Ways to Increase Your Barbell Row Strength

The barbell row, or bent-over row, targets your back muscles, specifically the lats and rhomboids of your upper and mid back. It also works your traps, forearms, biceps and core. A stronger back can increase your performance on other upper-body exercises and barbell rows help maintain muscle balance between your chest and back, especially if you do a lot of bench and dumbbell pressing. Rows require a good level of upper-body strength as well as grip endurance. Increasing your barbell row strength can be difficult, as it's easy to cheat and use extra body momentum to lift more weight. The trick is to build your strength gradually while making sure your form stays strict.

  1. Technique

    • Keeping perfect technique is important on any exercise, but particularly so for the barbell row. During the movement your torso should stay at around a 45-degree angle to the floor, with your back straight. Avoid using momentum from your hips or dropping your chest toward the floor, shortening the range of motion. If you're struggling to keep good form, let the bar touch the floor between every rep, pause for a second and lift it from a dead stop each time. These are called Pendlay rows.

    Accessory Exercises

    • Adding other back-strengthening exercises into your program can boost your barbell rows. When you stall on an exercise, taking it out of your routine for three to four weeks and replacing it with a similar exercise can enable you to break through your plateau. Switch out barbell rows for dumbbell rows, machine rows or cable rows for a short period and aim to increase your strength on those.

    Grip Work

    • You need a strong grip for barbell rows and this can often be a limiting factor in increasing the weight you can lift. Add in grip-specific exercises in two of your weekly training sessions. These could be plate pinches, where you hold a 45 pound plate between your fingers for as long as possible, double-overhand barbell shrugs or farmer's walks. To perform farmer's walks you'll need farmer's walk handles or a pair of heavy dumbbells. Hold one in either hand and either walk for a set distance, or as far as you can until muscle exhaustion forces you to set them down. It is recommended to wrap your thumb around your fingers and use chalk so sweat doesn't compromise your grip, according to Jedd Johnson of Diesel Crew Strength and Conditioning.

    Rep Ranges

    • Working out for high repetitions can limit your strength gains. Sets of eight to 12 reps are best for muscle growth, while sets of 15 or more build muscular endurance. Low-rep sets of three to eight, however, will build the most strength. If you're used to training with higher reps, drop down to three sets of eight, or five sets of five, and increase the weight you lift. Aim to add more weight or perform more reps while staying at eight or fewer per set each.