Trap Bar Shrug

Muscles involved:

Back and shoulders:

• Trapezius (mainly upper fibers and, to a lesser extent, middle fibers)
• Deltoid (mainly posterior head)

Forearms

• Flexors

Abdomen:

• Rectus abdominis (straight abdominal muscle)
• Obliquus externus abdominis (external oblique muscle)
• Obliquus internus abdominis (internal oblique muscle)
• Transversus abdominis (transverse abdominal muscle, ‘corset muscle’)

Lower back and spine:

• Erector spinae
• Lumbar multifidus
• Quadratus lumborum

1. Attach and secure the weight plates to the trap bar.
2. Stand in the middle of the trap bar with your feet hip-width or shoulder-width apart.
3. Bend through your legs and grasp the handles in the middle.
4. Stand upright as in a deadlift.

A few common mistakes when performing shrugs:

• Bending the arms: You are training the trapezius. These muscles are solely responsible for pulling the shoulder blades upward, backward, and/or downward. By bending your arms and pulling the bar higher, you are actually combining two exercises: shrugs and upright rows. The problem is that during upright rows, the shoulder muscles have to do more work than the trapezius. This means you have to adjust the weight and number of repetitions to the capacity of the shoulders, while the trapezius can perform more work.
• Rolling the shoulders: You regularly see people rolling their shoulders backward at the top of the movement (or forward in behind-the-back shrugs). This adds nothing to the effectiveness of the movement! Gravity pulls the weight downward, not backward or forward. You therefore add no resistance. When rolling forward in behind-the-back shrugs, it would not matter if there were resistance in that direction anyway. Pulling the shoulders forward is not a function of the trapezius. Besides making the exercise no more effective, it also increases the risk of injury. Keep it simple: Straight up and straight down.
• Bending forward: Protect your spine by remaining upright instead of bending over the bar.
• Avoid spinal hyperextension: Do not lean too far backward either, and thereby avoid unnecessary pressure on the spinal discs.
• Raise the shoulder blades instead of lowering the head: The range of motion of shrugs is already short; do not make it unnecessarily shorter. This also prevents unnecessary neck discomfort.

A few tips:

The trapezius is a relatively strong muscle, partly because of the short range of motion it has to perform. This means it can soon be performed with fairly heavy weights.

• Therefore, use straps: Using so-called straps, bands that you can wrap around your wrists and the barbell (or dumbbell), may quickly prove necessary. The ability of the fingers to hold the barbell can often be lower than the ability of the trapezius to raise the bar. The fingers may give out while the trapezius could still perform more repetitions.
• Optionally use a weightlifting belt to protect the spine. The potentially heavy weight used can create high pressure on the spine.
• Start from an easy point: Place the barbell at a point just below the lowest point of the exercise’s range of motion (as described). Avoid having to start and finish with a heavy deadlift.

In front of, beside, or behind the body?

Shrugs with a barbell can be performed in front of, beside, or behind the body. There appears to be little data available on the activity of the different parts of the trapezius in these different variations.

Some claim (probably incorrectly) that shrugs performed behind the back activate the middle fibers more. This is the part that mainly adds thickness to the middle of the back. The upper fibers also add ‘height’: the triangle of fibers that runs from the shoulder blades to the neck. These would supposedly be targeted mainly by holding the bar in front. Looking at the function and direction of the different parts of the trapezius, this theory does not seem very plausible.

The diamond-shaped muscle in the upper back pulls on the shoulder blades from three different directions: from above, from the middle, and from below. In both variations of shrugs, you pull the shoulder blades upward and therefore target the upper part of the trapezius. The middle fibers become active when the shoulder blades are pulled backward. This seems more likely when the weight is in front of the shoulder blades. If the bar is already behind or directly below the shoulder blades, they no longer need to be moved backward. It therefore seems more logical that the middle of the trapezius is activated earlier when the bar is held in front of the body.

A practical consideration for men may be that the bar behind the back is somewhat more comfortable.

Barbell or dumbbells?

Isolating the upper fibers of the trapezius therefore seems to occur mainly when the bar is held behind the body. The same applies to performing the exercise with the weight beside the body, as with dumbbells. The hands are then directly below the shoulder joint and therefore move straight upward.

Dumbbells can, however, have a few disadvantages. For the appropriate resistance, you soon use relatively heavy dumbbells. These press against the body, and the thighs can be partially pressed between the dumbbell plates. This creates a restricted range of motion. This is often ‘solved’ by pressing the hands slightly outward. However, this requires high effort from the shoulders, which may fatigue before the trapezius.

The trap bar then provides a solution. It allows you to keep your hands beside your body without the weight ‘getting in the way’. The trap baris unfortunately not available in many gyms.

Alternatives

• Dumbbell shrugs
• Cable shrug
• Smith machine shrug
• Barbell shrugs