maratoolElevated Cable Rows
How to do the elevated cable rows
- Get a platform of some sort (it can be an aerobics or calf raise platform) that is around 4-6 inches in height.
- Place it on the seat of the cable row machine.
- Sit down on the machine and place your feet on the front platform or crossbar provided making sure that your knees are slightly bent and not locked.
- Lean over as you keep the natural alignment of your back and grab the V-bar handles.
- With your arms extended pull back until your torso is at a 90-degree angle from your legs. Your back should be slightly arched and your chest should be sticking out. You should be feeling a nice stretch on your lats as you hold the bar in front of you. This is the starting position of the exercise.
- Keeping the torso stationary, pull the handles back towards your torso while keeping the arms close to it until you touch the abdominals. Breathe out as you perform that movement. At that point you should be squeezing your back muscles hard. Hold that contraction for a second and slowly go back to the original position while breathing in.
- Repeat for the recommended amount of repetitions.
Muscles worked
The prime mover is the latissimus dorsi, which pulls the upper arm down and back toward the ribcage.
Because more than one joint is moving, the work does not stay in one place: the mid-back retracts the shoulder blades so the shoulder has something solid to work from; the traps anchor the shoulder blade against the load.
Every exercise for:LatsMiddle backTraps
How this movement works
The load travels toward you and several joints bend to bring it there. The arms finish work the back starts, so grip and elbow flexors sit in the path of every repetition: when people stall on a compound pull, it is more often the hands giving out than the primary muscle running out of force.
It is filed under strength: produce force against resistance for a countable number of repetitions, and progress the resistance over time.
What you need
A cable holds tension for the whole range, including the point where a free weight would go slack. Moving the pulley changes the angle the resistance arrives from without changing the movement.
Every exercise using:Cable
These train the lats too, using equipment this one does not:
- Latissimus Dorsi-SMRfoam roll
- Leverage Iso Rowmachine
- Narrow Parallel Grip Chin-upsbarbell + body only
- Overhead Slammedicine ball
- Pullupsbody only
Difficulty
Listed at intermediate level. It assumes you already own the underlying pattern and can hold position under load — if the position breaks before the target muscle tires, drop back to a beginner variation until it does not.
Of the 45 lats exercises in this database, 14 are listed at intermediate level.
Photos: free-exercise-db — public domain (Unlicense) Full attribution →
ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.