X3 Bent Row

So the bent row is primarily for the latissimus dorsi, which is this muscle right here. It runs the course or sort of side of your back. Covers all the way into the ribcage and the posterior deltoid. There is some bicep work, but not nearly the bicep work that is involved with the actual X3 bicep curl.

So, if you’re worried about growing your biceps too much, which some women are most likely, to be worried about that, don’t worry about that with this movement. This is a multi-joint movement.

So, you want to focus on feeling it in your back, but you also want to keep a neutral spine. You don’t want to be hunched over. You want to keep a very flat back. So, not overly arched, not hunched, but flat back. So if somebody looks at you from the side, your back looks like a straight line at an angle. They call it a neutral spine.

And then, you want to go through slow and controlled movements with each repetition. One thing that is very unique about this, and I go over it in great detail in the book “Weightlifting is a Waste of Time,” is that you will go to complete fatigue with many more partial repetitions over all other movements in the X3 program.

And the reason for this is the strength curve. With a rowing-type movement, your power position is not at the top, as you would suspect. It’s in the middle. And it’s because the biceps and the latissimus dorsi have curves that kind of cross each other. It just happens that the power position is in the middle of the movement, as opposed to the top.

So, what you do, is you might do 15 movements that get you all the way to the top, and then the rest of the repetitions will be partials, but there will be a lot of them. So instead of two or three, as there may be with other movements, you might have six or seven, by comparison.

For the bent row, make sure the band is doubled underneath the ground plate, in line with the midfoot. So, when you stand on the plate, the band is running near the middle of your foot. You want to grab the bar with the hands supinated, which means pointing outward, to perform this movement.

As always, you’ll stay focused on slow and controlled repetitions, two seconds up and two seconds down. The strongest range of motion in this movement is unlike the other movements.

The bent row is unique. So it is the middle that is the most powerful part of this movement. So, the way we handle this is you want to do 15 to 40 full-range repetitions, but instead of having four or five partial repetitions, as with most other exercises, you may have another 10 to 15 partial repetitions in this mid-range of motion, because you still have so much power left in that position, as it is actually the strongest.

We are still taking all ranges of motion to complete fatigue. The ratio of complete to partial repetitions is different with this movement.

There’s even a chapter in the book, “Weightlifting is a Waste of Time,” on this specific subject.