I simply LOVE your stuff. You must also mention what a great exercise shrugs are for helping you deadlift big poundages and also improving posture for those who are a bit hunched over.

cheers brother

Michael

I’ve always had difficulty with shrugs. I usually end up feeling as though I’m pinching a nerve in my neck, so I never can lift enough to reach muscle failure. Any suggestions here? Am I doing something wrong? Or should I be lowering the wieght and aiming for higher reps, cause that’s just the way my body is?

Thanks man.

The cables offer no benefit to this exercise. There is no traversal across the plane normal to the force (gravity or cable coming up from ground). In other words, It is straight up and down with the full force in either case.

Now your previous cable videos were spot on, but we shouldn’t conclude that cable exercises are automatically advantageous in every lift. For further clarification of why cables work, take the bicep curl for example. In the sitting preacher curl with dumbells, you start by moving against gravity, but as the biceps reach the fully contracted position, you are essentially moving horizontally w.r.t. the downward force gravity. If you put a cable on the ground and do preacher curls, then those will be no better than dumbell curls. The advantage cables provide is you can change where the resistance force is coming from.

So to fix this problem of not peak force at peak contraction, you change where the resistance is coming from either via moving the source of the cable or standing in a different position relative to gravity (laying chest down on an incline style bench for example).

So people without cables, don’t despair. Just do dumbell curls while chest down on an incline bench

In THT, should I be adding these in with the upright rows on shoulder day, or simply subsitute rows for shrugs?

Cheers, Nick

Cheers,

Yavor

That being said, I’m not sure if cables have an advantage for trap exercises. Think about it: the selling point of cables is that the tension is not lost due to the change of angle (the way tension is lost in curls, flies, pullovers, triceps kickbacks etc ==> you are dead on there)

But with shrugs, dumbbells and bars are good enough because there is no change in angle. You pull vertically against gravity. So, I think, cables have no advantage here. What do you think about this man?

Now – if you substitute cables with ELASTIC BANDS – I see a potential use there.

Keep em coming buddy!

Yavor

You’re doing a good job convincing me that the constant resistance of cable exercises is the key to results, and it’s an attractive thought to imagine using these resistance bands instead of having to buy more bulky equipment or construct a cable tower for myself, but not if the results would not be the same.

I’d be interested to know your opinion, or possible a fully researched and written article, on this matter.