What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
When you are looking to look bigger you've got a couple options.
The first one is easy.
You change your wardrobe.
Get rid of those larges and mediums, and trade them in for s'mediums and you're going to
look a lot bigger right away.
However, you're not really creating actual growth.
But if you want to do that you actually can.
A place you should target is your traps.
There's a reason for that.
The androgen receptor density in your traps is larger than anywhere else in your body.
So you're going to be able to stimulate growth there with directed, targeted training, and
the right technique.
That's where we're going to get to the crux of this video.
Running out and just training your traps can actually make you look worse because if you
don’t have wide shoulders to go with them all you're going to do is create a steeper
slope, a narrower looking body, and it's going to work against what you're actually trying
to create.
So you have a couple ways that you can change the current exercises you're doing, or you
can do an alternative exercise that I'm going to show you here today, all right?
So what are we going to do?
You look at the dumbbell shrug.
One of the most classic exercises that you can do.
If you hold your dumbbells straight at your sides and you simply move them up and down
you're not really going to effectively hit the traps as well as you should, as I've covered
in previous videos about the angles and how you can attack them better with cables.
I'll actually link that video for you here.
But we're still going to do that exercise.
You want to make sure you're doing two things.
Number one: you want to lean forward just a bit so the angle of pull for the traps is
going to be more direct.
Secondly, to prevent that 'domination' of the traps versus the shoulders, you want to
try and get the shoulders involved a bit.
So if you widen out your grip, get your arms a little bit away from your body, and bend
your elbows – as I'm showing you here – now you're going to be able to involve a lot more.
You can see it working.
A lot more delt activation here, too.
So we're working on building them both up at the same time.
So we're not going to have that sloping, steep looking, narrow neck and torso.
We're going to have a wider look as we build up our traps.
Okay, now we' talk about the other exercise.
So what you can do is, I'm heading into the squat rack.
You don’t necessarily have to do any barbell shrugs.
You would apply the same technique as I showed you over there.
You would widen out your grip, you'd throw out your arms a little bit – your elbows
– and you apply the same technique.
But what I'm going to show you is a version of a row.
So now on this version of the row, now you want to get co-activation here of the traps
and rhomboids, and the upper back so that you could lift some heavy-ass weight and get
those traps to grow because they're going to respond well to heavier weight.
Of course, you're going to be able to activate them more because of the technique change.
So now I squeeze with the traps almost right before, and instant before I initiate the
row and I hold it there.
Now I start trying to crank out some reps here.
We've done the same thing.
Because the elbows naturally will bow out on a row, we're obviously going to get some
of the delts involved on this as well.
We're going to get the rear delts and all those muscles in between the shoulder blades
like we talked about.
That's going to bulk up and add to the density of the exercise, and the effect of this exercise.
So start putting some weight on this and start incorporating this as an additional move and
you will get rid of that problem; having that steep sloping neck.
You'll have a more wide looking torso from the front, the back, wherever it is that you're
going to be seen.
So guys, I hope you find this video helpful.
Remember, if you're going to attack a muscle, understand how you're attacking it.
Also, understand what the implications of your approach is going to be.
Just because someone told you to do something doesn’t mean that, in isolation, is going
to be the perfect remedy for you.
You have to understand what the implication of what you're going to do on that particular
day, in that particular move on the rest of your entire program.
That's why programs work so well.
We have a program over at ATHLEANX.com.
It's our ATHLEANX training system.
If you're looking for a way to put the science back in strength and get results, knowing
that one thing that you do relates to the other things that you do, and it all comes
together in the end to give you the one final result you're looking for; that's in our ATHLEANX
training system.
In the meantime, guys, leave your comments and thumbs up.
Let me know what you want to see here on this channel and I'll do my best to cover it in
a future video.
All right, guys.
Oh by the way, new gear here.
Punisher.
That's a sign of things to come in 2017.
I've got a lot of punishment getting ready to hand out to you guys in the form of a lot
of new workouts.
All right, guys.
See you soon.