How to Do Better Barbell Shrugs | Form Check | Men’s Health Muscle - video Dailymotion

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How to Do Better Barbell Shrugs | Form Check | Men’s Health Muscle

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00:00When we think shoulder training, we generally think of overhead presses, lateral raises,

00:04and very focused deltoid moves.

00:06But one other move guys often throw in to their shoulder training is something called

00:10the barbell strut.

00:11Now this is an exercise that's going to target your upper tracks, the muscles that essentially

00:14lie between your neck and your actual shoulder joint.

00:17And if you're a meathead, you know this move well, because in addition to building your

00:20upper tracks, it's also a great ego stroke.

00:23It is not an exercise that everybody needs to do, and one of the questions you should

00:26ask yourself is, do you actually need to do it?

00:29Let's break all of that down and understand how to do the barbell shrug right now.

00:33Now the shrug seems simple, and in many ways it is.

00:36You're just shrugging your shoulders.

00:38In the process though, you're going to work your traps, but if done correctly, you're

00:41going to get two underrated things out of this exercise too.

00:44First off, you're going to challenge your forearms, especially if you're doing your

00:47shrugs without wraps or straps.

00:49The second thing that's going to happen, because this is a very small range of motion, and

00:53in general, we're going to wind up going very heavy with this exercise, you get to acclimate

00:57your body to a heavy load, to just holding that heavy load, and there's underrated carryover

01:01in that that's going to translate to exercises like your rack pulls and even your deadlifts.

01:05Now is this a move that everybody needs to do?

01:07Absolutely not, and that's doubly true if you have shoulder issues, because the shrugs

01:13are training a muscle that's pulling your shoulder blades upwards.

01:16That is not something that we really want to reinforce.

01:18In fact, from a longevity standpoint, we want to reinforce the exact opposite idea and pull

01:23our shoulder blades downwards into something called scapular depression.

01:27All that said, if you are dying to do this move because you really, really want to move

01:31something heavy over a small range of motion, or you really just want to grow your traps,

01:35here's how you get it done.

01:36So we've got Brett here to help us demo the barbell shrug, and he doesn't have his straps,

01:41he doesn't have his lifting belt, so we're not going to do seven plates here.

01:44We've got one plate on each side, it's enough that we can get some load on here, and we

01:48can give you this real quick demo.

01:49Normally, when you do this shrug too, we're going to turn towards the rack.

01:53It's generally better to do your exercises turning towards the rack, but because we want

01:56you to be able to see Brett's upper body, and we want you to be able to see most of

02:00the action that's happening in the shrug, we're going to do the shrug facing out.

02:02We are going to want to pay attention to our setup, and essentially what we're going to

02:05do is we're going to do a very, very small rack pull to get ourselves set up.

02:09So he's going to get his knees nice and close to the bar, as if he was about to deadlift

02:14it.

02:15His butt is pushed back.

02:16He's essentially hinged back ready to pick this up.

02:17He's going to do one more thing for me.

02:19He's got a shoulder width grip with his hands.

02:20He wants to think about turning the pits of his elbows forward.

02:24That's going to turn on his lats.

02:25That's a nice, safe way to pick up the bar, and it's also going to set him up for success

02:29in the shrug.

02:30From there, he's going to take a deep inhale.

02:32All he's going to do then, he's going to stand up and squeeze his glutes.

02:37Now he's set up for the shrug.

02:39Now we've made a point to turn the pits of our elbows forward.

02:43He's going to think about driving his pinkies.

02:45We want to think about this principle called breaking the bar, which we wind up doing on

02:47our bench presses, on our deadlifts.

02:49We're going to do it on the shrug too.

02:51He's going to think about driving his pinkies together and essentially breaking the bar

02:56as hard as he can.

02:58From here, the shrug winds up being pretty simple, but we want to pay attention to a

03:01couple of things.

03:02All Brett's going to do, he's going to shrug his shoulders up, but he doesn't want to lean

03:06forward.

03:07He wants to make sure he's standing as straight up as he can when he's doing this.

03:10He's going to shrug up, hold for one second, and then he comes down.

03:14When he is coming down, he wants to let the weight stretch him out.

03:18The traps are not a large muscle group.

03:20They don't have a ton of range of motion, but we want to maximize that range of motion.

03:24On the bottom here, Brett is going to think about squeezing his lats and driving his shoulder

03:28blades down.

03:29That way he gets that maximum range of motion we can work our traps through.

03:33Let's go up again, Brett.

03:34One, two seconds.

03:35Get as high as you can, then go down nice and slow.

03:38Get that really good stretch and repeat that.

03:41That is your basic shrug, and that's how we want to see you do it every time.

03:45What we want to avoid is letting this turn into a combination rack pull deadlift shrug

03:50thing.

03:51Essentially, what we're going to see very often, you're going to either see very quick

03:54reps like this, which again we want to avoid, or you're going to see people lean forward

03:58a little bit and then drive up from that position because they're trying to do too much weight.

04:03They want to go through this really big range of motion, so they wind up having to use their

04:06hips.

04:07Those are the two things you want to avoid in this shrug.

04:09Let's give them one more good crack at this, Brett.

04:12He's going to break the bar, stand up and squeeze his glutes.

04:15It's up.

04:16It's one, two counts, that maximum contraction of the traps, get a really good stretch, and

04:21then come back up again.

04:22That is the ideal way to get the barbell shrug done.

04:25That is the barbell shrug, and as I have said multiple times in this video, no, it is not

04:30a necessary move, but it can be a fun one.

04:33If you are badly in search of big traps, it is a solid option.

04:37I would rank this overall behind dumbbell shrugs and kettlebell shrugs, simply because

04:42if we use those other implements, we're not going to have to break the bar as aggressively,

04:45and we're going to have a lot more of a friendly angle to work with overall, so that we can

04:49attack our traps.

04:51The upside of the barbell shrug, though, is that more than those other moves, we can really

04:55load this aggressively and go crazy heavy, and again, we get that cool ego stroke.

04:59However, if you use it, this is not a lead move in any of your workouts.

05:03Instead, we're thinking about making this the very last exercise that we do on back

05:07day or on shoulder day, after we've done more critical, larger range of motion moves, like

05:12our shoulder presses, our heavy dumbbell rows, or our lat pulldowns.

05:15Then you get to the barbell shrug, and you can think of doing this for two to three sets

05:19of 10 to 12 reps.

05:20We want to make sure that we're going heavy on this, but we still want to keep things

05:23high rep, because your traps are an incredibly strong muscle that is meant to be pushed hard.

05:27So if you are really, really searching for mountainous traps, then yes, you want to get

05:31this shrug in your workouts.

05:32It is not an exercise that you need to do, but it is fun to do every so often, because

05:36it is always fun to pick up heavy things.

How to Do Better Barbell Shrugs | Form Check | Men’s Health Muscle

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