5 common mistakes of training shoulders and traps
1. Dropped elbows when spreading arms to the sides
Raising the arms to the sides is an isolating exercise for the middle deltas. In the starting position, your hands are at your sides, and you need to raise them almost to shoulder level. There are two ways to do this, but only one of them is effective for developing medium deltas.
Let’s start by talking about the function of the middle deltoid muscle bundle. As you contract a muscle, you lift your shoulder straight up and out to the side in a movement called shoulder abduction. It is with this movement that the best exercises for middle deltas are performed – raising the arms to the sides, pulling to the chin, even overhead presses. Just look at the direction of movement of your upper arm.
The mistake we are talking about now is lowering the elbow and raising the arms with bent elbow joints. If you do this, the shoulder does not go through its full range of motion, although the hands end up where they should be.
The arms and elbows should move as a unit. Keep your elbows up; at the top, the entire forearm should be parallel to the ground. The movement should resemble a wide arc, and for this it is necessary to keep the elbow joints up. When you do everything right, the shoulder works in full range, which means that the middle deltas are working out to the fullest.
2. Inappropriate grip when performing the pull to the chin
The main multi-joint movement of your shoulder workout may be the bench press, but the chin pull is also a great exercise. Most trainees do not pay enough attention to the width of the grip, and this is a mistake because the grip affects muscle activation.
If you paid attention to the nuance mentioned above, you know that when the shoulder rises to the sides of the torso, the middle deltas contract with maximum effort. This happens with a moderately wide barbell grip. But if you grip the bar with a narrow grip, look where your elbows go. They shift noticeably forward. This shifts the focus to the anterior deltas and reduces the recruitment of the middle tufts.
This shift in focus may or may not be your goal. Worst of all, it rotates the shoulder inward, which over time can lead to poor posture, shoulder impingement, and rotator cuff injuries.
3. Extension of the elbows when extending the arms to the rear deltas in the crossover
I would like to say that only beginners make a similar mistake, but more advanced athletes also often sin it. To make single-joint shoulder movements effective, keep your arms in a slightly flexed elbow position throughout the approach while doing reverse arm extensions in a crossover, raising arms to the sides, or extending laterally in a bent over.
As soon as you start flexing and extending your elbows, the triceps come into the equation. This makes the movement less insulating and less effective. In exercises like standing crossover backward extension, many lifters mistakenly fully extend their elbows to 180 degrees in the final phase of the movement, and then bend them back to almost 90 degrees, returning to the starting position. If you’re doing shoulder exercises, congratulations; you get great movement for your triceps. It’s a shame that today is shoulder workout day!
To make sure you don’t make this mistake, follow your dilution technique in a mirror or ask your partner to evaluate it with a critical eye. Practice, hone your technique with lightweight; Lock your elbows with a slight bend and keep them in this position throughout the entire range of motion. If it is still difficult to return the weight to the starting position, do a peck-deck (butterfly trainer) exercise that forces you to keep your elbows in the correct position throughout the repetition.
4. Shortening of the lever arm when raising arms in front of you in a crossover
When does 20 kg not feel like 20 kg? When you lengthen (or shorten) what is commonly called a lever arm. The discussion of this phenomenon of physics can lead us far from the topic of biomechanics, so suffice it to say that in single-joint movements for the shoulders, such as raising the arms in front of you, reducing the distance between the projectile and the body simplifies the exercise. Conversely, the further you stretch your arm, the more difficult it becomes.
Let me remind you that single-joint exercises are performed with fixed elbow joints so that the arm should not bend and unbend during movement. The only question is how much flexion in the elbow joint will be – slight or very noticeable. Strong elbow flexion is easier to perform than a fully extended arm.
Moreover, when lifting in front of you with strongly bent arms, it is tempting to start pushing your elbows out to the sides. When the elbows, instead of going forward, start to go to the sides, the middle deltas are connected to the movement, which means that you lose the isolation of the front bundles. In fact, the movement begins to resemble a pull for the chin more. Maintain a slight angle at the elbows throughout the set to maximize the load on the front deltas.
5. Too heavyweight in the press from behind the head
There are many variations of the overhead press, the main multi-joint exercise for the shoulders, and they are all slightly different from each other. You can do the exercise while sitting or standing, with dumbbells, in the machine or with a barbell, you can lift the bar in front of you or from behind your head.
Especially when working with a lot of weight, be careful when lifting the bar from behind your head. The fact is that at the lowest point when the projectile is behind the head, the shoulder muscles are in the weakest anatomical position. Heavyweights significantly increase the risk of sprains, says Guillermo Escalante, assistant professor of kinesiology at the University of San Bernardino in California, Ph.D., board-certified strength and general fitness. For very heavy presses, he recommends lifting the bar from the chest. When working with medium weights, Escalante gives the go-ahead for the use of a press from behind the head.