Tips To Perform Bodyweight Row

Bodyweight row is one of the simple and yet effective exercise which helps to pull your muscle. Adding a bodyweight row to your daily routine is a great idea as it helps you to build strength and muscle in your biceps, forearms, core and back. Inverted bodyweight rows are also referred as level 1 of pull exercise. Today we will discuss about everything about inverted body weight row.

Inside this article (Quick Summary)

Introduction to Bodyweight row

If you are a fitness person then you should have heard about regular barbell row, basically its picking up a barbell and bending over your waist and pulling up weight toward your chest while keeping your back straight. This is a great exercise, but improper form can cause several complications to your body and muscles.

Bodyweight or inverted row helps you to overcome those complication and takes care of your muscles. All you need to perform a bodyweight row is a bar to lean back. Unlike traditional barbell row, there’s no need to extra stress on your back.

Pre-requisites to Bodyweight Rows

All you need to perform a bodyweight row is a bar, a basically straight bar where you can pull your shoulders back to pull your body up. Then after, relax your shoulders to lower yourself toward the ground. This will help you to increase shoulder stability and ranges of motion.

Before we proceed about how to perform an inverted bodyweight row exercise let’s jump into the benefits of doing it.

Benefits of Bodyweight Rows or Inverted Rows

If you were always doing pull ups and never been under the bar, then it’s a perfect time to get horizontal; here are some of the benefits to do it:

Great choice for starters as it is beginners friendly.
It targets arms more than a traditional pull up exercises.
It helps to recruit lower body muscles.
Improves your grip strength and scapular retraction.
Recruits the glutes and hamstrings.
Gives your biceps a boost.

How to perform Inverted Bodyweight Row

Once you setup the row or bar to required height all you need is a guide to perform the inverted row.

Set the bar around the height of your waist. TIP: The lower the bar the more difficult the movement is.
Lie down straight, inverted facing towards the bar with your face. Bar should be set around the height where your hands can grab even after lying down.
Hold the bard with an overhead grip, slightly wider than your shoulder’s width. TIP: Make your palm facing away from you!
Contract your abs and pull yourself up while keeping your back and body completely straight like you are doing a plank.
Pull yourself to the height where your chest touches the bar.
Lower yourself back to your initial phase.
Repeat, Repeat, Repeat!!!

If this is too difficult for you, there is an alternative method too.

Set the bar straight on the ground at the height of your shoulder.
Incline you body to a 45-degree angle and place yourself in a way that your feet are on one side of the bar and head on another.
After that pull your chest and lean back to initial phase like the steps mentioned above.

Things to consider for Bodyweight Row

Even when you then you’ve done everything right, but you are not getting the results then; go through the points below and check if you are doing everything perfectly.

Don’t fail your elbows, grab the bar with you hand closer.
Try pulling the bar toward the middle of your chest.
Flex your stomach and keep your body rigid from top to bottom.
Keep your abs tight and pull your shoulder blades down.
Go all the way don’t leave it until your chest touches the bar.

Types of Bodyweight Row

If you are struggling with the exercise above, then there are several other types of bodyweight row which are quite simple to get you going.

However, if you have already mastered the inverted row; you also have some more complex type of bodyweight row. Let’s have a look here:

High Inverted Bodyweight Row

High inverted bodyweight row is quite a simpler one and is relatively easy to perform.

Low Inverted Bodyweight Row

This is what we have exactly done today. It’s like high inverted row but the only difference is it’s quite difficult and the steel bar is place at low height.

Elevated Inverted Bodyweight Row

This is quite complex where you will place your feet and the steel bar to almost similar height as shown in the image. It makes your exercise little tougher.

Weighted Bodyweight Row

If you want to challenge yourselves, then weighted bodyweight row is the one you should be doing. On this form of row, you’ll place some weight on top of your chest and do the rows.

Hybrid Bodyweight Row

It is a combined form of inverted row where you elevate yourself and place a weight to your chest, exactly as the image shown above.

Perform Bodyweight Row at Home

While you do not need any fancy equipment to perform bodyweight row and on top you can do this at your home. In order to perform this exercise at home, you will need:

2 Dinning Chairs
A strong wooden or steel rod to hold your weight!

Why we picked dinning chairs is they are relatively to your waist’s height. Place two chairs at about 1m width to each other and place the steel rod on top of them and you are good to go!

(NOTE: It’s a good idea to tie the rod or make it immobile as they tend to roll and you’ll hit hard on ground. Be careful! You’ve been warned!!)

After Bodyweight Inverted Row

Bodyweight row is quite a low-level exercise and we do not think you are too good for it! Once you have mastered it, you can easily jump to tough bodyweight row or perform archer rows, typewriter rows or even one arm row/ one arm pull up! And last but not least challenging workout AKA. The One Punch Man Workout! It’s quite interesting, and we have summarized about it as best as we can read it now!

All of these body exercise challenge your body in quite a different way, so try them all and be a little bit creative with it.

Bodyweight rows are great beginner friendly exercise which helps to boost biceps, improve grip strength, scapular retraction, recruit lower body muscles, glutes, and hamstrings.If you are already performing normal pull exercise like pull-ups, pull downs than including bodyweight row to your daily list is a great idea. Also, if you have any question regarding bodyweight row then we are here to help, let us know in the comment section below; we will get back to you as soon as we can.