Seated cable row

What it is

Sit at the machine with your feet on the platform, knees softly bent. Take the handle and sit up tall with your arms straight and your shoulder blades allowed to travel forward.

Pull the handle to your lower ribs, elbows travelling back close to your body, shoulder blades drawing together. Return under control, letting the blades travel forward again at the end.

Your torso stays roughly upright throughout. A small amount of movement is normal; rocking is not.

What it demands

Pulling strength at a chosen load, from latissimus dorsi, the rhomboids, middle trapezius and the elbow flexors.

Enough hamstring length to sit upright with the legs out in front. This surprises people — if you find yourself forced into a rounded lower back just sitting in the machine, that is a hamstring limit, and bending the knees more fixes it.

Very little from the trunk compared with a barbell row, because you are seated and braced against a platform.

What usually goes wrong

Rocking. The torso swings back on the pull and forward on the return. It is the defining error here and it converts the movement into a poor hinge.

Rounding forward at the front of each repetition. Letting the shoulder blades travel is correct; letting the lower back round is not.

Short range at the front. Arms straighten fully; blades come forward.

Shrugging. Shoulders stay down as the handle arrives.

Where it sits

The horizontal counterpart to the lat pulldown, and the same virtue: real load, no back-position demand, nothing to set up.

That makes it the easiest place to train horizontal pulling heavily, and the natural step between the band row and the barbell row — which adds the substantial demand of holding a hinge for the whole set.