Rearing The Rear Delts: Barbell Rear Delt Rows

Don’t ever neglect training your rear delt muscles! With a nice compound like the barbell rear delt row it’s a breeze!

You And Your Rear Delts

Are your rear delts up to speed? They should be, because they provide stability for many exercises where the shoulders work along: pull-ups, chin-ups, pullovers and more.

When I first tried pullovers, I couldn’t do them, because I got pain from my rear delts being too weak.

It doesn’t take genuity to realize not training that small, little muscle nobody ever much thinks about is a big mistake.

Rear Delt Rows

An excellent exercise to do it with are barbell rear delt rows. That compound trains the rear delts, but also takes the deeper shoulder muscles, the lateral delts, parts of the upper back and the forearms along for the ride:

If all that looks familiar to you, you are right. A couple of months ago I showed you the dumbbell version of this exercise. I prefer to do it with the barbell, because the movement seems more stable to me that way.

Strict Execution Is Everything!

I know, I already said it in the video and I say it about all exercises and tire you with my sermon: make sure your form is good.

But it’s especially true for rear delt rows. If you are using too much weight and can’t keep the arms at right angle to your body, you have turned your rear delt rows into lat rows. And that’s a lat / upper back exercise!