Build Your Back Like You Never Did Before

Seal Row Variations for a Freaky Lower Back

The seal row is a challenge that requires you to use a full range and stops cheating. Horizontalize your upper back, and your lats will explode.

Horizontal is a great way to build your back

Do the seal row to strengthen your upper back and delts like never before. This will reduce lower back strain and keep you from cheating by using momentum.

It’s a horizontal angle that blasts your mid back and lats. This is uncommon. This is rare. Most lifters will do bent-over rows with different degrees of a straight torso. While this is fine, it reduces the distance that a weight must travel. It’s good for the ego, but it doesn’t do much for the development of your upper back. While it’s not bad to use a slightly angled torso, if that’s the only position you’re in while rowing, you’re missing out on some upper-back gains.

Here are some secondary and additional seal rows and bonuses that take advantage in the same high-bench prone position.

Variations in the Primary Seal Row

1. Barbell

Take a broad, shoulder-width grip on the bar and pull it towards your abdominal. Keep your neck straight and your lower body relaxed. Start by pulling with your shoulders and then move your elbows backwards. To get an extra isometric advantage, push the bar against a bench. Contract your upper back and lats.

2. Snatch Grip

Take a broad grip and hold the bar until it reaches your sternum. This will cause a lot of strain on your upper back. Use lifting straps if you have to.

3. Underhand

Supinate, palms-up grip. Pull the bar towards your lower abdomen. You’ll feel this more so in your lats and biceps.

4. Dumbbell

Try to keep your dumbbells in neutral grip and imagine driving your elbows towards the ceiling. Because you can pull the weights from the bench, dumbbells offer greater motion and contraction. Also, you can use trap bars and kettlebells. Swiss bars.

Variations on Accessory Seal Row

5. Face-Pulling Dumbbells

You can use an overhand grip to pull the weights up high to your neck or chest. This will work your upper back. You can increase your reps by lifting more weight. This is a great option if you don’t have access to a cable stack. If you can’t hold the contraction for at least a second, the weight’s probably too heavy.

6. From dumbbells to hip

Instead of driving your elbows behind your head, try pulling your fists toward your hips. These can be described as a cross between a row of rows and a series. straight-arm pulldown. They’ll give you an intense contraction in the lats.

7. Barbell to Hip

These are the most extreme, finished position of a pullover. Keep your focus on pulling towards your beltline. When you reach the end position, your arms shouldn’t be straight or bent. Push the bar as hard against the bench as possible to increase contraction in your lats.

8. Accentuated Negative by Dumbbell

Use a neutral grip to drive your elbows back until your forearms meet the floor. As you lower your body back to the original position, imagine pushing the weights towards the floor. This is a powerful stimulus for developing your back.

Bonus Variations

9. Prone Dumbbell Shoulder Extension

The lats are responsible for extending your shoulder or bringing your arm behind you torso. For upper-body mobility, it’s important to maintain this range of motion. Keep your arms straight, your hands neutral and your dumbbells behind your back. Flex your lats and bend your elbows. You’ll feel this in your triceps as well.

10. Prone Dumbbell Rear Delt Raise

It’s common for lifters to do rear delt raises either chest-supported against an inclined bench or leaned forward at the hips while sitting at the end of a bench. Doing shoulder raises Keep your torso parallel to a flat surface and you will work your rear delts.

Sets and reps

• You can make the primary seal row variations heavier by doing 5 reps. Or, you can decrease the weight to do the same number of reps.
• Modest weights and medium-high rep brackets are ideal for accessory seal row variations.

“Wait, This Lift Isn’t New!”

Correct. Although it’s existed for some time, the seal row is becoming more commonplace. They can be found on specific benches, and they are even used in some military physical testing protocols.

This move has been called a variety of names including bench pulls and benches rows. In Bill Pearl’s classic glossary of strength, Keys to the Inner Universe, they were known as lying high-bench lat pull-ups.

It is important to remember that naming confusion aside, you should have a high-quality bench for upper-body training.

Always see the England rugby players do these but never been able to do them at a gym as there is no bench that’s raised enough (also I have long arms which makes that worse).

Although I would love one of those benches in the gym, it’s too short for me.

I love seal rows so I’m going to buy a bench with special features soon!

A good alternative to these would be the Seated Hammer Strength horizontal rows. The Torso is straight.

To increase the height of Seal Rows, my flat bench is propped on DIY pulling blocks. Because I have short arms, this helps.

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I’m in total agreement. A few of my friends were there. “let me show you how” Sessions with him started his weightlifting journey without any instruction. It seemed like he was just following the instructions in glossy magazines.
First, I had him buy a notebook.
Thankfully he new the value of back work and wasn’t a mirror lifter. His row form was terrible. He was like 80% of lifters. You can quickly gain momentum by dropping the torso and doing a series of reps.
I got him on the seated seat. Told him that if he didn’t feel his chest getting pulled into the pad, he wasn’t doing it right. It’s easier for beginners than the “I been liftin’ fer years” guys. You all know the type. You have been doing the same exercises for years with the same load and the same reps. There has been no noticeable change.

Flat bench, and chain extensions with latbar/whatever accessory handle you choose, would effectively replicate the same thing without creating a new piece of equipment. At least that’s what I’ve been doing for years. I’m 6’ 6” and I modify a lot of movements that would look stupid in the gym and less so at home.
I’m writing this solely from a safety perspective. As with everything else in this article.

It is crucial to hold at the end a pull. Also, the isometric part is important.

Literally the 50th time I’ve read this on T-Nation and I’ve forgotten it 49 times. I’m lazy.

Hopefully I don’t forget again.

One of these machines is in my gym:

This will make your stomach churn haha. It was my first time trying it. I used 3 plates of 45 lb to warm it up. For 10 rep sets, I managed 8 reps.

It is very similar to a seal row. Although the weight is moved on an arc which is quite different, the arc is set such that the center gravity of the weight being lifted is close to perpendicular with the angle of the pad.

I think it’s a great bonus to not have to carry too much weight. I loved the fact that I could use multiple plates with it. They gave me my ego. These days, I choose the ones that I have to lose the most weight.

A standard bench can be stacked on bumper plates.

They can be very costly. A standard comp bench is enough to stack on top of bumper plates. What was worth the expense for me was buying Rogue’s dedicated seal row bar, which has a 7 inch drop in the middle, allowing for full range of motion.

It’s been a minute since I’ve drooled over one online. I laughed at your comment about the price. I searched Google to prove you wrong.

Fuck dude. They have doubled their price since when? . It’s literally the most simple thing ever

I wish my gym had one.

Hahaha, I’m sure my gym would ban me for doing that. As soon as there’s more than one person squatting or deadlifting it’s pretty much a waiting game to use the plates.

I’m happy with my chest-supported rows, I don’t feel that I’m missing out on anything with them. Inverted rows are also a huge underrated and have many of the same benefits that seal rows. This is mainly due to angle.