Dumbbell Lawn Mower: How to and Exercise Guide

July 20, 2023

The dumbbell lawn mower is a great exercise for correcting back and biceps muscle imbalances.

The dumbbell lawn mower, like renegade rows, is an effective horizontal pulling exercise that engages your back and biceps. This routine incorporates five joint actions, essential for promoting good posture and developing upper body strength. You only need a single dumbbell and a bench or chair to perform this exercise easily.

Bodybuilders looking for power and strength on their backside should consider adding the dumbbell lawn mower to their training. It works for beginners and advanced athletes; beginners must start with light weights.

The dumbbell lawn mower has many benefits, which we’ll cover below. However, doing this exercise with the wrong form can put you at risk of shoulder and back injury. Check out this guide for answers to frequently asked questions about dumbbell lawn mowers, the correct way to do it, and alternatives you can also try.

Technique and Muscles Used

The dumbbell lawn mower is a compound exercise that targets your back, shoulders, arms, and core. It recruits muscles like lats, rhomboids, biceps, traps, forearms, and abs. This exercise helps you work your lats and upper back while recruiting your core and lower back for stability.

Note that the dumbbell lawn mower doesn’t let you lift as much weight as the barbell row. However, it lets you load each side one at a time to isolate the muscles specifically. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to do this exercise in proper form to maximize your gains.

Prepare your support (bench) and choose the appropriate dumbbell size. Start with lower weights if you are at the beginner level.
Stand behind your bench and put your right hand on it for support.
Bend your right knee to 90 degrees and put it on your support while ensuring your left body has no contact with it. This will also help your joints sufficiently.
Grab your dumbbell with your left hand and suspend it. Ensure that your arm stays straight while slightly bending your left knee. Press your foot firmly on the floor for balance; this is your starting position.
Pull your dumbbell towards your chest and squeeze your shoulder blades at the movement’s top. Your elbow should be past your torso with the dumbbell around your hips. (Breathe in while rowing to help with control and contractions.)
Breathe out while slowly controlling and lowering your dumbbell back to the starting position to complete the rep.
Repeat for the desired number of reps, switch sides, and start again.

Benefits

The dumbbell lawn mower engages your back and arms. This study shows that this exercise is especially great for building elbow extensors like the biceps and brachioradialis (1). Below are other important benefits of this routine.

Build and Strengthen Back Muscles

The dumbbell lawn mower is a great way to build strength, power, and size in your back. By placing your free arm on your support, you’ll be better able to focus on contracting your muscles and get more results. Strengthening your back muscles also improves your posture.

Increases Stamina and Grip Strength

This exercise works on your muscular endurance, which helps to improve stamina when lifting weights. This is because it’s great for lighter weight and higher reps. Plus, it improves your grip strength. Strong muscular endurance and good grip strength help with daily activities like lifting or carrying objects at home or work.

Prevent Back and Shoulder Injury

The dumbbell lawn mower recruits your serratus anterior, stabilizing and moving your scapula. Strong scapula muscles help to prevent shoulder injury. Since this exercise also strengthens your back muscles, it prevents back injuries.

Tone Your Waist

This exercise engages your core and so tones your midsection. The bent-over position tasks your abs to keep your back almost parallel to the floor. You also keep your chest square during this routine, which places a demand on your obliques.

Fix Muscle Imbalances

Dumbbell lawnmowers are a unilateral exercise. As a result of lifting with one arm and one side of your body, you can fix any imbalances. With bilateral exercises, the stronger arm usually picks up the slack without you noticing, causing one side to be stronger than the other.

Strengthen Both Arms

Research shows that while exercising with one arm, your other arm also gets a workout, effectively strengthening both arms (2). Using your bench as a stabilizer also means lifting more, strengthening both arms, and increasing muscle growth in your back and biceps muscles.

Carryover to Deadlifts, Squats, and Bench Presses

Dumbbell lawnmowers target the muscles on your back, forearm, and arms. This carries over to lat pulldowns and pull-ups, as those muscles assist in those routines. The stronger those muscles get, the better your form for the exercises will be.

Dumbbell Lawn Mower Alternatives

There are many other routines that you can use to strengthen your back muscles. They could use different equipment and require different skill levels. Below are some great dumbbell lawn mower alternatives.

Bent Over Barbell Row

This standard exercise is great for your back and improves your pulling performance. Doing the bent over barbell row with a barbell allows you to use heavier loads and increases your strength.

Seated Cable Row

The seated cable row is also a horizontal pulling movement that is great for your back. This routine has the added advantage of the cable machine keeping constant tension on your back during each rep.

Renegade Row

Engage your back, core, and entire body with the renegade row. This is not a beginner exercise since it requires good stability and stamina. It’s done in the plank position while alternating pulling dumbbells with both arms from the ground.

Inverted Row

Our last alternative is a bodyweight exercise that is also great for your upper body muscles. You do an inverted row by pulling your body to the Smith machine or squat rack. It’s not a unilateral movement that helps with imbalances like renegade rows but requires brute upper body strength.

FAQs

What does dumbbell lawn mowers work?

Dumbbell lawn mowers work the muscles of your back, core, and biceps. For a better breakdown, please check the guide above.

What is the lawn mower exercise called?

Other names for the dumbbell lawn mower are the single-arm dumbbell row and one-arm dumbbell row.

Are lawnmowers a good exercise?

Lawnmowers are a good exercise because they work multiple muscle groups and only require minimal equipment (dumbbell and bench). Renegade rows are a good alternative.

References

Mannarino, P., Matta, T., Lima, J., Simão, R., & Freitas de Salles, B. (2021). Single-Joint Exercise Results in Higher Hypertrophy of Elbow Flexors Than Multijoint Exercise. Journal of strength and conditioning research, 35(10), 2677–2681. https://doi.org/10.1519/JSC.0000000000003234
Valdes, O., Ramirez, C., Perez, F., Garcia-Vicencio, S., Nosaka, K., & Penailillo, L. (2021). Contralateral effects of eccentric resistance training on immobilized arm. Scandinavian journal of medicine & science in sports, 31(1), 76–90. https://doi.org/10.1111/sms.13821