How to Do the Upright Row

How to do it

1. Stand with feet roughly hip-width apart, grip the barbell with an overhand (pronated) grip slightly narrower than shoulder-width, and let the bar hang at arm's length against your upper thighs.
2. Before the first rep, pull your shoulders back and down slightly, brace your core, and keep your chest tall so the bar has a clean vertical path in front of your body.
3. Initiate the pull by driving your elbows upward and outward, not by curling your wrists or shrugging first. The elbows lead the entire movement.
4. Pull the bar straight up along your torso, keeping it close to your body the whole way. The bar should skim past your lower chest and upper abdomen on the way up.
5. Continue pulling until your elbows reach roughly chin height or just above, at which point your upper arms should be close to parallel with the floor and your side delts are fully contracted.
6. Pause for a brief moment at the top with control rather than letting momentum bounce the bar up. The traps should feel fully engaged at this peak position.
7. Lower the bar under control back to the starting position at your thighs, resisting the descent rather than dropping the weight. A controlled negative builds more muscle than a free fall.
8. Reset your brace and posture at the bottom before initiating the next rep, especially if using heavier loads where technique tends to erode under fatigue.

Form cues

• Elbows drive up first, bar just follows.
• Keep the bar within an inch of your body the whole way.
• Think wide elbows, not high hands.
• Chest stays tall. Don't round into the pull.
• Pause at the top. Don't bounce out of it.

Common mistakes

• Using too narrow a grip: a grip that is too close to center shifts the pull more toward the front delts and biceps and takes the side delts out of the equation. Moving to a slightly wider grip, still inside shoulder-width, puts the side delts back in the driver's seat.
• Letting the elbows drop below the hands at the top: if your wrists finish higher than your elbows, you have turned the movement into an upward curl rather than a true upright row. The elbows must stay the highest point throughout the lift.
• Leaning back to muscle the bar up: swinging the torso back to complete the rep is a sign the load is too heavy. It shifts stress onto the lower back and removes the vertical pulling demand from the shoulders and traps entirely. Drop the weight and keep the torso stationary.
• Pulling the bar away from the body: letting the bar drift forward creates a longer moment arm, puts the shoulder in a mechanically weaker position, and makes the lift significantly harder without adding useful stimulus. Keep the bar dragging up the front of your shirt.
• Jerking the bar off the thighs: starting with a yank rather than a controlled initiation tends to cause the lower back to flex into the pull and lets momentum do the first third of the rep. Start each rep with deliberate, smooth acceleration.

Why do the Upright Row?

• The side delts are notoriously hard to load with heavy compound pulling, and the upright row is one of the rare multi-joint movements that places meaningful mechanical tension on them through a full range of motion rather than the short arc of a lateral raise.
• The traps get trained through scapular elevation under load, which carries over to Olympic lifting movements like the clean and the snatch where trap strength through elevation matters for bar speed.
• Training two major upper-body muscles with one barbell movement makes it efficient for programs where shoulder volume needs to be accumulated without adding many extra exercises.
• The shared loading of the side delts and traps builds the visual width of the upper body across both the shoulder cap and the upper back ridge, which contributes to the appearance of a broader frame from both the front and the rear.

Upright Row variations

Wide-Grip Barbell Upright Row

Taking the grip out closer to shoulder-width reduces the range of motion slightly but puts the side delts in a more favorable pulling angle, making this a good starting point for lifters who find the standard grip uncomfortable.

Dumbbell Upright Row

Dumbbells allow each arm to travel its own natural arc rather than being locked into the bar's fixed path, which can feel more comfortable for lifters whose shoulder anatomy makes the barbell version awkward.

Cable Upright Row

The cable keeps constant tension on the side delts and traps throughout the entire range of motion, including the bottom where a barbell loses tension, making it a useful progression for adding more time under tension.

Behind-the-Back Barbell Upright Row

Performed with the bar behind the hips rather than in front, this variation shifts the line of pull and is typically used by more experienced lifters looking for a novel stimulus on the traps.

How to program it

The upright row tends to appear as an accessory movement in upper-body or shoulder-focused sessions, typically placed after heavier pressing work when the side delts and traps have already been warmed up but are not yet fatigued to failure. Many lifters use it in the 8 to 15 rep range, where enough volume accumulates to drive hypertrophy in both the side delts and traps without requiring loads so heavy that technique breaks down. Some strength athletes include it in lower rep ranges, around 4 to 6, as a supplemental trap-builder alongside Olympic lifting accessory work. It almost always lands in the middle or back half of a session rather than first, since it is rarely the primary strength movement.

Upright Row alternatives

Lateral Raise

Dumbbell · Isolation

Cable Lateral Raise

Cable · Isolation

Dumbbell Shrugs

Dumbbell · Isolation

Barbell Shrugs

Barbell · Isolation

Arnold Press

Dumbbell · Compound

Dumbbell Shoulder Press

Dumbbell · Compound