[quote]Fletch1986 wrote:
[quote]ColdFeet wrote:
[quote]Fletch1986 wrote:
[quote]ColdFeet wrote:
I do foam rolling often, i have just read top priority for lower traps and am confident this may affect me.
I am doing the activation drills - wall slides, and will eventually move onto lat pulldown iso holds.
@dhickery - Pretty much my whole trap area i guess, from mid back up to my neck.
I am currently hitting my back with deadlifts and rows, and the occasional pull ups.
I am not doing much overhead work with a bar as it hurts my shoulders, i do heavy rows, alternate with moderate rep range, heavy deads, but it seems the middle part of my upper back is flat and out of proportion - under developed. The sides are fine, but that’s a big flatness in the middle, which makes me confused. [/quote]
Maybe try Pendlay rows with a narrowish grip. Do these by slumping your upper back, then forcefully contract your lats and upper back while keeping your low back at the same angle. It should be a fairly explosive movement.
Maybe some cable rows with a hard squeeze for a couple seconds too.[/quote]
Thanks for the suggestion fletch, i am currently doing bent over barbell rows in the pendlay row style fashion, i guess i’ll work on more of retracting my shoulder blades which should involve some of the middle traps, does it sound like my symptoms are related to low/mid traps? I sure hope soÃ??Ã?¬[/quote]
With any BB row, you want to squeeze your shoulder blades as hard as possible when the weight meets your stomach/chest (depending on how you do them). Your not doing an isometric hold, just squeezing really really hard. This will overload the upper back muscles or something like that.[/quote]
Right, okay i’ll work on doing that. It seems i really need to develop my low/mid traps, they are undeveloped, i guess from not retracting and depressing my scapula enough?
I was thinking of throwing in some additional exercises to help work on the area, such as incline db shrugs or dip shrugs.
You see the thing with rows is, i pushing the shoulder blades back and down is limiting the ROM and when i go to have my arms fully extened, to get a longer ROM i have to have them, i guess flaring out, but this is more than likely not the safest way to do things.