Instructions (Seated Machine Shrug-Back)
- Adjust the seat height so the top of the chest pad is level with the top of your breastbone, and grip the handles with your arms straight. If the handles are adjustable, set them so they’re just out of reach when you extend your arms.
- Grab the handles and relax your arms and shoulders, letting the weight pull your arms straight and your shoulders as far forward as they’ll go.
- Staring straight ahead, retract your shoulder blades and pinch them together as close as you can, without bending your elbows.
- Pause briefly, then let the weight pull your shoulder blades forward and return to the starting position.
Instructions (Seated Cable Shrug-Back)
- Attach a V-grip handle to the cable row machine and sit upright with your feet braced on the platform.
- Grab the handle and relax your arms and shoulders, letting the weight pull your arms straight and your shoulders as far forward as they’ll go (but keeping your back straight).
- Keeping your arms straight and your back upright, retract your shoulder blades and pinch them together as close as you can, without bending your elbows.
- Pause briefly, then let the weight pull your shoulder blades forward and return to the starting position.
Instructions (Chest-Supported T-Bar Shrug-Back)
- Adjust the foot or chest pad (depending on your machine) so that the top of the chest pad is level with the top of your breastbone.
- Grab the handles and let the weight pull your arms straight and your shoulder blades forward as far as they’ll go.
- Staring straight ahead, retract your shoulder blades and pinch them together as close as you can, without bending your elbows.
- Pause briefly, then let the weight pull your shoulder blades forward and return to the starting position.
Instructions (One-Arm Dumbbell Shrug-Back)
- Hold a dumbbell in your right hand. Plant your left knee and arm firmly on a bench, your right foot on the floor a foot or two from the bench, and let your right arm (the one holding the dumbbell) hang straight down toward the floor.
- Let the weight pull your shoulder blade as far forward as it can go—it helps to rotate your torso slightly to get an even deeper stretch.
- Keeping your back straight and staring straight ahead, retract your right shoulder blade and pull it as far back as you can, without bending your elbow.
- Pause briefly, then let the weight pull your shoulder blade forward and return to the starting position.
- Once you’ve completed the desired number of reps, repeat the process with your left arm.
Expert Tips
- Concentrate on getting as deep of a stretch in your shoulder blades as you can, and pause for a moment when you retract them. If your shoulders never move, you aren’t effectively training your traps. It’s a good idea to record a video of yourself the first few times you do this to confirm you’re getting full scapular retraction (pulling your shoulder blades all the way back).
- Avoid bending your elbows. You may find that you need to bend your elbows a tad to get full scapular retraction, but as a general rule, the more your elbows bend, the more your biceps become involved, and the less work your traps have to do.
- Try using a thumbless grip. This helps reduce the temptation to bend your elbows and overinvolve your biceps.
- Keep your torso as still as possible. The more you swing your torso back and forth, the less your traps are working. (This is also why it’s best to do this exercise on a machine that includes chest support—it makes it harder to use momentum to cheat.)
- Look straight ahead or slightly up, and avoid the temptation to look down or tuck your chin against your chest. Looking down makes it easier to collapse your chest, which can make it harder to get full scapular retraction on each rep.
- Try to avoid shrugging your shoulders up during this exercise. Focus on pulling them straight back and together.
- Depending on what variation you do and what machine you use, adjust the handles so that you’re forced to support the weight throughout each rep. Ideally, you want tension on your traps throughout every rep of every set.
- If you find your grip fails before your traps, use weightlifting straps.
Mike’s Take
The shrug-back is the single best isolation exercise for training your traps.
It’s basically just a machine row with your arms taken out, so you aren’t limited by the strength of your biceps and rear delts. And the fact that you can brace your chest against a pad means you aren’t limited by your lower-back strength—your mid-traps and rhomboids are doing most of the work.
One of the primary functions of your traps is to pull your shoulder blades toward your spine (scapular retraction), and this is the exact movement that the shrug-back trains.
Here’s what scapular retraction looks like:
Unlike most muscle groups, the traps are composed of three parts shaped like a star in the center of your upper back, and they contract in different and sometimes opposing directions.
To fully develop your traps, pair shrug-backs with a shrugging exercise like the barbell shrug (which trains the upper fibers by elevating your shoulder blades) and a pulldown performed with scapular depression (pulling your shoulder blades down), which trains the lower fibers. Read this article if you want to learn all of the best exercises for training every portion of your traps:
The 15 Best Trap Exercises and Workouts for a Thicker, Stronger Back
There are generally two ways I like to program this exercise: as a standalone exercise that you perform like any other, or as a “finisher” at the end of your rows. I typically prefer the latter, since you’re already set up on the machine and you can almost always squeeze out a few reps even after your arms are fried.
For example, let’s say you do a set of 8 reps of seated machine rows to failure. Once you can no longer complete another full rep of rows, you’d immediately perform as many seated machine shrug-backs as you can until you hit failure.
Then repeat for every set. If that feels like too much initially, just do this after your last set of rows.
Alternatively, you can also add a brief rest between your rows and shrug-backs, like a rest-pause set. In this case, you’d finish your rows, rest about 20 seconds (just enough to catch your breath and rest your grip), and then do a set of shrug-backs to failure.
If you do this as a standalone exercise, how you program it really depends on your goals. If your main goal is to develop your traps, it makes sense to do it before your seated machine rows (when your traps are freshest).
If you want to develop your traps, arms, lats, and rear delts more or less equally, do shrug-backs after rows.
When you use the shrug-back as a standalone exercise, do 3 sets of 8–10 reps with 1–2 minutes of rest between sets.
As for which variation to use, it’s mostly a matter of preference and what your gym has. The seated machine and chest-supported T-bar versions are my favorites because the chest pad takes your lower back out of the exercise.
The seated cable version is a good alternative if your gym doesn’t have a machine with chest support, though it requires a lot of lower-back strength. And the one-arm dumbbell version works anywhere you have a dumbbell and a bench, but it’s not as time-efficient as the others and demands more from your lower back and supporting arm.
Shrug-Back Alternatives
- Chest-Supported Dumbbell Shrug-Back (Kelso Shrug). Lie face-down on an incline bench with a dumbbell in each hand and pinch your shoulder blades together without bending your elbows. A good option when all you have is dumbbells and a bench, though it forces you to add weight in larger increments than the machine versions, and also partly trains your upper traps, making it less of a true isolation exercise for the middle traps.
- Seal Row Shrug-Back. The same movement performed lying face-down on an elevated bench with a barbell. This works well, but most people find it harder to get a full range of motion, and most gyms don’t have a seal row station.
- Seated Cable Row. Any horizontal rowing exercise, performed with scapular retraction, is also a fantastic exercise for training the mid-traps. The first part of every rep is a shrug-back, and it trains your lats, biceps, and rear delts, too.
- One-Arm Dumbbell Row. This works the same way as the seated cable row, but it isn’t as time-efficient and demands more from your lower back and supporting arm.
3 Shrug-Back Workouts
Here are three sample workouts that show how to program the shrug-back into your training:
Trap Workout with the Shrug-Back
Seated Cable Shrug-Back: 3 sets | 8–10 reps | 1–2 min rest
Seated Cable Row: 3 sets | 6–8 reps | 2–3 min rest
V-Grip Lat Pulldown: 3 sets | 6–8 reps | 2–3 min rest
Barbell Shrug: 3 sets | 8–10 reps | 1–2 min rest
Pull Workout with the Shrug-Back
Barbell Deadlift: 3 sets | 4–6 reps | 2–3 min rest
One-Arm Dumbbell Row: 3 sets | 6–8 reps | 2–3 min rest
Seated Machine Shrug-Back: 3 sets | 8–10 reps | 1–2 min rest
Lat Pulldown: 3 sets | 8–10 reps | 2–3 min rest
Alternating Dumbbell Curl: 3 sets | 8–10 reps | 2–3 min rest
Trap-Focused Upper-Body Workout with the Shrug-Back
Chin-Up: 3 sets | 4–6 reps | 2–3 min rest
Seated Cable Row: 3 sets | 6–8 reps | 2–3 min rest
Seated Cable Shrug-Back: 3 sets | 8–10 reps | 1–2 min rest
Machine Chest Press: 3 sets | 6–8 reps | 2–3 min rest
Barbell Shrug: 3 sets | 8–10 reps | 1–2 min rest
To progress these workouts, use double progression: use a weight that allows you to work within the given rep range, take each set 1–2 reps shy of failure, and once you hit the top of the range for your first set, add weight.
More Trap Exercises
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