Seated One-arm Cable Pulley Rows

🎯 Middle back🏋️ CableIntermediateCompoundBiceps (2°)Lats (2°)Traps (2°)

How to do the seated one-arm cable pulley rows

  1. To get into the starting position, first 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.
  2. Lean over as you keep the natural alignment of your back and grab the single handle attachment with your left arm using a palms-down grip.
  3. With your arm 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 lat as you hold the bar in front of you. The right arm can be kept by the waist. This is the starting position of the exercise.
  4. Keeping the torso stationary, pull the handles back towards your torso while keeping the arms close to it as you rotate the wrist, so that by the time your hand is by your abdominals it is in a neutral position (palms facing the torso). Breathe out as you perform that movement. At that point you should be squeezing your back muscles hard.
  5. Hold that contraction for a second and slowly go back to the original position while breathing in. Tip: Remember to rotate the wrist as you go back to the starting position so that the palms are facing down again.
  6. Repeat for the recommended amount of repetitions and then perform the same movement with the right hand.

Muscles worked

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

Because more than one joint is moving, the work does not stay in one place: the biceps add force at the elbow; the lats keep the upper arm drawn in toward the torso; the traps anchor the shoulder blade against the load.

Every exercise for:Middle backBicepsLatsTraps

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 middle back too, using equipment this one does not:

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 37 middle back exercises in this database, 10 are listed at intermediate level.

Related exercises

Photos: free-exercise-db — public domain (Unlicense) Full attribution →

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