Band row

What it is

Anchor a band at roughly waist height, or loop it around your feet while seated on the floor. Take an end in each hand and step back until there is real tension with your arms straight.

Pull your hands towards your lower ribs, elbows travelling back close to your body, shoulder blades drawing together. Return until your arms are straight and your shoulder blades have come forward again.

Distance from the anchor is the dial: further back is harder.

What it demands

Pulling strength at whatever tension you set, and enough trunk control to stay upright rather than being pulled forward.

Scapular movement through a real range — the shoulder blades should travel forward at the start of each repetition and back at the end, not stay locked.

What usually goes wrong

Leaning back to pull. The torso rocks backwards and the legs and hips do the work. Stay vertical and let the arms and back move.

Short range at the front. Not letting the arms straighten between repetitions. As with every pull, the far end of the range is where it quietly gets shorter.

Rowing to the chest. Elbows go back past the ribs towards the hips.

A band with no tension at the start. If it is slack at the front of the movement, half the range is doing nothing. Step back further.

Where it sits

Pulling is the hardest pattern to equip at home — pressing needs only the floor, but pulling needs something to pull against. This is the cheapest solution to that, and it is why a band is arguably the highest-value piece of equipment a beginner can own.

Its limit is the band: resistance is capped and it is hardest at the end rather than the start. When that becomes the constraint, the inverted row scales by body angle and the single-arm dumbbell row scales by weight.