10 Bent-Over Row Benefits: Unlocking The Potential 2024

What are the bent-over row benefits, and are they helpful for lifters looking to hit their health and fitness goals? Performing bent-over rows can provide lifters with numerous sought-after benefits, including improved functional strength and enhanced upper body strength. 

The bent-over row is a compound exercise that engages multiple muscle groups, like the latissimus dorsi and hamstrings. By targeting these muscles, the bent-over row can actively stimulate muscle growth and strength gains in lifters. But that’s not all.

This exercise can support health benefits too, like improved bone density and boosted metabolism. In this guide, we provide in-depth information on the bent-over row benefits and how to implement them into your workouts.

10 Bent Over Row Benefits

Want to know the enticing benefits of the bent-over row and its variations like the dumbbell bent-over row? There are many benefits, from enhanced muscular endurance to improved functional strength. Find out more about these benefits below!

Enhanced Muscular Endurance

Exercise has many benefits for the human body, which explains why its importance is so heavily emphasized. Increased muscular endurance and strength are examples of some of the benefits resistance training provides. 

Incorporating bent-over rows into your training routine can build muscular endurance in the upper and lower body. Improving endurance can help enhance athletic performance by decreasing muscular fatigue. This prepares the body for the demands of exercise and sports so they can perform at a high level. 

Whether the aim is strength, hypertrophy, or endurance, how you implement exercise can make or break your success. Use the chart below to determine the ideal sets and reps to enhance your progress by appropriately working the muscles.

Training Style	Sets	Reps
Strength Training	3–5	4–6
Hypertrophy	3–4	8–12
Endurance Training	3–4	12–20
Power Training	3–5	1–3 (Explosive)

For endurance-focused programming, lifters should use lighter weights to adjust to the higher repetitions than lifters with strength-based goals. Target around 60% or less of your one-repetition max for the bent-over row and adjust if needed. Consider raising the intensity by shortening rest periods between sets. 

One-repetition maximum, or 1RM, refers to the maximum weight a person can lift for one repetition with proper form. This helps determine the appropriate weight range for specific goals. For example:

• Strength: 80%–100% of your 1RM.
• Hypertrophy: 60%–80% of your 1RM.
• Endurance: <60% of your 1RM.

Improves Functional Strength

Another benefit of the bent-over row is its improvement in functional strength. Functional strength is the body’s ability to perform daily activities and movement patterns. Improving functional strength means better coordination, flexibility, and balance, which reduces injury risk and enhances performance. 

Bent-over rows, deadlifts, and farmer’s walks are functional strength-focused exercises because they mimic real-life movements. The bent-over row specifically replicates movements like picking up objects off the ground, like furniture or groceries. For parents, this exercise improves mobility and strength so they can pick up their kids without injuring their backs or hips.

Supports Healthy Bone Density

Implementing exercises like the bent-over row into your training routine can be extremely valuable for your health. The reason why is that it can improve bone density in the body. Bone density refers to the amount of calcium and other essential minerals in the body’s bone tissue. 

Evaluating a person’s bone density is detrimental to one’s health. The denser a bone is, the less susceptible it is to breaking, reducing the risk of injury. 

Unfortunately, as humans age, our bone density naturally declines. This raises the risk of diseases like osteoporosis (weak and brittle bones). There are other causes of osteopenia (low bone density), such as:

• Diet — A person’s diet can increase the potential for low bone density. Diets low in vitamin D and calcium can contribute to concerns like bone loss. 
• Lifestyle — Poor lifestyle choices come with more than a few cons. Excessive drinking and smoking, along with physical inactivity, can promote low bone density. 
• Hormones — Hormonal changes that occur, like in menopause, can contribute to changes in bone density. Medications like hormone-blocking treatments for cancer can also cause this. 

Even more shocking is that 43.1% of adults aged 50 and up have low bone mass. Now that you know the importance of bone density, you can understand why exercise is so heavily emphasized. Utilize exercises like the bent-over row to improve bone density, reduce injury risk, and deter conditions like osteoporosis.

Improves Core Strength

Bent-over rows can be productive in improving core strength. Because of the bent-over position of the exercise’s form, the core is actively engaged to support balance. The core is activated to protect the spine, maintain a neutral spine, and prioritize proper form. 

As a compound exercise that utilizes multiple muscle groups and joints, the bent-over row incorporates upper- and lower-body muscles. The abdominal muscles work together with muscles like the latissimus dorsi, glutes, and hamstrings to maintain form. 

Strengthening the core is important for supporting stability and coordination in the body to reduce injury risk. The core muscles, when healthy and strong, increase stability of the trunk and lumbar spine, which is essential for:

• Good Posture — A strong core can help improve posture by keeping the lumbar spine aligned. It also reduces stress on the joints and muscles. 
• Supports Performance — Another benefit of a strong core is its capacity to improve exercise and athletic performance. By providing better stability and coordination, the core can aid performance by improving accuracy, explosiveness, and form. 
• Injury Prevention — Focusing on strengthening one’s core with exercises like the bent-over row is productive for injury prevention. The core helps keep the body aligned to prevent hyperextension and strain on the muscles and joints. 

Utilize exercises like the bent-over row to improve your core strength and reap benefits like improved posture and performance.

Increased Upper Body Strength

The barbell bent-over row and its variations are full-body exercises that recruit multiple muscle groups to empower movement. It utilizes muscles like the trapezius, erector spinae, rhomboids, and deltoids to establish movement and maintain proper form. 

Engaging numerous muscle groups is productive for lifters who may have the goal of increasing upper body strength. Striving for this goal is important for obtaining associated benefits such as improved bone density and increased lean body mass. These benefits can improve health and functional capacity in everyday life. 

For lifters who wish to improve strength, it’s crucial to incorporate the correct amount of sets and repetitions. A lifter with endurance-focused goals will perform a greater number of repetitions than a strength-based lifter. This is because their goals are different and they must actively encourage specific growth with their training. 

The recommended sets and repetitions will vary depending on your unique goals (see the chart above). For example, to implement bent-over rows into your training routine to improve upper body strength, you will perform 3–5 sets with 4–6 reps. 

Performance and nutrition are other factors to evaluate when focused on improving strength with exercises like bent-over rows. Emphasize balanced nutrition, like protein and carbohydrates, to fuel your muscles for workout sessions. 

Evaluate your form and technique to ensure proper muscle activation and to reduce injury risk. If necessary, seek the assistance of a physical therapist or fitness professional to help you.
For a balanced workout, use bicep peak exercises or this back and bicep workout to strengthen other upper-body muscles.

Reduces Risk of Chronic Disease

Taking care of your health by making positive lifestyle changes improves your quality of life and deters sickness. Chronic disease, an illness that is not contagious, is considered one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Physical inactivity is associated with increased chronic disease risk, while increased physical activity reduces it. 

Incorporating exercises like the bent-over row into your routine is an active way to reduce the risk of chronic disease.

Aids Posture

A significant population of the world is affected by pain-related symptoms from poor posture in school and work environments. With increased core strength comes the benefit of improved posture. Bent-over rows improve core strength and other posture-related muscles, like the erector spinae, trapezius, and glutes. 

Poor posture includes a hunched back or shoulders, forward neck posture, and slouching. Improper posture is correlated with negative pain-related symptoms in the shoulders, back, and neck. This is because of the strain it places on the muscles and joints. 

Bent-over rows actively incorporate lower- and upper-body muscles, like the trapezius and glutes, that support posture and stability. Strengthening these muscles using exercises like the bent-over row can help improve posture and spinal alignment. Consider incorporating this shoulders and traps workout to strengthen these important posture muscles further.

Encourages Hip Hinge Improvements

The exercise form for the bent-over rows requires a hip hinge to enter the bent-over position. A hip hinge involves a slight knee bend, a straight back, and a forward torso lean by pushing the hips back. The lifter must maintain this position while performing the rows, ensuring the spine and pelvis remain neutral.

Another reason the bent-over row is considered a functional exercise is its capacity to strengthen the hip hinge. Humans utilize hip hinge-based movements when we bend over to pick something up, like groceries or children. Different exercises, other than the bent-over row, also incorporate the hip hinge, including:

• Box jumps.
• Deadlifts.
• Romanian deadlifts.
• Hip thrusts.

These exercises help strengthen the hip hinge, improve range of motion, reduce hamstring tightness, and decrease back pain. A healthy hip hinge enables a neutral spine, decreasing back tension and reducing injury risk.

Activates Multiple Muscle Groups

The bent-over row is a compound and full-body exercise, engaging upper- and lower-body muscles. From the trapezius and the core to the erector spinae and hamstrings, the bent-over row actively engages multiple muscle groups. 

Full-body exercises are a productive option for lifters who are short on time and looking to activate more muscle groups. These can help lifters improve strength, promote hypertrophy, enhance endurance, and more in multiple muscle groups simultaneously.

Boosted Metabolism

Performing bent-over rows can boost metabolism for lifters looking to burn more energy. Metabolism refers to the body’s chemical processes where food and drink are converted into energy. This energy is used for bodily functions like breathing and actions like walking. 

When a person’s metabolism is slow, it can contribute to weight gain because the body burns fewer calories. On the other hand, a fast metabolism burns more calories quickly. 

Someone with a faster metabolism can consume more food without gaining weight, though weight gain is still possible. Individuals with slower metabolisms must eat less to discourage weight gain as their metabolism works slower. 

Resistance exercises, like bent-over rows and squats, produce metabolism improvements and protect against metabolic disease. This is one of the many benefits of bent-over rows that people can take advantage of to improve their health and fitness.

Tips For Doing Bent-Over Rows 

There are many bent-over row benefits to profit from in your health and fitness journey, like improved posture and metabolism. Here are some helpful tips to enhance your results with bent-over rows:

• Perform Form Checks — Prioritizing quality form can make or break your results in exercise. Begin each repetition with a form check to ensure good technique and a neutral spine. This will prevent injury that could otherwise be caused by poor form. 
• Check Breathing Technique — Breathing technique is an often overlooked factor in exercise technique when it is one of the most important. How you breathe, or your lack of breathing, affects whether oxygen is appropriately delivered to the muscles. Exhale on the concentric (lifting) portion of the exercise to enhance core engagement and relieve pressure. Inhale on the eccentric (lowering) portion of the bent-over row to feed the muscles oxygen. 
• Emphasize Mind-To-Muscle Connection — Emphasizing mind-to-muscle connection can drastically improve muscle engagement in the bent-over row. Focusing on the use of primary muscles, like the lats and traps, can maximize the bent-over row benefits.

Sample Workout Routine

Want a sample workout routine to implement bent-over rows? Next time you work out, consider using this example workout focused on hypertrophy.

Exercise	Sets x Reps
Pull-Ups	3–4 sets x 8–12 reps
Bent-Over Rows	3–4 sets x 8–12 reps
Landmine T-Bar Row	3–4 sets x 8–12 reps
Straight-Arm Lat Pulldown	3–4 sets x 8–12 reps
Close-Grip Lat Pulldown	3–4 sets x 8–12 reps

Conclusion

Throughout this article, the many benefits of bent-over rows were discussed, such as increased core strength and improved posture. This full-body exercise enables total-body muscle engagement to provide outstanding success in strength and muscle gain. 

Implementing the bent-over row and its variations, like the single-arm dumbbell row, can promote lifters with great success. This exercise can help you reach your health and fitness goals by enhancing upper-body strength and boosting your metabolism.

Frequently Asked Questions