Muscle Inbalance (Upper Trap)

Training Beginners
1

Hello fellow T-heads! I have been observing and reading from this site for quite a while, and today i registered beacause i have a problem.

I have been training properly for about 5 months now, my workout consits of benching, squatting, deadlifting, upright rows, horizontal rows, seated rows, 90 degree flyes lifts, mill presses, and am thinking of incoporting some shruggs, dumbell pullover and face pulls in there also (all low volume, free weights). I used to do this workout 3 times a week, and soon noticed it was way to much, so now i do it 2 times a week and then ill have a high volume workout on a wensday on machines, and i do the low volume on a monday and friday.

Presently i have noticed that deadlifting twice a week also takes too much out of me, so am thinking of cutting this down to once a week. But everything else seems fine.

Now you have some details, my probem is that i have huge traps and shoulder form on my left side, whislt on my right i can barley feel or tense the muscle, it looks shit, i feel shit. The only reason i can think what caused this inbalance was using a mixed grip on the deadlifting, and i never used to switch hands (meaning my left used to be the one gripping the bar from under it, and the right from over it, supinated and pronated i dont know which is which) and i never used to switch it up in sets.

Remembring that i am a beginner, and i did not have the knowlege untill very recently ( i was doing more reading)that your brain will switch the stress to the most functional hand, which am guessing is my left.

Is this the cause of the problem? because i cant think of anything else i do that could or would cause this serious shitty inblance i now have, i mean of all muscles to be inblanced my ****** traps!

Anyway does any one have a diagnosis for this, and a remedy, if so then i will apriciate it a great deal, Thank you for your time.

2

Supinated means your palm is facing towards you, pronated means palm is facing away from you.

It’s unlikely that using the same setup (mixed grip) is causing huge imbalances.

However, if you are unable to ‘feel’ the movement in your ‘weaker’ side, you can’t really use those muscles effectively.

Try to either use a symmetrical (‘snatch-grip’) grip on DL or switch your positions in the mixed grip. If your gym has heavy DB’s try incorporating some unilateral work as well.

Also, try DLing in front of a mirror to check your form and make sure your posture is right (especially the position of your hip and shoulders). If you hip is rotated to one side (or your whole body leans towards one side), you are not distributing the weight evenly during your Deadlift, which leads to a asymmetrical training effect.

3

[quote]TRAIN2Failure wrote:
Hello fellow T-heads! I have been observing and reading from this site for quite a while, and today i registered beacause i have a problem.

I have been training properly for about 5 months now, my workout consits of benching, squatting, deadlifting, upright rows, horizontal rows, seated rows, 90 degree flyes lifts, mill presses, and am thinking of incoporting some shruggs, dumbell pullover and face pulls in there also (all low volume, free weights). I used to do this workout 3 times a week, and soon noticed it was way to much, so now i do it 2 times a week and then ill have a high volume workout on a wensday on machines, and i do the low volume on a monday and friday.

Presently i have noticed that deadlifting twice a week also takes too much out of me, so am thinking of cutting this down to once a week. But everything else seems fine.

Now you have some details, my probem is that i have huge traps and shoulder form on my left side, whislt on my right i can barley feel or tense the muscle, it looks shit, i feel shit. The only reason i can think what caused this inbalance was using a mixed grip on the deadlifting, and i never used to switch hands (meaning my left used to be the one gripping the bar from under it, and the right from over it, supinated and pronated i dont know which is which) and i never used to switch it up in sets.

Remembring that i am a beginner, and i did not have the knowlege untill very recently ( i was doing more reading)that your brain will switch the stress to the most functional hand, which am guessing is my left.

Is this the cause of the problem? because i cant think of anything else i do that could or would cause this serious shitty inblance i now have, i mean of all muscles to be inblanced my ****** traps!

Anyway does any one have a diagnosis for this, and a remedy, if so then i will apriciate it a great deal, Thank you for your time.[/quote]

I have seen that on my traps, what I did was to lower the weight a little and “relax” the over developed side, putting an extra effort to my left side. after some weeks, it started to look even. I am not sure it will work for you, but to me, it did.

4

Are you right handed? People with dominant right hands will tend to develop a lower shoulder and trap on the right side when compared to the left side.

5

What you did when you were younger is going to have a big impact on your level of body awareness now. People who grew-up on an apple orchard and picked a lot of apples when they were younger tend to have much better awareness of their upper traps and shoulders than those individuals who spend their early years climbing the apple trees.

5 months is long enough for you to develop some awareness and some muscle but I’m thinking that your DL grip has little to do with it.

But, regardless of the cause, single arm db shrugs should be sufficient to tell you if you have an imbalance in strength, and if you do, doing some extra volume on the less developed side for a few months should address the size/strength/body awareness concerns.

Another thing that may be of use to you would be to hold the shrug at the top (fully contracted side) with the weaker side for 30-60 seconds. This is will improve body awareness and control more than normal tempo stuff.

6

[quote]Varanid wrote:
Are you right handed? People with dominant right hands will tend to develop a lower shoulder and trap on the right side when compared to the left side.[/quote]

yes i am right handed, thank you all for the feedback also, very helpfull.