I’ve been following your training log from the start and got inspired by you to blow up my traps again.
However, I’m starting to lose motivation because my left upper trap fibres refuse to properly activate.
I tried pre-fatigue, post-fatigue, pauses, yielding isos, high reps, low reps, bilateral and unilateral. Nothing really seems to work and the lack of a pump after doing a high rep set also tells me that what I’m doing is not effective.
Something feels off. It’s like I’m moving the muscle up (and back - scapular elevation and retraction) and down without really connecting to it. I’m not passively going through the motion. I’m really focusing all of my attention to contracting the muscle but it’s like either my nervous system or my muscle fibers refuse to respond.
I never had trap issues in the past. I could do a set of shoulder presses and my traps would get a pump already (you could argue that this was actually poor technique for shoulder presses but my traps looked awesome doing it).
Is there a solution here? like an exercise to practice contracting (altough I feel this would be of no use) or maybe using citrulline malate to increase local blood flow or perhaps it a matter of loosening the tissue (my traps don’t feel tight but maybe there’s an obstruction of nerves).
Cranial Nerve XI or Accessory Nerve XI makes your upper traps go. Tightness in your neck, traps or even upper chest can crank down on your neck, impinge or entrap your poor nerves and turn your muscles “off.” If you’re not super in tune with your neck muscles, this could be happening without you even feeling it.
Here’s the first video that popped up about it. So, just a place to start, not a huge endorsement. I don’t have any experience with this particular issue, but I’ve done similar stuff for neck or lower back before.
In my non clinical, personal, n=1 experience…
Not being able to feel/ fire something almost always implies some nervous dysfunction. In this case, @FlatsFarmer identified the likely culprit.
At a very hazardous guess, it’s even likely that starting to do a bunch of trap work created inflammation in the cervical area, which then impinged upon a nerve root, which is, ironically, reducing your trap activation. A vicious cycle!
Any change with NSAIDS? Obviously we don’t love them for long-term use, and I think there’s more data on side effects every day, but they sure could serve as a diagnostic to my hypothesis above.
This, along with @TrainForPain’s explanation, is the same thought process I’m having right now.
My neck tends to get very tense when I’m under severe stress. I actually didn’t train traps for a long time because of this. Each time I tried to do trap work, the muscles of my neck would take over.
What you’re describing here might very well be the issue: nerve impingement due to local inflammation or tightness.
My lower back (right side) also gets super tight when I’m stressed so yeah, this might actually be a key insight for understanding the road to recovery and getting that musce recuitment back.
I never heard of that exercise but I just saw a demo and I’m intrigued by it. Not only because it can potentially stimulate my traps better but also because it improves shoulder joint stability in the overhead position.
It’s funny, I actually had a similar experience by not using any resistance at all.
I practice contracting my traps when I’m doing my daily walks. It may sound weird but I got a pretty good contraction just now by visualizing the way an eagle spreads its wings.
I’m not actually focusing on the wings (or arms in the case of a human being) but rather the circular upwards motion of an eagle’s shoulders in order to spread its wings.
It’s very similar to Lu Xiaojun raises, only i’m not doing anything with my arms. I simply focus on the role of the upper traps in the movement, if that makes sense.
The bad news is as soon as I pick up weights, I tend to lose that contractile ability. Maybe because my brain recruites my muscles differently, the emphasis is more on my neck than my upper traps. It’s really weird honestly.
