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Thread: Why not bent row?

  1. #1
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    Default Why not bent row?

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    Why is bent row not a staple exercise? You are benching and pressing with our doing a counter movement to balance those muscles, If you are not rowing. Someone please explain the idea behind the row just being an auxiliary assistance exercise. Would that not cause muscle imbalance and rounded shoulders?

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  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dalelemay View Post
    Why is bent row not a staple exercise? You are benching and pressing with our doing a counter movement to balance those muscles, If you are not rowing. Someone please explain the idea behind the row just being an auxiliary assistance exercise. Would that not cause muscle imbalance and rounded shoulders?
    In your opinion, what qualifies an exercise to be a 'staple exercise'?
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dalelemay View Post
    Why is bent row not a staple exercise? You are benching and pressing with our doing a counter movement to balance those muscles, If you are not rowing. Someone please explain the idea behind the row just being an auxiliary assistance exercise. Would that not cause muscle imbalance and rounded shoulders?
    If by "rounded shoulders" you mean rounded forward, the "upper crossed" syndrome, or whatever other names it can be given, just about every movement in the basic barbell lifts, if done with specified form, encourages pushing the shoulders in the exact opposite direction, either as a matter of basic posture or even part of the lift. Especially the bench. If you keep your scapulae (apparently spellcheck insists this is not pluralized with an s) tightly retracted through the whole movement to give yourself that "footing" on the bench, there is absolutely no rounding forward that occurs of your shoulders.

    As for why it's not included at all, I suspect it's for the sake of keeping the novice program streamlined. A lot of what the row trains are trained by other movements in the program. Power cleans, which people often sub out to put in rows, do something rows and even the other barbell exercises in the program don't, and that's train an explosive movement. They also serve as a "light day" version of deadlifts once you can't progress the deadlift 3 times a week. There's reasons you might have to sub out power cleans for something else non explosive, but if you do, like me, you're missing out.

  5. #5
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    Jun 2019
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    From what I read in the Book, I'd have to conclude that rows are almost impossible not to cheat on, especially for novices who are not under coaching.
    The inevitable form creep would result in incremental cheating instead of incremental strength increase.
    Since the basic program can only work with a limited number of exercises, and the chin-up trains most of the muscles that the row does, I understand why the chin-up is preferred.

    Also, the Book states the row is not a competition-worthy lift because it would be impossible to judge whether the lift was performed strict enough,
    so training towards a big row has less purpose than the others.

    Then again, I love rows and would really like to do them- guess I'll have to wait until my NLP is done.

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