hey hey what's up its Coach E here from Precision Movement and today I'm gonna
answer a question I got from a customer of my Scap control program Lauren who
is asking about upper traps and how to shut them off
she's specifically asking about techniques that are designed to target
the upper traps but she feels them working too much and the other muscles
that are supposed to be working aren't working and the upper traps are
fatiguing first preventing the technique from being executed properly okay so
this is a very common problem that a lot of people have because the upper
traps are strong muscles that often try to take over the job of all their
muscles that aren't strong enough have atrophied due to poor posture or not
being worked enough relative to the other muscles so people who have done a
lot of shrugs in the gym never done any work to really work on depressing the
scapula they're gonna have this issue people who have bad posture because of
working at the computer they're gonna have this issue okay so this is going to
be a little bit more in advance so if you're not sure about some of the
concepts some of the terminology that I'm talking about I highly recommend you
dive into the scap control course because then you're gonna get the
background the kinesiology basic exercises to do and then you can
understand what is going on here and how to apply it more effectively okay so
here's what I recommend you try what happens with this is often you get into
a range of motion where the muscles like the lower traps or the serratus anterior
those muscles have absolutely no strength in that range of motion
for example arm up overhead because a lot of people do overhead work presses
pull-ups all sorts of things but they don't have that range in the strength in
that upper range in those stabilizer muscles okay so the upper traps have to
work more because those muscles aren't working so how we got to approach it is
you think about the muscles working if you take them
into this overhead position they've got no range no strength no strength no
strength and then maybe they can activate down in this position okay at
this angle so what we have to do is we have to start at the angle where they
can work and they can activate and build from there if we try to go too far
you're never going to be able to get them firing okay so here's a drill that I
recommend you try just to get awareness to less lower upper trap work and more
lower trap and serratus anterior work okay so you're going to get into a hinge
position now you can do this lying on an incline bench as well if you don't have
a comfortable hinge position but if you can do the hinge and hold it for a
minute that's great then you're going to work
kill two birds with one stone okay so from here get into a comfortable hinge
hanging out on the glutes and the hamstrings can lumbar spine the back
muscles are all relaxed sitting in neutral spine here you're gonna kind of
like do a row flaring the elbow out okay what's your shoulders abducted and we
get into this position here from here you can stick your hand behind your back
okay I'll turn around a little bit as you can see touch the other's scapula
the opposite scapula so I want to make sure the scapula is posterior lis tilted
so serratus anterior is firing hard okay from there I'm going to externally
rotate make sure I'm still posterior lis tilted I'm not winged and from there I'm
going to slowly press up overhead making sure the posterior tilt still on and the
upper traps trying to relax them okay when you go here you go as far as you
can until you feel like those upper traps are just kind of dominating the
movement once you find that range where the upper traps dominating mine's mine
aren't that dominant because it do a lot of this kind of work but you might be
say here you hold it there and just hold and fight and work the muscles that are
supposed to be working like the lower traps and the serratus anterior and keep
the upper traps as quiet as possible okay and you hold from anywhere from
twenty ten to twenty seconds and then you can just back
okay take a little rest from the hinge position if you need to and then go
again okay so the key here is activating first because in this position in this
neutral position it's very easy to get serratus or it's a lot easier to get
serratus and lower trap working okay as opposed to doing a movement where I'm
going to the full range and then they totally shut off when my arms up
overhead so there's no way I'm going to get to the working one I'm completely
out of that range of control alright so again go to lineman feet straight ahead
hinge over so your your body is at an angle okay it doesn't have to be you
don't want to actually be parallel to the ground that's too much okay you're
probably gonna overload too much the serratus in the lower trap so slight
angle of the body kind of like a row with the elbow out make sure serratus is
on so you're not winging the scapula and then externally rotate keep that
serratus on okay the scapula is pulled flush to the ribcage and then you could
press overhead and just hold once you feel the upper traps dominate you back
it off a little bit and just hold there so you got the serratus creating the
posterior tilts you got lower traps working in conjunction with the upper
traps the upper traps contribute to this movement so they're not going to be
completely shut off okay and you'll hold ten to twenty seconds breathing so you
can integrate this activation pattern and then when you're done just kind of
reverse the motion and go from there okay so that's gonna take time to
progressively build up that range of control that you have with the serratus
anterior and with the lower traps working with the upper traps in creating
that upward rotation of the scapula okay it's gonna take some time to build up
that range of control you might start a lot lowe
like I said you might only get your arm up to this position before the upper
traps feel like they're firing like crazy
okay so you might have to back it off and just do that rotation I'm not sure
where you're at but figure it out based on what I taught you in this video and
just progressively build that up so you can do that two three times a week
because we're not working a big intense movement doing two to three sets could
do anywhere from three to six reps holding 10 to 20 seconds okay just to
progressively build that up over probably around it's probably gonna take
anywhere from three to six weeks to get good range of good activation all the
way up to full range as long as you don't have other issues but Lauren
because you're following Scap Control in conjunction with this technique that
might help you out okay so anybody who else who wants upper
traps to shut off a little bit do this technique it's going to help you out and
if you want more mobile more stable shoulders yeah shoulder pain check out
Scap Control got a lot of happy people who follow this program and like to have
you as one of them all you can see the links to that stuff
at the end of this video and until next time have a good one peace