[quote]lift206 wrote:
[quote]craze9 wrote:
[quote]T3hPwnisher wrote:
[quote]craze9 wrote:
Haha, ok. I still can’t say I really understand your position.
To confirm, if I want to look more like Kingbeef I should add a day to my split where I just do shrugs and abs and wrist curls and calf raises?[/quote]
You will definitely develop those muscles more by working them directly versus indirectly, yes.[/quote]
I didn’t think that’s what we were talking about. As a general point I think the above is obviously true. But it would depend what you mean by “directly.” I think hang cleans and deadlifts and farmer walks work the traps pretty directly. My traps get sore when I do them.
And if you’re saying that for a beginner lifter barbell shrugs will build traps better than deadlifts, I don’t necessarily agree. I don’t know for sure either way, but there was just a thread on traps the other day and no one said “just do a lot of shrugs”.
[/quote]
I agree with most of what was stated in that forum. Getting big traps comes from forcing the traps to do a lot of work. That’s why the answer can be doing a ton of reps which also translates to a large amount of TUT.
The holistic answer is that you have to get your traps strong so it can do more work. More work forces adaptation to get stronger. Basically periodizing between strength and hypertrophy because they build off one another. If you only focus on the strength end of the spectrum, it will take a long time to gain size.
IMO, there isn’t much of a difference between a bodybuilder, powerlifter, oly lifter and strongman. The goal is to get as big and strong as possible for the given weight class. The strength athletes just tend to focus more on technique for strength and are generally more efficient at using their body as a whole to execute each competition lift. It doesn’t necessarily mean that a person focused on aesthetics can’t learn to move big weights in the same competition lifts - some can be stronger than their counterparts.
The large work load is technically most responsible for the mass gains but if you’re talking about getting big over an entire lifting career then it’ll be wise to have a good mix of work ranging from light to heavy intensity and low to high volume.[/quote]
I agree, but I thought we were talking about the best “in general” approach for a lifter in his first few years of training.
To which I’m saying 1) it’s a good idea for most of these people to at least try doing deadlifts, or some deadlift variation and 2) it is a waste of training resources for these people to have an entire day focusing on isolation work for small muscle groups like calves/traps/forearms.
At no point did I say that someone who really wants to focus on maximizing trap size should never do shrugs. Or that a bodybuilder shouldn’t isolate a muscle or use targeted lifts rather than larger compound movements.
But for someone whose goal is more overall size and strength (the vast majority of lifters), and is still relatively a beginner, I don’t see shrugs or wrist curls as important, at all. I’ll go one further – a lifter in that category who focuses on deadlifts and hang cleans and farmer walks and does zero shrugs or wrist curls will tend to have just as good trap and forearm development as a guy who devotes a day in his split to shrugs and wrist curls, but he will also have been training additional qualities via those compound lifts – full body strength, core stability, explosiveness, etc. If you are an advanced bodybuilder and don’t care about any of those things, then fine, do the isolation work and load up the volume, but I was never talking about advanced bodybuilders.