Modified
High Pulls for Building Bigger,
More Explosive Traps and Upper Back
The High Pull exercise,
if you're not familiar with it, is very similar to an upright
row done explosively, pulling the bar up from the floor to as
high as you can.
The only problem
with the high pull is that the position your shoulders are pulling
from (because that's similar to the upright row), can be potentially
damaging to the shoulder joint. I won't go into the full explanation
of that here, but bottom line, the upright row is an exercise
I avoid and recommend you avoid as well.
That's why I came
up with this alternate version of the high pull, used to target
primarily the traps. I've modified the movement in order to
take the shoulder strain off and to focus more on the traps
while still using an explosive movement that isn't a full clean.
The movement looks
a lot like a clean that stops short of flipping the bar up and
around onto your shoulders. Instead of doing the flip, you will
instead pull the bar into your chest.
Start with the bar
at a hang, at arms-length (use a similar overhand grip position
that you'd use for a shoulder press and/or clean and press).
Much of the "clean"
movement originates with a hip thrust, NOT an arm yank, so bend
forward a bit like you're doing the top part of a stiff-legged
deadlift.
Next, thrust the
hips forward and pull the bar explosive straight up (don't swing
it around).
As the bar comes
to the top of the movement (where you'd normally flip it around
to do a clean if you were doing a clean), you'll pull (it'll
feel like a row) the bar into your chest hard, then let it come
down to a hang again.
This explosive pulling
upwards hits the upper trap fibers while the pull back into
your chest will help target the middle-trap fibers. The pull
back is a very subtle movement...more something that you'll
try and feel than you'll actually see in the path of the bar.
Repeat this for 4
to 6 reps. Don't push this one to failure...stop the set when
your explosiveness diminishes. Once that happens, your form
will break and you won't get anything out of the training AND
you might risk injury by throwing weights around when you're
fatigued.
This exercise is
a nice alternative to both the regular shrug and the clean or
high pull and will really hit your traps in a way they've never
been hit before, especially if you've not worked with explosive
upper body training like this before!
