How to Do Better Barbell Shrugs | Form Check | Men’s Health Muscle
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00:00When we think shoulder training, we generally think of overhead presses, lateral raises,
00:04and very focused deltoid moves.
00:06But one other move guys often throw in to their shoulder training is something called
00:10the barbell strut.
00:11Now this is an exercise that's going to target your upper tracks, the muscles that essentially
00:14lie between your neck and your actual shoulder joint.
00:17And if you're a meathead, you know this move well, because in addition to building your
00:20upper tracks, it's also a great ego stroke.
00:23It is not an exercise that everybody needs to do, and one of the questions you should
00:26ask yourself is, do you actually need to do it?
00:29Let's break all of that down and understand how to do the barbell shrug right now.
00:33Now the shrug seems simple, and in many ways it is.
00:36You're just shrugging your shoulders.
00:38In the process though, you're going to work your traps, but if done correctly, you're
00:41going to get two underrated things out of this exercise too.
00:44First off, you're going to challenge your forearms, especially if you're doing your
00:47shrugs without wraps or straps.
00:49The second thing that's going to happen, because this is a very small range of motion, and
00:53in general, we're going to wind up going very heavy with this exercise, you get to acclimate
00:57your body to a heavy load, to just holding that heavy load, and there's underrated carryover
01:01in that that's going to translate to exercises like your rack pulls and even your deadlifts.
01:05Now is this a move that everybody needs to do?
01:07Absolutely not, and that's doubly true if you have shoulder issues, because the shrugs
01:13are training a muscle that's pulling your shoulder blades upwards.
01:16That is not something that we really want to reinforce.
01:18In fact, from a longevity standpoint, we want to reinforce the exact opposite idea and pull
01:23our shoulder blades downwards into something called scapular depression.
01:27All that said, if you are dying to do this move because you really, really want to move
01:31something heavy over a small range of motion, or you really just want to grow your traps,
01:35here's how you get it done.
01:36So we've got Brett here to help us demo the barbell shrug, and he doesn't have his straps,
01:41he doesn't have his lifting belt, so we're not going to do seven plates here.
01:44We've got one plate on each side, it's enough that we can get some load on here, and we
01:48can give you this real quick demo.
01:49Normally, when you do this shrug too, we're going to turn towards the rack.
01:53It's generally better to do your exercises turning towards the rack, but because we want
01:56you to be able to see Brett's upper body, and we want you to be able to see most of
02:00the action that's happening in the shrug, we're going to do the shrug facing out.
02:02We are going to want to pay attention to our setup, and essentially what we're going to
02:05do is we're going to do a very, very small rack pull to get ourselves set up.
02:09So he's going to get his knees nice and close to the bar, as if he was about to deadlift
02:14it.
02:15His butt is pushed back.
02:16He's essentially hinged back ready to pick this up.
02:17He's going to do one more thing for me.
02:19He's got a shoulder width grip with his hands.
02:20He wants to think about turning the pits of his elbows forward.
02:24That's going to turn on his lats.
02:25That's a nice, safe way to pick up the bar, and it's also going to set him up for success
02:29in the shrug.
02:30From there, he's going to take a deep inhale.
02:32All he's going to do then, he's going to stand up and squeeze his glutes.
02:37Now he's set up for the shrug.
02:39Now we've made a point to turn the pits of our elbows forward.
02:43He's going to think about driving his pinkies.
02:45We want to think about this principle called breaking the bar, which we wind up doing on
02:47our bench presses, on our deadlifts.
02:49We're going to do it on the shrug too.
02:51He's going to think about driving his pinkies together and essentially breaking the bar
02:56as hard as he can.
02:58From here, the shrug winds up being pretty simple, but we want to pay attention to a
03:01couple of things.
03:02All Brett's going to do, he's going to shrug his shoulders up, but he doesn't want to lean
03:06forward.
03:07He wants to make sure he's standing as straight up as he can when he's doing this.
03:10He's going to shrug up, hold for one second, and then he comes down.
03:14When he is coming down, he wants to let the weight stretch him out.
03:18The traps are not a large muscle group.
03:20They don't have a ton of range of motion, but we want to maximize that range of motion.
03:24On the bottom here, Brett is going to think about squeezing his lats and driving his shoulder
03:28blades down.
03:29That way he gets that maximum range of motion we can work our traps through.
03:33Let's go up again, Brett.
03:34One, two seconds.
03:35Get as high as you can, then go down nice and slow.
03:38Get that really good stretch and repeat that.
03:41That is your basic shrug, and that's how we want to see you do it every time.
03:45What we want to avoid is letting this turn into a combination rack pull deadlift shrug
03:50thing.
03:51Essentially, what we're going to see very often, you're going to either see very quick
03:54reps like this, which again we want to avoid, or you're going to see people lean forward
03:58a little bit and then drive up from that position because they're trying to do too much weight.
04:03They want to go through this really big range of motion, so they wind up having to use their
04:06hips.
04:07Those are the two things you want to avoid in this shrug.
04:09Let's give them one more good crack at this, Brett.
04:12He's going to break the bar, stand up and squeeze his glutes.
04:15It's up.
04:16It's one, two counts, that maximum contraction of the traps, get a really good stretch, and
04:21then come back up again.
04:22That is the ideal way to get the barbell shrug done.
04:25That is the barbell shrug, and as I have said multiple times in this video, no, it is not
04:30a necessary move, but it can be a fun one.
04:33If you are badly in search of big traps, it is a solid option.
04:37I would rank this overall behind dumbbell shrugs and kettlebell shrugs, simply because
04:42if we use those other implements, we're not going to have to break the bar as aggressively,
04:45and we're going to have a lot more of a friendly angle to work with overall, so that we can
04:49attack our traps.
04:51The upside of the barbell shrug, though, is that more than those other moves, we can really
04:55load this aggressively and go crazy heavy, and again, we get that cool ego stroke.
04:59However, if you use it, this is not a lead move in any of your workouts.
05:03Instead, we're thinking about making this the very last exercise that we do on back
05:07day or on shoulder day, after we've done more critical, larger range of motion moves, like
05:12our shoulder presses, our heavy dumbbell rows, or our lat pulldowns.
05:15Then you get to the barbell shrug, and you can think of doing this for two to three sets
05:19of 10 to 12 reps.
05:20We want to make sure that we're going heavy on this, but we still want to keep things
05:23high rep, because your traps are an incredibly strong muscle that is meant to be pushed hard.
05:27So if you are really, really searching for mountainous traps, then yes, you want to get
05:31this shrug in your workouts.
05:32It is not an exercise that you need to do, but it is fun to do every so often, because
05:36it is always fun to pick up heavy things.