Let um rip! What can I work on? Thoughts? Criticism? Any advice is appreciated!
5’11”. 188-190lbs. 14.5 body fat %.
You look fairly lean and in good condition but your totally covered up.
Hard to see what s going on.
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Show more of your physique if you want “Honest” evaluation.
About all I can say is that you have very nice looking cephalic veins.
From what I can see, which is not all that much given the request of an evaluation, you have done well at getting lean. I don’t see much body fat on your face or arms. Good vascularity.
From what I can see, I’d say upper arms and traps could use some size. I also struggle with upper arm size.
Thanks! I’ll try to get more “uncovered” pics up soon.
Traps-I can’t get them to grow worth a damn! Help!
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Do you deadlift? I don’t really do any trap isolation exercises, but I have been deadlifting regularly for about 10 years. My back and traps are my strong points, and I believe it is mostly from deadlifts (and that it is probably a genetic strong point for me).
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How can we answer that if you are not holding a shoe?
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There’s always a reason, time and place for squats. Make use of the indirect effect and grow the entire body (shoes included).
I do deadlift. Doesn’t seem to work. I try and isolate traps twice per week.
I squat twice per week. To failure one day, then heavy the other.
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Trap envy.
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Ok, explain the shoe thing to me? I’m pry gonna get blasted, but I want to know.
Isolation exercises work. Also doing finishing movements, like a few shrugs during a deadlift, or overhead shrugs after OHP. Weighted carries are dope.
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Old forum joke mate. We get lots of posts from people asking to rate their body or their body fat. Without something to use a reference point it is very hard to rate something from a photo. It doesn’t really matter what anyone else thinks. Are you happy with the progress you have made ?
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Just from observations, it seems that the people that have good traps notice that they have good traps and then start exercises that isolate traps. Genetic traps grow doing overhead presses, cleans or high pulls, lateral raises, upright rows, parallel rows that target upper back, and deadlifts.
Note: if you do cleans, I would recommend hanging cleans, where the plates don’t hit the floor until you are done with the set. Dropping the weights to the floor each rep offers very little eccentric contraction (which is needed for hypertrophy.) I would pull the bar to my knees and then pull to the top of the clean. Then let it fall as you move your elbows out from under the bar and catching the bar supplies a lot of plyometric force to slow the bar back to your knees for the next rep. I liked to do 4 working sets of 5 reps (that is once you have warmed up to the weight you want to use, do 4 sets with that weight.)
You actually squat on your failure day until the bar crushes you like an egg shell?
Then the next squat day is “heavy”? Do you mean like 5 sets of 5 reps?
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Yes, 5 sets of 5
Personal opinion:
Traps wouldn’t be my biggest priority here, I’d work on emphasising the X physique, shoulders, lats, quads and pecs (roughly in that order).
You’re very lean, if it were me I’d be keen to add some more mass, might have missed it but don’t see what your goal is? You train for physique? You look like you train for athletic endeavours? Got a goal in mind?
Thanks! Just training for physique/muscle building.
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