Is your shoulder development falling vicim to what I call the "Traps Trap"?
I am going to show you today how with one shift in focus during an exercise you can
change all that really quick.
[Music Intro]
What's up guys? Jeff Cavaliere AthleanX.com
Today I am going to talk about something really important: shoulder development.
What happens when we train, we sort of have substitutions.
We know what we want to do. In this case we have a side lateral raise.
We know we want to get the dumbbell from this position out to our sides, and get it from
down low to up high.
The problem is sometimes, our bodies are really smart.
They tend to overcompensate and find out ways and substitutions to get to the same point.
What winds up happening is what I call the "Traps Trap".
That means that our Traps become a little bit too involved in the motion in trying to
get this dumbbell to the top.
So let me explain what I mean.
Basically if we take our dumbbell-I want to get it to the top.
I can raise it with just my shoulder, if I just concentrate on raising from the side.
Or I can get my trap involved, because it is going to elevate my arm.
So if I just take my arm and I bend it here and then I lift my shoulder-I brought the
dumbbell up from basically waist height out to the side here just by using my trap.
OK? Right up through here.
That is what happens with a lot of guys when they are trying to develop their deltoid.
They wind up getting way too much substitution, so as they are raising it up, they are lifting
up through their trap.
Just like that.
I have seen a lot of guys just do that when they are training.
The problem is when you have about 50 percent of the work being done by the trap, and 50
percent of the work being done by the deltoid.
If you are trying to build your shoulders, that is not going to get it done.
So what do we try to do?
Well, we try to do just a couple things: one, you want to get focused on the actual trap
and shutting it down.
Now we can do that 2 different ways.
We can do it by concentrating on it and we can do that by trying to neurologically shutting
it off a little bit.
So how do we do it by by concentrating on it?
We do it just by pulling our shoulders down and back.
So we are setting up in this position, OK?
Just like that which will try to rest them a little bit.
Then as we bring the weights up, you are going to see that we are going to leave it just
at the shoulder.
OK? Just abduction here of the arm up without that trap involvement from before.
So the next thing we are going to do is actually squeeze at the bottom of the rep.
So when we do that-remember the chest is going to sort of protract the shoulder forward.
That will actually put the muscle on the backside, one of the retractors or elevators of the
shoulders, the traps, on rest.
Neurologically turn it off a little bit.
The same way if we want to make the triceps rest, we are going to flex the biceps which
is going to make them relax on the back side of the joint.
OK? So if we engage our chest in the front and pull our shoulder blades back, now from
here it is literally straight up and down.
Again isolated to just at the delt.
A little contraction at the bottom then just let the delt do the work.
So as much as we can, we are really trying to turn off the traps from doing too much
of the work.
That is the difference guys, between following and exercise and workout plan, and following
and exercise and workout plan correctly.
Remember: anything written on paper can be done a lot of different ways.
With Athlean-X I try to give you a program, and also the how-to behind it.
So we always want to train like athletes.
We want to take the best parts of that, the most intricate parts of actually doing one
exercise.
Because the guys rehab-ing, and you want to get a specific response from him; you have
to sometimes tweak exercises to do that.
There is nothing different than doing a regular workout.
This is a science guys.
I said before that we put the science back in strength and this is what I am talking
about.
Start doing your exercises correctly.
Start doing them with the Athlean-X training system.
You are going to build more muscle more quickly because you are targeting the way they are
meant to be targeted.
I will see you back here in another week.
This one goes by quick, it seems like they are here before you know it.
I will be back here guys very very soon. I will see you then.