Smith Machine Bent-Over Row
Trains the Rhomboids and Middle Trapezius.
- Equipment
- A machine
- Mechanic
- Compound
- Force
- Pull
- Level
- Beginner
How to do it
- Set the bar in a Smith machine at about knee height and stand over it.
- Take an overhand grip a little wider than your shoulders and unhook the bar.
- Hinge forward from the hips with a flat back until your torso is near parallel to the floor.
- Pull the bar to your lower ribs, driving the elbows up and back.
- Squeeze where the shoulder blades come together.
- Lower under control to straight arms, then re-hook the bar before standing up.
Common mistakes
- Standing in the wrong place. The bar travels on a fixed vertical line, so your feet decide where on your body it lands — too far forward and it drags up your thighs, too far back and it pulls you off balance.
- Treating the fixed path as back support. The machine holds the bar's line; the flat back is still yours to hold, and the hinge is no easier here than with a free bar.
- Loading it far beyond a free-bar row because the balance is removed. The load through the spine at a hinge is the same whether or not the bar wobbles.
- Forgetting to re-hook the bar before standing. Standing up under a bar still in its guides with the hooks unset is where this machine goes wrong, and it goes wrong at the end of a set when attention has already moved on.