When constraints are useful 

Your hands are tools. They can perform surgery, handle a knife or scissors with skill, swing a racket, punch hard and everything in between.

This capacity to produce plenty of force as well as the most delicate movement is a function of having muscles that are small and delicate like in the fingers or big and strong muscles like in the upper back. 

One of the key things your upper back does is a category of movement called pulling. Think of pulling a pail of water out of a well. Or climbing a rock face at your local gym. Rowing a boat. Even carrying bags and objects involve the same muscles. Granted we don’t do these moves everyday. But when these capacities exist and the muscles are strong, your ability to sit all day and work or hold your neck in position is also improved. 

We can mimic and practice pulling in the gym using rowing, pull ups, chin ups, inverted row and pulleys. 

We built a machine for rowing. Normally, people hinge and row. You drive your hips back, position your back parallel to the floor and pull an object towards your chest without shrugging or curling too much. 

Holding this position of the back parallel to the floor limits the row to a great degree. It’s a tough position to sustain.

Enter the seal row bench. I have no idea who first came up with this unit. But everyone now makes one of these. 

You lie on the bench. There’s a bar that you unrack and row as Shankar is doing  in the video. 

With the entire torso and body weight supported by the bench, the focus is on the row and only the row. 

The details: 

The bench is almost 4 feet from the floor. This allows for the arms to completely straighten at the bottom without the weight touching the floor.

The bar has handles that are positioned 8 inches above the main bar where the load is and more can be added. That lets Shankar pull the weight much deeper and higher than he would if the bar made contact earlier. This means the muscle works harder and the joint works through a greater range of motion. 

While the seal row unit is similar to what’s available in the market. The bar Shankar is using is a derivative of our neutral grip axle bar we made in December 2023. In my experience, rowing with hands positioned as if to clap is more comfortable and allows you to engage your upper back more. 

Both made in Madras. The unit features 55 percent scrap stainless steel.