A transmission/reception method and apparatus for a mobile communication system supporting uplink MIMO is provided. In the transmission method, a User Equipment (UE) transmits two transport blocks according to a predetermined number of layers and respective precoding indices, an evolve Node B (eNB) transmits, when one of the transport blocks is lost, a negative acknowledgement for the lost transport block, and the UE sets a precoding index for the lost transport block to a predetermined value to retransmit the lost transport block while maintaining the number of layers.