 My name is Jill Millard, I am from Oxford, Michigan. Yeah. Excellent. How long have you been listening to the show? Gosh, probably going on about two years now. Oh, awesome. Now, who is your least favorite host and why is it, Justin? Why do you always open with that? I'm afraid you're going to ask me something like that. I'll let you answer that. I'm just kidding. All right, so what is your question? My question is I'm really trying to work on building the delts. And I have pretty large traps and always have, and they always seem to take over when I'm doing a side lateral raise. And I feel them more there than I do in my actual delts. OK, now, what is your fitness history? Are you following any particular program now, a maps program? Right now, I'm doing split. I've done anabolic. I've done aesthetic. And I've done split twice. So right now, I'm doing split. And that has side laterals in it. So when I do those, even like this in I forget what one it was, but there is alternating side laterals. And I just tend to feel it most in my traps. So I have a couple of things that could help. So one, have you ever heard of the dumping the milk out as you come up? Have you ever heard someone give that cue before? So yeah, so as you raise, think of actually rotating, like if you're holding two gallons of milk in each hand and you're pouring the milk out as you come in, that's one. That's one cue. The second cue I give to someone with something like this is think more about flying out instead of up. Because once you get up to where you're parallel to the floor, the traps will kick in to help stabilize or lift you up even higher. So instead of thinking lifting up, think of flying out. So if I have somebody still is having a lot of trouble and the traps kicking in, this is where I'll actually take like an incline bench and I'll get it like almost, not quite 90 degrees, but almost. And you'll almost lay on it as if you're going to do a rear fly, but it's more lateral and it'll just help keep the traps out a little. Yeah, that's one of my favorite ways to do it is I'll have people lay forward on a bench so that your chest is on the bench. And it's a really high incline. And then what you do is you bring the dumbbells out and rather than bringing them straight out to your sides, bring them out to the sides and kind it to the front of your body. Now, how much weight are you using when you're doing these laterals, by the way? Well, I guess it depends. I mean, usually probably around 15 pounds, 12, 15 pounds. Oh yeah, that's, wait, okay. So let's cut that down, way down. I would go five to eight, go five to eight pounds, go really, really slow. And the goal is to not shrug the shoulders or bring the scapula back. You're just using the delts, go real slow. Once you really start to feel that connection, once you start to get that pump in the side delts and you feel real comfortable with the form and the technique, then you can slowly move up and wait. But this is one of those exercises where weight isn't that important, it's all about feel. It's not a, it's all technique. This is a total technique exercise. Okay. Awesome. Were you an athlete in the past or something? Why do you have big traps? I was a cheerleader, actually. And I was a bass. Oh, you were a bass. There you go. Yeah, I spent a lot of time lifting. I don't know, that's the only thing. I had them in high school and I still have them. So I, that's the only thing I can attribute it to because I did mainly cheerleading is what I did. So. Okay. Do you not like traps? No, I don't mind them. I like them. She's like, I just don't want more of them. She's like, I just don't need more of them. That's what she's worried about here. Well, this is a real talk though. This is also an example of, since the beginning of the podcast, we tell people that the programs are, they're also moldable, right? So if there's exercises that I have a client going through and that they just seem to, their traps just build constantly and that's not what we're trying to do. I'll eliminate and exchange it for something else. Like let's say you're quite happy with your delts and you feel like every time you do lateral raises, no matter how you do them, no matter what tips you hear, they keep building your traps up, I'll exchange it with something else. So I'll put more focus on the rear delt or the front or do things that I think that are not going to build your traps up. So this is where I always encourage somebody that use the programs as a blueprint and a foundation for you, but this is where I would encourage someone to mold it to what best suits them. Now how does it feel when you use rubber bands, for instance? Like have you tried priming ahead of time and like getting some connectivity there with your delts with a rubber band? No, I have not tried that. Yeah, I've found sometimes that that just helps just to connect to it pre-workout. So just some techniques like that and some mobility drills just to kind of wake everything up so you can get that to respond a little bit more in the workplace. Well, no, that's actually, so you just reminded me of another strategy that I hadn't thought about this. I haven't done something like this with somebody in a long time. So take a really light band, like the lightest band you can get and step on it and do the lateral holding, like so I'll get five pound, symmetrical five pound dumbbells, but I'll also hold the band and fly out with that. The band will get so, the resistance of the band will keep her from probably coming up too high and letting the traps kick in and adding a little bit more resistance by adding the five pounds. But really your question has to do with mind to muscle connection. So something that helps with that is to understand the function of the muscles that you're trying to avoid working, right? So if it's your traps that are overactive, if we look at the action of the trapezius muscles, the traps shrug the shoulders up and they also bring the shoulder blades back, right? So when you're doing your lateral, you wanna push your shoulder blades down and prevent them from squeezing back. So they're just down. So while they stay down, push them down, then just lift the arms. That's why you gotta go a real lot of anchoring down. Well, this is also why the incline bench reverse is so great is cause down and forward is the opposite. Exactly. So gravity is gonna help that, right? So if you do the incline bench advice that we gave first, where you're facing the opposite direction on the incline bench, gravity is gonna pull the shoulders forward and down, which is exactly the sales point and why that works so well. And when it comes to feel exercises like laterals, lighter is perfectly fine, sometimes and often it's better. So if you still can't feel it, go even lighter, slow down. And your goal when you're doing every single rep is to concentrate and try to feel it exactly where you wanna feel it. That's the value of this particular exercise. Okay, that makes sense. Awesome. All right, thank you. I heard some kids in the background earlier. Do you have children? Yeah. Oh yeah. I have three kids and I just tested positive for COVID this week. Oh no. You sound okay. Are you doing all right? Yeah, just like a mild head cold. Yeah. Oh shit. Can we get COVID through the mic? But I can't. Today started the no taste, no smell anything. Oh man. Oh well. Well now you got some antibodies, right? Yeah. Yeah, Michael donates in plasma. There you go. Well, thanks for coming on the show. Good luck with the recovery on COVID. Yes. Good luck. Thanks guys. It's been great. Thank you. All right, thanks.