Hello Thib
Do you know any ways to reduce/deactivate upper traps involvement while doing upper back/rhomboid work, especially face pulls and YTL’s?
My upper traps are so active they take over to an extent that i can’t have a good mind muscle connection with the rhomboids/lower traps & dont feel them working, which significantly contributes to my forward shoulder posture
Thanks a lot.
[quote]outlaws wrote:
Hello Thib
Do you know any ways to reduce/deactivate upper traps involvement while doing upper back/rhomboid work, especially face pulls and YTL’s?
My upper traps are so active they take over to an extent that i can’t have a good mind muscle connection with the rhomboids/lower traps & dont feel them working, which significantly contributes to my forward shoulder posture
Thanks a lot. [/quote]
You should actually stay away from YTL and face pull until you learn to develop a solid mind-muscle connection with the rhomboids and are able to activate them before the upper traps.
The following movement is a good example… from 0:27 to 0:38 seconds
Or you can do the same exercise but with the neutral grip with the pulley being at eye level and you pulling in a slight downward path (upper traps lift and rotate the scapula up, if you do down slightly it wont happen).
You can also do the rear delt/reverse fly machine but initiate the movement by squeezing both shoulder blades together then doing the movement. The muscle that fires first will tend to take over. And keep the hands lower than the shoulders to minimize traps involvement:
at 0:43
Great, i’ll try them in a few hours! Thanks a lot again