Reverse Grips Bent Over Barbell Rows

🎯 Middle back🏋️ BarbellIsolationBiceps (2°)

How to do the reverse grips bent over barbell rows

  1. Bend over a barbell at slight angle with your knees bent and your back straight.
  2. Grasp the bar with a reverse grip (palms facing up) and slowly pull the barbell to your abs, keeping your elbows close to your sides.
  3. Pause for a moment at the top.
  4. Return the barbell to the starting position.
  5. Repeat.

Muscles worked

The prime movers are the rhomboids and mid-trapezius, which draw the shoulder blades together and back down the ribcage.

Even with a single joint doing the moving, the muscle is not working alone — the biceps add force at the elbow.

Every exercise for:Middle backBiceps

How this movement works

Everything happens at one joint. That gives you direct control over where the tension sits; the trade-off is that the muscle gets no help, so the load that feels hard here is a fraction of what a multi-joint version of the pattern would take. Slow, complete repetitions beat heavy ones.

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 barbell locks both hands to one bar, so neither side can drift and the load climbs in plate-sized steps. That makes it the simplest way to add weight and the least forgiving thing to bail out of.

Every exercise using:Barbell

These train the middle back too, using equipment this one does not:

Related exercises

Illustration: Everkinetic — CC BY-SA 4.0 — license. Modified versions are shared under the same license. Full attribution →

ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.