Inverted row: how to do it, how to make it harder or easier, and what it trains

An inverted row is a row with your body as the weight. You hang under a bar set at about hip height, heels on the floor and body straight like a plank facing up, and pull your chest to the bar. It trains the upper back, the lats, the rear shoulders and the biceps, the same muscles as a dumbbell or barbell row, from a position you can make easier or harder by changing the angle of your body.

This page covers the setup, what the studies measured, how to make it harder or easier, grip and elbows, where to do it at home or in a gym, how it compares with the pull-up, the faults, and the sets. If your goal is your first pull-up, the inverted row is one of the steps in how to do a pull-up, and the full back day is on the back workout.

How to do an inverted row

1. Set a bar in a rack or a Smith machine at about hip height, or set suspension straps so the handles hang at that height.
2. Lie under it and take an overhand grip a little wider than your shoulders, arms straight.
3. Make a straight line: heels on the floor, legs straight, glutes squeezed, so your body is one plank from heels to head.
4. Pull your chest to the bar, squeezing your shoulder blades together, elbows travelling back past your sides.
5. Pause for a moment with your chest at or near the bar.
6. Lower under control to straight arms, keeping the line. That's one rep.

Bend your knees and put your feet flat to make it easier; that's a good first version.

What the inverted row trains

• The back and the arms, hard. In 13 men and 13 women doing four versions of the inverted row on a portable pull-up device, the lats, biceps, lower trapezius and rear shoulder reached very high activity in all four, above 61% of a maximal contraction; the upper and middle trapezius and a deep back muscle were in the high range, 41 to 60%.¹
• Against other rows. In seven healthy men comparing three rows, the inverted row produced the highest activity in the lats, the upper back and the hip extensors; the standing bent-over row produced large activity across the whole back.²
• The rear shoulder. A 2024 review of 33 studies of shoulder muscle activity ranked pull-ups highest for the rear head, with the standard pull-up and an inverted row on suspension straps at the top of the list.³

All three measured muscle activity during a set, not growth or strength over weeks; no training trial of the inverted row on its own turned up in a PubMed search for this page. Read together, they say the inverted row is a full back exercise, not an easy one.

Making it harder or easier: your body angle

The angle of your body sets the load. The more upright you are, the more of your weight your feet carry; the closer to horizontal, the more your arms pull. In 30 young adults, 16 men and 14 women, holding a strap row at seven strap lengths, lengthening the straps lowered both their body's angle and the force through their feet, and holding with the elbows bent put more force through the feet than holding with them straight.⁴

• Easier: raise the bar, step your feet closer, or bend your knees with your feet flat.
• Harder: lower the bar, straighten your legs, then raise your feet on a bench so your body is horizontal.
• One leg: lifting one foot didn't significantly change activity in any of the nine muscles measured in the 26-person study, against both feet down.¹ It's a balance change more than a load change.
• Added weight: a weighted vest, or a plate on your hips with your feet raised, once the horizontal version comes easily for 15 reps.

Grip and elbows

Grip. In the 26-person study, switching from an overhand to an underhand grip changed lat activity significantly with both feet down, and changed upper-trapezius activity with one foot down.¹ Both grips reached the very high range in the main back muscles, so use the one that feels stronger, or alternate them.

Elbows. In 28 adults, 14 men and 14 women, rowing on suspension straps, a high row and a row with the arms out to the sides brought the upper, middle and lower trapezius and the rear shoulder above 60% of a maximal contraction, while a low row reached 40 to 60% only in the middle trapezius, the lats and the rear shoulder.⁵ So pull with your elbows out, toward your upper chest, when you want the upper back and rear shoulders working hardest. Tucked, toward your lower ribs, is the standard row.

Where to do it: bar, Smith machine, straps or at home

If none of those are available, a dumbbell or backpack row is the same pulling job: the bodyweight workout uses a doorframe row.

Inverted row vs pull-up

They pull in different directions. The inverted row pulls toward your chest, a horizontal pull like any row; the pull-up pulls your body up to a bar overhead, a vertical pull like the lat pulldown. A week with both covers both directions.

The inverted row is easier to scale, which is why the pull-up page uses it as a step toward a first pull-up. In an eight-week trial, 30 physically inactive young men trained twice a week with assisted pull-ups, inverted rows, chin-ups and negatives, and all three groups added pull-up reps.⁶ Inverted rows were only one part of that program, so the trial doesn't show what they did on their own. The full approach is in how to do a pull-up.

The common faults, and a fix for each

• Hips sagging. Squeeze your glutes and keep the line from heels to head, as in a plank.
• Reaching with your chin. Pull your chest to the bar; your head stays in line with your body.
• Half reps. Go to straight arms at the bottom and to your chest at the top. If you can't, make the angle easier.
• Shrugging. Keep your shoulders down away from your ears as you pull.
• Dropping down. Lower under control; the way down is half the rep.
• Pulling through something that hurts. Sore muscles the next day are normal; a sharp or lasting hurt in your shoulders or elbows isn't. Stop, and see a doctor or a physical therapist.

Sets, reps and where it goes

• Three sets of 8 to 15, at an angle where the last two or three reps are hard, stopping a rep or two short. (How to judge reps left.) The American College of Sports Medicine's 2026 position stand, which covers healthy adults, advises at least two sets per exercise.⁷
• Use it as your row on an upper-body or pull day, or as the second row after a heavier one.
• Progress the angle first, then reps, then weight. (Progressive overload covers the options.)

If you'd rather not plan it alone

The inverted row is simple to set up; deciding how it fits next to your pull-ups, pulldowns and heavier rows is the part a page can't do. Coaching is the version where your workouts are built around the days you actually have, and a weekly call looks at the week you just had and rebuilds the next one. Coaching to build muscle explains how that works, and here's how to apply. Otherwise: at your next upper-body session, set a bar at hip height, do three sets of inverted rows, and write down the bar height and the reps.