Hise Shrugs

I’ve been reading a lot about doing Hise Shrugs for building the traps lately. I haven’t tried them yet but I recommended the exercise to my brother who did them yesterday and is complaining about how sore his whole back is, and he said that it hurts to breath heavy. What did he do wrong?

Maybe he let his lower back round out. You’re supposed to stand like you’re going to do a squat (but you knew that already), so the lower back should stay arched. If it was his 1st time doing them, that might be why his lats are sore. As for the rest of his back, I think that’s what’s supposed to happen. Here’s part of Peary Rader’s description of them: ‘…standing with feet in solid position you take a deep breath-always striving to breathe into the upper part of the chest, as high as possible while shrugging the shoulders upwards as high as you can.’ That’s probably why it hurts to breathe, because he was doing them right. If he went 20 reps with as much weight as he could handle, and if he hasn’t done them before, I could see how he’s so sore now.

Yeah, sounds to me like he did them right.