Inverted Rows

“In the confrontation between the stream and the rock, the stream always wins. Not through strength but by perseverance”. That H. Jackson Brown quote applies to the heart and soul of this exercise. One of my absolute favorites, this exercise can serve multiple functions as both a strength exercise as well as an endurance builder.

The inverted row might be one of the most overlooked exercises in the climbers training arsenal. We often associate standard, vertical pull ups as the go-to pulling exercise. While not to be overlooked the standard pull up isn’t as applicable to real world climbing as we like to think it is. The mechanics of the inverted row much more closely mimic the movement patterns we exhibit when climbing.

The inverted row targets both your arms and back, which gives you more “bang for your buck” in terms of a pulling exercise. While engaging your forearms and biceps it also targets your lats which make up the top end of your posterior chain and some of our most powerful and widely used muscles in climbing.

Another very cool and useful aspect of the inverted row is it’s scalability for athletes of varying abilities. When the athlete positions themselves horizontally and are pulling/rowing straight up this can be a tremendous strength building exercise. Adding in a weight vest or anchored super band can increase the intensity or load in that position.

When the athlete assumes a less steep angle (like in the video) the intensity of the exercise is lessened and we can start pushing the duration of the exercise. One of my favorite capacity or endurance building exercises is duration rowing in the inclined position. It’s a great way to build forearm capillarity safely without training near max intensity on edges or potentially riskier holds when tired.

Every athlete is different and it’s important to dial in the intensity of this exercise for yourself but my general rule is that when close to or in the horizontal position, the reps are kept low, 5-8. Sometimes we’ll add weight to that position to increase the intensity but that’s dependent on equipment like a weight vest. When I include this as an endurance exercise the format changes pretty dramatically. In an inclined position (30˚-45˚) I will often have athletes do 3 rows, rest straight armed for 10 seconds and repeat. This 3:10 combination can last up to 5 minutes which is usually incredibly pumpy at that point.

If you don’t have access to a sling trainer or rings you can easily modify this exercise by adjusting a barbell in a squat or press rack and position yourself underneath it. This limits your ability to rotate your hands/arms during the exercise but will still target all the same muscle groups.