Hi Richy,

Apologies if you're already doing some or all of this.

With one arm rows the start position is, for example, your left hand and lower left leg on the bench, and the dumbbell in your right hand.

Right foot will be on the floor and your right knee will be slightly bent. From there, you have to work out the details yourself.

Your left hand should be somewhere underneath your left shoulder. I like to put mine a little in front of my shoulder as opposed to directly underneath it, if that makes sense. As long as your torso is parallel (or pretty close to it!) to the floor, you'll be ok.

As far as performance of the row is concerned, there are 2 main points.

1. The shoulder joint and the elbow joint that move, nothing else. Twisting at the torso does nothing more for the target muscles. Keep your torso parallel to the floor, facing the floor. If your left hand is on the bench, and your right hand is holding the dumbbell, then your right shoulder should NOT drop below the level of your left shoulder at any point during the set, other than when you pick the dumbbell up and put the dumbbell down at either end of the set.

If someone was stood at the end of the bench where your head was, they should be able to look at you and see that you shoulders are level with each other. Hopefully that makes sense.

2. When you pull the dumbbell, pull it back in an arc to your hip. Do NOT pull it straight up.

This is what made the biggest difference for me.

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Do not focus on your hand holding the dumbbell. Do NOT think about pulling the dumbbell upwards in a straight vertical line. Ignore your forearm, wrist, hand and the dumbbell. They all just sit there, and get pulled along for the ride.

Focus on your elbow instead.

The shoulder, elbow and wrist should all be in a straight line at the start.

Imagine that your upper arm is a hand on a clock.

Your shoulder is the point in the middle of the clock face where the hand is attached to the body of the clock.

Your elbow is the end of the hand the isn't attached to anything and points at the numbers on the clock face.

Your elbow, when you perform the rowing movement should move, from 6 o'clock, to either 10 o'clock or 2 o'clock. Basically to the point where it is just above parallel with the ground.

The shoulder is merely the central point around which the upper arm rotates, as far as it can, in a circular motion.

You could look at it like this.

Stand up and imagine that you are holding 2 dumbbells with your palms facing each other, and your arms straight out in front of you like they were in the top position of a dumbbell front raise.

Move your elbows down and back whilst keeping you forearms parallel to the floor. Keep moving your elbows until the are down by your side, directly underneath your shoulder. From there, keep moving them back as far as you can comfortably go.

That is basically the path of motion that your arms should take during the one arm row, but you've just done it whilst your torso is in a vertical position, rather than a horizontal position.