 Hey everybody, Lance Coyke here. Today I want to discuss one of the favorite favorite muscles of any rowing variation and any coach around the lower fibers of the trapezius muscle. So the trapezius to recap some anatomy. We got two shoulder blades, and then the trapezius is like this little diamond here in the middle and attaches to both shoulder blades. It goes all the way up to the neck and it goes all the way down to the upper lower back, if that makes sense, the upper part of your lower back. Now the lower fibers, they connect to the middle part of the shoulder blade and they actually rotate the shoulder upward. So now it helps me bring my arms up because now my arm is pointed upward. That shoulder blade motion is like a third of the actual motion of your arms. So it doesn't actually all occur in the joint. It actually is shifting the entire complex of the joint itself and that scapular motion is required for good shoulder health. So when I do rowing variations, what I'm looking for is lower trap activation and good timing of everything. So when I do a row, if I'm noticing my shoulders shrugging up as I'm coming down or as I'm rowing up, then I have to think, okay, well, I want a little bit more lower trap. The first cue is let me set my shoulders down and try to squeeze that lower trap muscle a little bit more. And sometimes that's enough and that's okay. And you're like, oh yeah, now I feel it in my middle back area and you're like, good. That's exactly what you need. If you're not feeling that, then I have to start to think, why am I not feeling the lower trap? Generally, it's because I'm shifting the tension off of the upper back muscle and onto something else. It might be onto a spinal muscle, right? So this is the most common thing that you'll see. When I get my row, I might stick my chest out too much in an effort to get my shoulder blades together. And maybe this much is okay, but this much is too much. And that destabilizes my upper back. Maybe that takes the tension off of that trapezius muscle and puts it onto my spinal column muscles and increases the compression in your spine. So it's some optimal anyway. That's the whole nutshell. Those are the two major examples. You might have some asymmetries going on too, but that's a little too complicated for us to talk about on the video on YouTube. But hopefully that helps you kind of understand what's going on with the lower trap in the row. It's going to help me bring the shoulder blades back together, but it's also going to help me keep the shoulder blades set down, right? And so if I get both of those, I'm going to feel that low trap working during my row.