This content provides a detailed guide on how to perform the one-arm row exercise correctly to maximize lat gains and prevent injuries, by addressing common setup and execution errors.
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Walk into any gym today and if you see someone doing a One Arm Row and it looks like this,
I can pretty much guarantee they're fucking it up. But not anymore. Because today I'm going to show
you how to do the One Arm Row properly so that not only will you be setting the right example in
your gym, but you'll also be getting better lat gains as a result. Oh, and by the way, without
the pains. And the way they do that is by first setting up the angle of the bench to the right
angle, and that is not flat. Because by setting it up as an incline, you're actually able to put
both feet on the floor. You see here, I don't want any knees up on the bench doing a One Arm Dumbbell
Row. And this is why. Because when you do this, you're introducing an instability to the pelvis
that doesn't need to be there in the first place. And along with it, as I mentioned in other videos,
an increased inguinal stress that could lead to a hernia. And the moment I do that, by virtue of
having to put my knee up on the bench, I've taken my foot off the floor and instantly introduced
asymmetrical loading to the pelvis. But then we look at the other foot, it's not just straight
back, because that actually wouldn't be so bad in terms of the strain on the inguinal canal.
We do that on a Bulgarian Split Squat, but it's the introduction of the frontal plane movement
out and back in order to stabilize ourselves when we lift a heavier weight, that starts to
introduce the problems. Throw in the fact that as the weight gets heavy and we start to cheat it up
a little bit more, we introduce a rotational stress. Again, it's just not necessary when
there's better options. And then I use the back side of this bench to support my upper body, which
allows me to get both feet on the ground. This two-footed of variation allows us to
instantly get that stability that was lacking from the typically performed asymmetrical
version of the One Arm Row, which is a good thing because it removes that risk. And we do
it three different ways. First, with both feet on the floor, we've normalized those ground reaction
forces on the pelvis. That's good. The second thing is we can take the dumbbell and center it
on our body and not have to offload it to one side and put that asymmetrical stress. Because
I could drop it straight here through the center of gravity and still wind up in the same target
end point. And with our feet not needing to be any wider than shoulder width apart,
or where we would comfortably squat from, we put ourselves in a position biomechanically
to not only pull heavier weights, but to actually pull them without risk.
But with your feet and body in place, you're still not quite done with the setup because
we still have to focus on our back. And this is where people kind of mess it up a little bit,
because you have to at least be in a neutral position or even slight anterior tilt,
but you don't want to be trying to pull from a tucked under, posteriorly rotated pelvis. So,
what I like to do is think about deadlifting the dumbbell into position to do the exercise in the
first place. So, if I have my hand up on the bench, I'm going to hinge back at the waist,
drop it right through the crease of your hip to grab the dumbbell. Once I'm in this position here,
wherever my back falls, I gotta keep it in that position before I pull. And even as I pull on
every single repetition, how I pull though, that's where things get really interesting.
And it starts with how we grip the dumbbell, because it actually matters a lot. You can
either perform it from one of three different grips, either a neutral grip with our palms
sort of facing our body, an overhand grip, or an underhand grip. But if it's your lats that you're
trying to maximally develop here, then you're going to want to try to take the bicep out of
the exercise. And we perform the exercise with an underhand grip, you're getting a lot of bicep
activation. If you go the opposite way though, fully pronated, which a lot of us don't do,
we kind of stick with the neutral grip. you're going to maximally turn off that
bicep so that most of the pulling can be focused on the lats where you're trying to grow.
But regardless of what grip you pick, how you pull determines the results that you ultimately get.
Because you can still turn this into an arm heavy exercise if you don't do it right. Because what a
lot of us will do is just simply hammer curl the dumbbell up. And I will say that a lot of this is
promoted by the fact that you do perform it from a neutral grip. Again, it's okay, but you have to
understand you don't want to then carry that over to the all too familiar hammer curl motion. So,
what I say is fix it all by putting that dumbbell into my back pocket, which promotes
a more natural rowing motion, again, dominated by the elbow getting into full extension behind the
body. Because even when you don't hammer curl the dumbbell up, we tend to sort of stop short and by
stopping short of full extension behind the body, we're limiting the effect we can get on our back.
So, if we put that dumbbell right there in the back pocket, we're on our way to a good rep.
That being said, there's another thing you can do to promote doing it correctly, and that is let
the dumbbell drift out in front of you a little bit. By drifting, you have a more natural angle
back towards that back pocket again. If I let it sit straight down beneath me, I'm going to tend
to want to pull it straight up, but at an angle in front of me, I'm going to want to try to pull
it at that angle back again, targeting that back pocket. Remember doing it from this pronated grip
is going to give you even more of an effect towards getting a great lat contraction. But
again, pick what's comfortable for you, but make sure you're pulling right in the first place.
And so now that you know how to do a one arm row properly, let's make sure your next back day goes
off without a hitch and that means knowing how to do a Face Pull and also a Lat Pull Down. You
can check those videos out by clicking on those links. Also, if you're looking for a complete
program where I stress how to do exercises properly so you get the best results, you can
find them at athleanx.com. If you haven't done so, click Subscribe, turn on your Notifications
so you never miss a video from me when I put one out. All right guys, see you soon.
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