Seated cable row

Why it's here

The seated cable row pulls horizontally, toward the body, where the pulldown pulls from overhead, and you sit supported with your feet braced on a plate. Its evidence is shared with the pulldown: in eight weeks of training whose only pulling exercises were the seated row and the lat pulldown, muscle fibres sampled from the lats grew ^[1]. No trial we found tested the seated row on its own.

The evidence

• Training study Eighteen young men with no regular resistance training for at least two years trained for eight weeks with six exercises, of which the seated row and the lat pulldown were the only pulling exercises. Muscle fibres taken from the lats grew. The trial cannot say how much each of the two exercises contributed ^[1].

How to do it

1. Sit with your feet against the plate and your knees slightly bent, and take the handle with your arms straight.
2. Sit tall and pull the handle to your lower ribs, bringing your shoulder blades together.
3. Let your arms straighten under control until you feel your shoulder blades spread, without rounding your lower back, then pull again.

Stop an exercise that causes significant or unusual pain and have it assessed. This page describes the movement; it is not rehabilitation advice.

Making it harder over time

This is a moderate compound exercise in the Progressive Overload Calculator, which adds weight in steps of 2.5%–5% once every set reaches the top of your rep range, and adds reps until then.

Alternatives

• Lat pulldown — The pull-up's movement at any load you choose. Eight weeks of it raised pulldown strength by over a quarter and more than doubled pull-ups.
• Pull-up — Needs only a bar. In trained men, stopping each set while reps were still quick built more pull-up strength than grinding on.