yea my traps are non existant, I was doing shrugs on my back days but the past few weeks I've been forgetting to do them since I've been ending off on face pulls. any other exercises to build them?

I don't do anything extraordinary for traps. They just naturally grow well for me with deadlifts and shrugs. Are your traps sore after back day?

Congrats on 15,000 posts in this thread boys.

I own that shit

skinny, may i join ze club :okay:

Can you go into the science of this for me?

I've seen ppl do it..and I've never done it before. I was conversing with my workout buddy about it and I figured that front squats would work the same and probably be better.

This is how I think of it, if you've taken physics, as you squat down, there is a force driving outward against your knee, because your feet naturally want to point outwards. There is also a force driving inward against your knee because you are consciously keeping your feet locked in an unnatural position as your squat. Both outward and inward forces increase as you add weight to your squat.

If you squat with your feet shoulder width, and feet pointed outward, these forces against your knee are not as strong as it's your natural movement.

Front squats in themselves are fine though, work the quads more.

I've tried singling out traps, but the only thing that's seemed to work for me are deadlifts, with a combination of losing weight.

Weight loss is probably more responsible for making them visible, however.

Do dem deads.
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Chalk and mixed grip are fine for Race to 3 Plate DL. I don't think you need straps for 3 plates though. What do you guys think?

Btw thanks Berz for posting typical split routines the other day. I was doing:

Legs/Back/abs
Shoulders/Tris/abs
Chest/Bi/abs

Switched today to:

Legs/Shoulders/abs
Back/Tri/abs
Chest/Bi/abs

Do you do shrugs with dumbbells or with a bar?

Back looks good! I've got an exercise for your traps, I'll show you next time I see you at the gym.

Just had a 1hr convo with ICBC....deff gonna go LIFT super heavy today....prolly without PWO cause I'm that pumped up with rage.

Bar. The bar brushes on your snake though.

LOL

That guy is pretty strong. He can probably do 100's no spot

If it hits your pecker try going behind the back

Oh at LEAST that.

HAHA! do the rollll

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&fe...&v=raDXQetQSaY

cant get the embed to work...

that's actually the safe thing to do

Well, first of all, you'd have no room to go down to max depth because your knees will jam your stomach. Full ROMm which promotes flexibility, full muscle recruitment, and for some, the bounce at the bottom, will allowing you to push the most amount of weight.
Feet and knees flared out 30 degrees is probably the most natural for the majority of the people out there and with squatting you want it to be a loaded natural human movement. Try going down as low as you can with your feet and knees forward and having someone give you a push compared to feet and knees pointed 30 degrees out. Which one is more stable?
Less stable knees when doing heavy weights, or even light weights, is prone to injury since you're always in a battle to stabilize your knee during the squat.
Nobody who squats heavy will use a Marilyn Monroe stance.

Since we're talking about shrugs, one of my straps snapped shrugging 8plates last night. POS $2 straps from china.

I've never understood guys who do massive amounts of weight for shrugs, and that's not a knock on you Jim. Everyone I see doing big weight shrugs with either DB's or a bar can't do full ROM reps or hold the squeeze at the top so I wonder if it's even doing anything for them. I do 1 plate, sometimes 1 and 25's, for 3 sets of 10 top and 3 sets of 10 rear; supersetted. Always gets awesome burn and I think my traps are pretty big and defined. Different strokes I guess....

A local, you can see him usually at Richmond Fitness World :troll:
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Honestly, I've only tried dumbbell shoulder shrugs. I try to hold the weight at the top on each rep.

Do you use an olympic bar or the shorter 25lb bar?

I go to that gym haha and I remember him taking that video. That was around the time I started getting into lifting as well...

I'm actually in that video...making a cameo :alonehappy:

He probably moved to some other gym though.

Seems so long ago...

I do it on the Smith machine for total isolation, like this:


I lean a bit more forward than shown in the video which works the top. To do the rear, in the same position, I squeeze my shoulder blades together. It only moves the bar like 2 inches but it directly works the part of the trap that runs down the center of your back.