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.

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