats. So as the lats depress, the lats are a rotator, they rotate the spine. Okay. So when we depress the lats down, we're preventing rotation of the spine. Which is great. The other thing here is we need to extend and keep that lower back, the lumbar spine, we need to create stiffness in here. So before we grab anything, we want to make sure this is depressed and packed. And this is where we're creating some T extension, some thoracic extension. So this lower back kind of has that fishing hook. So imagine a fishing rod gets a fish, the lower part of the fishing rod stays stable, but the top half bends, which is the thoracic spine. So think about that when we're doing the barbell bent over row. Now some other considerations we want to have is for our feet, we don't want to have our feet too wide because we're going going to be hitting our hands, which isn't going to work. And then finally, hand position. So hand position, generally I like a just outside of shoulder-width grip. You can go wider, it just depends on what you're wanting to enhance on the row. So if we row straight up in a vector line, we're going to be hitting more mid-back. If we row on a diagonal axis, we're going to— and lower to our hips, we're going to be hitting more of the lats. One of them is much harder. Now obviously when you're doing a lat row, it does become a bit easier, and for hitting just our mid-back, it becomes fair bit harder because of the, the straight vector force. So get into position, he extends his hips nice and high, you can see how he's depressing his lats as well, beautiful. So he's rowing right now into kind of into his hips, he's at the midpoint, he's not quite all upper back and it's not quite all lower back. What I get you to do is really row that into your waistline, let's really make it a lat row right into the waistline, that's perfect. So you can see here that's enhancing the lats. Now as you do it, I want you to now just row it into your sternum, And you'll see here when he rows into his sternum, it's going to be using a lot more mid-back and flare those elbows if you need to. Right. So in this position, he's a lot more mid-back. If we roll it into the spine, so he's going to use less weight. You can see the upper back working a lot more in that position. So this is why I say it really depends on what we're looking to achieve on a bent-over row. Do we want to enhance mid-back or do we want to build that Dorito shape, the lats? I did say I was going to show you an alternative if you cannot maintain. So if you're someone who does a bent-over row, and or you have a client and they round out through their back, it's because the limiting constraint on your row is not the upper back, it's not the lat, it's that lumbar spine, which is very, very normal for new clients. So in those cases, we don't touch barbell bench over row. So for a lot of beginners, we are not doing any barbell row. I think actually a barbell row for a beginner and someone who doesn't have the stability in their lower spine, that lumbar spine, is absolutely a terrible exercise. So instead we do a one-arm row. So one-arm row, I'm gonna get you to set up, Kaye, set up in a tripod position for me. So just, just there where your legs are nice and wide, right? So that hand's fine. So nice and wide with your feet. So you can see here when we're wide with our feet, you can see this position, we don't— we're factoring in for that lumbar position, right? So we can coach this position a lot more easy and effectively with that position and one arm. And he's also got this hand supporting him and stable. So to keep that lumbar stiff in this position, it's a lot easier. So for your newbie clients, this is a much better alternative. Now go ahead and do it. Do a couple of reps because everything is same true. The only difference here is we're using unilateral rather than bilateral with a barbell. So we can still make considerations for roll it in, make it more lat enhanced. So for making it more lat enhanced, I want you to roll it to your pocket, roll it on a diagonal axis. So that's gonna be more lat enhanced. So you're from here, right? And then if we want to make it more upper back enhanced, we can twist this way and just roll it out. There you go. And again, one of the key cues that I use with all clients, T, this is your T-spine, Extend into it, extend into it. That's beautiful, right? And we can play with different variations to make it feel different parts and light up different parts of the back.