 Hey everybody Lance Gwakie here. Today we're discussing the upper trap during the pull-up or the chin-up. The pull-up and the chin-up variations aren't really changing the upper trap involvement so I wanted to squish them both together in this one video. Now when I do my pull-down with a bar where I'm sitting, lat pull-down, or a pull-up where I'm doing some sort of vertical row and I'm pulling my entire body up, I need proper shoulder motion. So what's proper shoulder motion? I need upward rotation to get a full reach at the top of the upward rotation of the shoulder blades and then on the way down I need them to downwardly rotate to finish my pull and to help me get that squeeze in my upper back muscles. Now that's all well and good. What happens when I'm not doing that? Well sometimes to get that extra pull what I do is I crunch over a little bit more and I try to bring my shoulder blades over and forward and what's doing that the upper trap, right? Sorry I got a little frog. When I do that though I'm throwing the shoulder forward and I'm not maximizing my mobility. So you may not even have any shoulder issues during the pull-down or during this rowing pulling variation but you might get a tight neck because the upper trap is attached to the whole base of the neck and even the base of the head up top and so it might be flattening you out, it might be stiffening you up. So look into that. I'm not looking for that, right? So when I'm getting my vertical row if I see my shoulder blades roll forward like this I think, well I think upper trap, I almost said lats because lats are sometimes a poison muscle too, upper trap and I don't necessarily want upper trap during my pull. Pretty much don't. It's going to help me with the upward rotation here at the top but I want some downward rotation when I get to the bottom of my pull. So I need to let that relax a little bit. Basically I would focus first on getting your shoulder blades to come back together to retract a little bit more in an effort to kind of inhibit this upper trap muscle during the row. Basically the upper trap is bringing me not just upward but also forward because it's pulling the shoulder blade forward. So if I can get it backward then I can help keep that muscle calm. There might be some other stuff going on too, right? If we've talked about the upper trap previously sometimes the rib cage position is maximizing the involvement of the upper trap and maybe I just don't have the rib cage position to get that downward rotation that I'm looking for and I can't feel the upper back muscles so I start to squeeze a little bit more and then my shoulder blades start to ride up because they've run out of motion. They're actually running into the rib cage. So in that case I've got to change the position of the rib cage. I've got to try my push-ups and get a nice rounded position at the top of the push-up. I got to try some lunging variations and make sure I'm not too proud while I'm doing my lunges. Make sure I can keep a slight slouch and put the tension on my legs instead of on my back while I'm doing that. And you know the simpler variations are stuff like full rock back breathing where I'm just scrunching up my abs and rounding out my upper back to make sure I still have that motion available to me but I'm not gonna get the feeling that I'm looking for until I can hold that position while I take a breath in. Okay? So that's a long-winded explanation of the upper trap during the pull-up. If I'm seeing my shoulder blades come forward like this at the top or at the end of the pull-up then try to set them back maybe reduce the weight so it's a little bit easier so you can focus on the muscles that are involved and if not then start to look into some other exercises so I can reposition the ribcage here.