Source: http://tonygentilcore.com/2015/12/exercises-you-should-be-doing-hinge-row/
Mike Boyle was once quoted as saying:
“Most trainees can never really do enough (horizontal) rowing.”
I tend to agree.
It’s no secret most guys (and girls) are mirror-centric, often training the muscles most easily viewed when staring into a mirror – pectorals, shoulders, biceps, abdominals, and the tranzipidous1
It’s also no secret most guys (not so much girls) often skip leg day.
Whenever I audit a program it’s amazing to me the ratio of pushing exercises compared to pulling. I saw one program recently that, when broken down into it’s parts, looked like this:
Push (benching variations): 45 total sets
Pull: 7 total sets. And none of them were horizontal in nature. All were the obligatory handful of sets of lat pulldowns – more glenohumeral internal rotation – tossed in for good measure.
And this person was wondering why their shoulder was bothering them. Weird.
Horizontal rowing variations (think: inverted rows, seated rows, chest supported rows, 1-arm row variations) do a superb job at targeting the upper back – specifically scapular retraction – which often helps to offset or count…