Picking exercises in your training programme can be an arduous and confusing task. Should you stick to the basics? Or should you fill your training with some of the new and exciting exercises plastered all over the internet?

The answer is heavily dependent on your goals, but a mixture of the basics and unique looking exercises can be a great way to build a well-rounded training programme.

Our recommendation is to create a bit of a toolbox of exercises for training various muscle groups and movements. In this toolbox, you may have your key exercises that stay in your programme all the time and other exercises that are periodically rotated in and out.

Whether a key exercise, or one you rotate in and out, the Meadows row is a great addition to your upper back toolbox.

How To Perform a Meadows Row?

A Meadows row is a unilateral horizontal pulling exercise using a barbell landmine setup. It comes with unique benefits versus other upper back exercises, making it a great exercise for your upper back toolbox.

• Stand perpendicular to a barbell Landmine Attachment.

• Stagger your feet so your leg furthest from the bar is forward and leg closest is back.

• Reach straight down to the bar with your closer arm, hinging down as you do so.

• Pull your elbow your torso, getting as much range of motion as possible.

• Slowly lower back down to complete a rep.

• Repeat for the desired number of reps before turning around and swapping arms.

What Muscles Does a Meadows Row Work?

Upper Back - lats, rhomboids, traps.

Arms - biceps.

Lower Back - erector spinae.

Benefits of a Meadows Row

Increased Range of Motion

Typical barbell rows are great for producing lots of force, but the range of motion is limited by the barbell touching the torso and the bilateral grip stopping the torso rotating, resulting in a limited range of motion. In a Meadows Row, the arced motion of the landmine rotates the torso on the way down to get a bigger stretch of the lats and the single arm load allows you to get the weight behind your torso for more concentric range of motion.

Can Reduce Side-to-Side Imbalances

Unilateral exercises like the meadows row are a great way to reduce side to side strength imbalances, which may be holding your performance back elsewhere, because two strong sides are better than one.

Easily Loadable

Meadows rows use a Barbell which means that they can be loaded with as many Weight Plates as you can fit on the bar, allowing you to improve your horizontal pulling strength greatly, without being limited by the weight of dumbbells available to you.

You can train high intensity and low reps or lower intensity with higher reps, or a mixture of the two. When the weight gets heavy, consider using grip straps too, so that you aren’t limited by grip strength, unless grip strength is a particular focus of your training.

If your back training has become stagnant, try adding meadows rows into your training rotation to train your back through a large range of motion, which is great for hypertrophy and mobility, and to reduce side to side imbalances.

For more content, follow us on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and on our official Mirafit Facebook page.

Tags: Equipment > Bars and Weight Plates ; Equipment > Landmines ; Exercise Type > Strength