maratoolT-Bar Rows
How to do the t-bar rows
- Place your feet on either side of a T-Bar Machine.
- With your knees slightly bent and abs drawn in, grasp the handles with a narrow grip.
- Bend at the waist so your chest is parallel to the floor, this is starting position. Slowly pull the bar to your chest, as high as you can.
- Pause at the top for a moment and then lower the bar to starting position.
- 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; the deltoids stabilise the shoulder and add force at the top of the range.
Every exercise for:Middle backBicepsShoulders
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
The machine fixes the path, removing the balance demand and letting you train close to failure without a spotter. The cost is the stabilising work a free weight would have made you do.
Every exercise using:Machine
These train the middle back too, using equipment this one does not:
- Two-Arm Kettlebell Rowkettlebell
- Bent Over Barbell Rowbarbell
- Bent Over Two-Dumbbell Rowdumbbell
- Rhomboids-SMRfoam roll
- Seated Cable Rowscable
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.