Pendlay row: dead stop, torso parallel, every rep
Also called: dead-stop barbell row, pendlay barbell row. All one movement, one page.
Short answer
A barbell row where the bar resets on the floor every single rep and your torso stays parallel to the ground.
- Pattern
- Horizontal pull
- Equipment
- Barbell · Plates
- Usual bar
- 45 lb / 20.4 kgOhio Power Bar, 45 lb
Pendlay row setup
- 01Bar on the floor over mid-foot.
- 02Hinge until your torso is roughly parallel to the floor. It stays there.
- 03Grip just outside your legs, back flat.
How to do a Pendlay row
- 01Pull explosively from a dead stop to your lower chest.
- 02Lower the bar all the way back to the floor.
- 03Reset your brace, then pull again.
How to load the bar for the Pendlay row
Before the pendlay row is a rep, it is a number on the bar. Plates go on in pairs, one per sleeve, and the bar itself is part of the total — a 45 lb bar with a 45 on each side is 135 lb, not 90. This animation walks the three loads you will meet most often.
Need a different number? Run it through the plate math calculator.
Pendlay row video demonstration
Reading the steps only gets you so far, and a render cannot show you what a human body does under a bar. This is the pendlay row demonstrated by a coach, not by us — we did not make this video, we do not host it, and we do not earn anything from it.
Demonstration
Pendlay Row | Olympic Weightlifting Exercise Library
Catalyst Athletics
Loads from YouTube when you press play. Nothing is requested from YouTube before then.
Common Pendlay row errors
- Standing up out of the parallel position — the entire point of the lift is that you do not.
- Bouncing the bar off the floor rather than resetting.
Pendlay row: muscles worked
Primary
- Latissimus dorsi
- Middle trapezius
- Rhomboids
Secondary
- Posterior deltoid
- Biceps brachii
- Erector spinae (isometric)
How we know: Standard functional anatomy — which joints move and which muscles cross them. Convention and reasoning, not a measured EMG result.
Pendlay row: what the evidence does and does not say
No EMG source specific to the Pendlay row was located. The muscle list is standard functional anatomy, and it is the same musculature as the standard barbell row — what changes is the strictness of the position and the dead stop between reps.
How to program the Pendlay row
Training convention: 4-5 sets of 3-8, treated more like a strength lift than a bodybuilding row.
Rep ranges are training convention. They are what most lifters and coaches do, not a measured result, and nothing on this page is medical advice.
Run the numbers
Knowing the lift is half of it. The other half is loading the bar correctly.
Questions people actually ask
▶What is the difference between a Pendlay row and a barbell row?
Two things. The Pendlay row keeps your torso parallel to the floor and does not let it rise, and the bar returns to the floor for a dead stop on every rep instead of hanging at arm’s length.
▶Should the bar bounce off the floor on a Pendlay row?
No. Reset. The dead stop is the point of the lift — bouncing gives you back the momentum the movement was designed to remove.
▶How should I program Pendlay rows?
Training convention treats it more like a strength lift than a bodybuilding row: 4 to 5 sets of 3 to 8, pulled explosively from the floor.
The kit this lift needs
Straight from this movement’s own equipment list. Each page below compares published specs across every model we have verified — no prices, no ratings, nothing we claim to have tested.
Same pattern, different lift
Sources
No study is cited for this movement because none was verified for it. The description above is mechanical instruction and standard functional anatomy. We would rather tell you the shelf is empty than put something on it.
How this page is built and what we will and will not claim: read the methodology.