🏋️ Pendlay Row Form Guide
Explosive back power from a dead stop.
SportsReflector AI analyzes your Pendlay Row form by tracking key body landmarks such as the hips, knees, shoulders, and elbows. We monitor your torso angle relative to the floor, hip hinge depth, and the bar path to ensure an explosive, controlled lift. Metrics tracked include hip angle at the start, torso angle consistency, and elbow flexion during the pull.
Primary Muscles
Lats
Equipment
Barbell, Weight Plates
AI Score Categories
6 metrics tracked
What AI Analyzes in Your Pendlay Row
SportsReflector tracks 6 key metrics to generate your 0–100 form score.
AI Form Score
Every Pendlay Row session gets an overall form score plus category-level scoring for each metric above.
4 Pendlay Row Mistakes AI Catches
These are the most common Pendlay Row form errors — and the ones most likely to cause injury or limit your progress.
Rounding the lower back, especially during the setup or initial pull, places excessive shear stress on the lumbar spine. This significantly increases the risk of disc herniation and chronic lower back pain, as the spinal erectors are compromised and unable to maintain a neutral position.
Fix: Maintain a rigid, neutral spine throughout the entire movement. Focus on bracing your core and initiating the hinge from your hips, keeping your chest up and shoulders pulled back. Ensure your torso remains parallel or slightly above parallel to the floor.
Not hinging adequately at the hips means the torso is too upright, reducing the leverage for the lats and shifting the load to the lower back and biceps. This diminishes the intended back activation and can lead to a less powerful, less effective pull, and potential lower back strain.
Fix: Push your hips back as if closing a car door with your glutes, allowing your torso to come down to a position roughly parallel to the floor. Your knees should have a slight bend, but the primary movement should be at the hips.
Bouncing the weight off the floor or using excessive body English to initiate the pull reduces the time under tension for the target muscles and compromises the explosive, dead-stop nature of the Pendlay Row. This diminishes strength gains and can lead to uncontrolled movements that increase injury risk.
Fix: Each rep must start from a complete dead stop on the floor. Focus on an explosive pull using your back muscles, then control the eccentric (lowering) phase back to the floor without bouncing.
Allowing the elbows to flare wide during the pull shifts emphasis from the lats and rhomboids to the posterior deltoids and upper traps. This reduces the primary back muscle activation and can place undue stress on the shoulder joint, potentially leading to impingement or rotator cuff issues.
Fix: Keep your elbows relatively tucked, driving them towards your hips or slightly behind your torso. Imagine pulling the bar to your sternum or upper abdomen, squeezing your shoulder blades together at the top.
Muscles Worked
Get Your Pendlay Row Form Score
Record your Pendlay Row on your iPhone and get an instant 0–100 AI form score with specific corrections for every mistake above.
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