Hey how’s it going? It’s Lee Hayward here from leehayward.com. And in this video clip, I'm going to show you some of my favorite trep exercises to really help thicken off your shoulder and your upper back. So the first thing we’re going to do and to start thins off is the basic barbell shrug. Now chances are, this is no unique exercise. You’re probably already doing this in your workouts right now. But the one thing that I like to do with this to make it a big unique and eve more effective for muscle growth is the way that I structure my strength and reps. I will start off light and a pyramid my way up and then once I reach my peak weight, I will pyramid my way back down. So just to out some real numbers here, I’ll probably start off with say like a 135 and do 30 reps. Then I’ll try and go with 185 and so a set for 20 reps and then may go you know, 225 and do a set for 15 reps, 275 maybe 10 to 15 reps. 350 for probably 10 and then work my way back down again. And I find that that really hits the slow twist muscle fibers as well as some of the faster twist muscle fibers and they’ll help give you a complete development throughout your shoulders.
This right here is the regular barbell shrug and you noticed that I'm using an overhand grip on the bar and just really shrugging away. Anytime you do a shrug variation, there is not a whole lot of range of motion here. The main thing is that you out a stress on the muscles. So again, just focus on squeezing the muscles here rather than really worrying about the big range of motion. All right so the Patricia is doing her set here now. And you can really exercise the muscles of her upper back work and as she’s doing the shrug. And this is a critical exercise because it’s going to build up these muscles in your upper back. And this is going to help carry over into all your major exercises. for example, anytime you do a bench press, your upper back is planted right on the bench, anytime you do squats, the bar is resting across your upper back. Anytime you do dead lifts, you know strong is going to help you finish off that lift and lock at the weight.
So again, the traps are such a critical muscle group and it’s going to carry over into all your major lifts. In here, I'm doing the pine to back shrug and this is just a different variation. But I find that it gives you a really strong peak contraction in the upper back. I mean even though it’s not a huge range of motion, your traps will contract hard when you do the behind the back shrug variation.
[Demonstration]
All right so now we’re going to throw in a little workout blooper. As you can see, I was doing the behind the back shrug and right here, Trish is going to attempts it but I think you can kind of see if you're watching the video here that this is going to be a bit of a challenge. Al right, so normally myself and Trish, we like to workout set for set on this one. You know when we’re doing any workouts. We go set for set in the gym and do all the same exercises. But, sometimes women can’t do the exact same exercise as men. As you’ll notice now with this behind the back shrug variation, I have to problem doing it but sometimes if you have too much jump in the trucks, sort of peak. it might be a little but painful to you know get that range of motion in there. So anyway I just wanted to point that out. If you find this exercise uncomfortable or you know you can’t do it for whatever reasons, then you can do other variations like a dumbbell shrug variation that we’re going to show you right now.
We’re going to move on and do some dumbbell shrugs and it just gives you another variation, a bit more freedom of movement with you hand positions. You noticed that I'm using lifting straps here just to help reinforce my grip. I found that after doing the barbell shrugs and the pine to back shrugs, my grip is a bit fatigued so the straps can help me with. Just hold on to the weights and really focus on training the traps rather than worrying about loosing your grip. And again, you’ll notice here that there is not a he range of motion. Like is ay, the main thing when doing any shrug variation is just to really squeeze the muscles. I mean lift up as high as you can. Squeeze it for a split second there and that will fully work the traps. It’s not a huge range of motion.
[Demonstration]
See, Trish is getting set up with the reverse side as well. You really see this working on Trish now because we’ll she’s tried to down up, going to the six weeks from her show. See all the muscles in her traps here and the upper back, great job.
[Demonstration]
And again, the cool thing about the dumbbells is your hands are facing your sides here, facing forward, facing your sides rather than facing you know in a straight line as they are when you're grabbing a barbell. So it just heads to the traps from a different angle. And it also forces the left and the right sides, to handle an equal workout.
Hey so next trap exercise I'm going to show you is a unique that you’ve probably never seen before but it’s a great one for hitting the trap and really getting a good peak c contraction throughout your whole traps and upper back. Now what we’re going to use here for this is the standing calf raise machine. Now you’re probably—let’s get right here at a better angle. I know that you’ve used a calf raise machine before for working your calves but now as you can see, we’re just going to use it. For a shrug machine, so Patricia is standing on the calf quad, with her feet flat. So I mean there’s no need to ah g your toes over the edge like you're doing calves. All right, she’s just going to shrug her shoulders and lift the pad up as high as she can. And we really see the traps working here. Great job!
And this is a great exercise and the cool thing about it is your grip doesn’t come into play here. So I mean if you wanted to start off with the regular shrugs, you know the barbell and the dumbbells and stuff like that, and then you can finish off with this because your grip is not a limiting factor with this one. So the great finisher, you can just focus on squeezing out traps.
The final exercise for a trap workout that I'm going to show you is the up rope roll. It’s a great exercise for building up the delts and the entire upper back. The way I like to do the up rope rolls is I use a table and a rope attachment. I find that hits the traps in the upper back from a unique angle and the fact that I'm using a rope places less stress on the wrist joint. If you’ve done up rope rolls which is like a barbell, it places a lot of stress on the wrist. I mean you're grabbing a barb and as you roll up, you can see your wrists are [pretty caught in a weird angle here. But when you use a rope, you have more freedom in movement in your wrist, a more natural movement. And I find that you can just really focus on working the muscles without excess stress on the joints.
So again, I’d set up here the rope from the low pulley cable.
[Demonstration]
Again, the cool thing with the rope, you can pull it right up. Next, you pull it apart at the top and get a better range of motion than you would if you're using the bar. And you cans exercise all the muscles in the upper back fully contracted here. So this is great. It hits the delts, you know the sides delts, your rear delts as well as your traps. And the cool thing too is where you’re using the low pulley cable. As you're pulling it up on a sleight angle and it gives you a different type of resistance than if you're suing free weight. Cool, great job!
All fright so if you’d like to get some more killer workouts like that, be sure to go check out my total fitness body building DVD training series. Let’s say I've got a bunch of different DVD programs available for different levels. So there’s DVDs there if you're a beginner just starting off or you're an advanced trainer who’s looking to take the physique to the next level, we got something for you. So again, go check out the link that’s at the bottom of the screen and look into the total fitness body building DVDs. Take care.
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