- What if you could do a row and you didn't have to worry
about your lower back positioning at all?
That's what we get whenever we get on one
of these hammer strength row machines
and when we get on a lot of row machines in general.
When we're doing classic dumbbell rows and barbell rows,
and those are staple moves in our routine,
we have to really worry about our lower back positioning.
We have to make sure that we're
in a nice, safe spinal position
and in some ways that takes away
from our ability to focus
on our lats and focus on our mid back.
We're not really able to squeeze with a heavy weight
at the top of a movement
when we're doing that dumbbell rail or the barbell rail
and point blank, we just can't go as heavy.
But when you come over to one of
these hammer strength style machines,
and there are lots of variations similar to it,
we're gonna be able to take our lower back
outta the equation from a stability factor
and we're gonna be able to focus a little bit more
on the squeeze at peak contraction.
That's the biggest advantage
of getting on the hammer strength row.
The other advantage of the hammer strength row
is we can get a much better stretch on our lats.
We can also focus a little bit more
on the overall contraction,
and we wind up getting to load up
a lot of weight on here as well,
which adds a little bit of fun and variety to your routine.
You are still training the same muscles
that you train on the other row,
so you're gonna get a lot of mid-back muscle.
Your lats are gonna wind up firing.
We're gonna hit a little bit of rear delt in this as well
and your biceps and forearms are working.
You're gonna get a little core emphasis out of this too.
And your lower back still can play a role in this row,
which I will show you later.
One of the greatest things too is that this exercise works
for a variety of populations:
bodybuilders, strength athletes,
anybody who wants to get super strong.
You can come over here, load up a lot of weight.
You're gonna get a lot out of it.
If you're somebody who's a little bit more
into functional training,
you can use this to support your dumbbell and barbell rows.
Because we're gonna be able to get
a little bit more weight on here,
that can help expose your body to those heavier weights.
When you go back to your dumbbell and barbell row,
you're gonna be that much stronger.
And if you're a beginner,
we can still come over to this exercise.
We get to work on loading up a little bit
without having to worry so much about our lower back.
So we get a lot of the benefit
of just exposing our beginner body
to a little bit of a heavier weight,
even though we want to be especially attentive
to our form if we're a beginner.
Now, how do we set up for this row?
It seems simple, but the last thing I want you to do
is just sit on the machine and start banging out reps.
We want to think about a couple things,
the first of which really is the seat position.
So essentially what we want to do when we get
into this row is we wanna have our mid chest
up against this pad.
We're using this pad for two things.
One, it's gonna provide feedback to us.
If my chest starts to come off the pad,
I'm conscious of that and I wanna make sure
that I'm in control of that
and I realize that it's happening.
Two is this is going to stop us from going forward
and that's gonna allow me to
get a good stretch on my row rep,
so we wanna make sure that essentially this pad is up
about to the midpoint of our chest
and that's what we want to think about
as we're setting the seat.
Now in terms of leg position,
there are a couple things we can do
and all of these are acceptable
so find what's comfortable for you as you're doing this.
We can essentially get into our position
and stand in the machine.
We can also do this as a seated kind of row.
We can also take a stagger stance.
Any of these are fine.
The two things I want you to think about,
regardless of that position, is just creating tension.
We are not in a lazy position even though this is a machine.
From there, we're gonna grab the handles
and as you can see,
there's a lot going on with these handles,
so there are a couple different ways
that we can approach this.
In general, you're going to be strongest
when your palms are in neutral,
so that's going to be your standard position.
That's going to involve a little bit more lats as we row.
We do, however, have all these other grips
so we can play with some other ideas.
We can go a little bit wider.
If we go wider and overhand,
then as we row, we're gonna wind up getting
a little bit more rear delts.
It's going to we're not gonna be able to move as much weight
but we're gonna get a lot more rear delts.
We're gonna get to focus a little bit more
on our shoulder blade squeeze.
You can also do this two ways in that we can go bilateral,
both arms at the same time.
You're gonna get a really, really good
shoulder blade squeeze and you can focus on that
when you're going bilateral.
Or we can also do this single arm with the single arm row.
That's one of my favorite ways to do this.
We can go really, really heavy with that.
We're gonna get a really good stretch
and then we get that good pull back,
and we can also focus on pulling back a little bit more.
But once we figured out our setup
and we figured out where we want
to kind of grab these handles and attack this row,
the motion from there is relatively simple.
All we're gonna do,
we're gonna breathe our abs into the bench,
try to drive our chest into that pad,
squeeze through our glutes,
get a little bit of forward motion here.
Let the let the bar kind of pull you forward.
It's gonna give you a nice stretch.
And then from there, we're gonna pull back.
As you're pulling back, I want you to think
about driving your chest into the pad,
especially at first and especially at lighter loads.
There is nothing wrong overall
with getting a little bit of hinge into this motion
because when we row in general, when we pick something up,
our lower back is going to be a little bit involved in that,
so you can get that involved at higher weights.
But when we're at a lower weight,
what I want you to really focus on doing
is keeping your abs nice and tight,
driving chest into the pad, and then pulling back.
This is a good row too,
to think about driving your elbows back
as far as you possibly can.
And one of the other strengths
of the hammer strength row is the fact that
because we don't have any load on our spine,
when you get to that back point,
think about pausing
and getting a good one to two second squeeze
at peak contraction.
I can't get that on the dumbbell row.
I can't get that on a barbell row,
especially if I'm going heavy,
but I can get that here
and that's one of the reasons
that I really, really wind up loving
the hammer strength row.
In terms of reps and sets, this is a versatile exercise.
I want you to think two ideas.
Think either first or last.
So we can make this the first exercise in any back workout
or any upper body workout that we do,
and in that case, we're gonna go heavy.
We're gonna think about going, say,
four sets of anywhere from six to 10 reps
and make it nice and challenging.
Do that more hingey version of the move
where we maybe let our chest come off the pad.
We can also throw this at the very end of our workouts
and in that situation,
we're gonna focus a little bit more on tension.
We can still push to fatigue because it's a machine
and it's a really easy machine to lose the weight on,
which is one of the strengths of it.
So you can push it to fatigue near the end of a workout.
You can go maybe a little bit lighter,
focus on a good squeeze,
hit three sets of anywhere from 15 to 20 reps.
Either way, this is one of the best ways
to get a really good mid-back pump.
It's gonna wind up hitting your biceps and forearms as well.
So you cannot go wrong with getting
the hammer strength row in your workouts.
If you're trying to build your back,
this is a machine that you want to think about
whenever you see it.
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