Agree with you,you can't isolate part of a muscle,thats not what i mean,I may have worded it wrong by saying targeting mid lower traps.
Traps can shrug up,pull shoulders together and down,ive only ever really done standing barbell or trap bar shrugs,shrugging straight up.In that position the upper traps are doing the brunt of the work because thats there function to shrug straight up,not really suprising that there overdeveloped compared to mid and lower.
I tried tomlet's suggestion yesterday and this morning ive got some nice mild doms in my mid back,so thats a good indicator that shrugging on an incline bench does work mid back,full of the traps will have been worked but mid traps were put in a stronger position to do there job pull shoulders together.
Hope that makes sense.
Reason for dropping bb rows,few years back decided to rethink how i was training,saw a quote that said if you want to look like a bodybuilder train like one,started watching lots of training vids,esp. milos,charles glass and yates and started expermenting with different exercise,tried supported bb rows and just love the feeling of it over regular rows,very strict you can't cheat.
Got to disagree about not trying to bring up lagging parts unless youre at a high level of development,seen people say this all the time and just from an injury point of view it doesn't make sense to me.
I didn't train rear delts at all up until i developed burcitus and the physios pointed out rear delts were weak,i didn't train them because i listened to the google gurus over on another board who said you don't need to train rear delts they get plenty of work from bb rows ect.
Theyve improved loads from direct work which is going to help prevent injury and side on they dont look flat any more lol
Trying to bring traps up will help prevent the burcitus coming back hopefully and realistically im not going to get much bigger than i am now so its worth a shot trying to bring weak points up.
,
Good post mate. Yeah, think I may have misinterpreted what you mean't exactly a little bit there.
To clarify though, I wasn't suggesting people ignore "weak" points/bodyparts...but my point is, unless you are already at a high level (and I'm not suggesting you are or aren't personally), everything could be/should be seen as a weak point.
I agree with your comments about injury prevention 100% and think its very important to make sure you provide a good balance in your training..e.g: many people do 20% more for chest than they do for back or vice versa. I think it's wise to train everything and use a variety of exercises to compliment each muscle group..etc..
Having said that, your muscular system is designed to work in concert so it's very difficult to target specific fibres directly without assistance from other muscle groups (impossible in fact). I'd generally aim to pick exercises which gives a lot of bang for their buck as they say. I guess this is why I've always favoured boring but basic exercises such as barbell rows over a machine..etc. although I can certainly see the merits of some of the fancy exercises Charles Glass and those other gurus come up with.
In many cases, it's often as case of muscle inbalance not so much underdevelopment, although you could argue what the difference is...e.g: this is common in respect to the quads and hamstrings.
SteamroD
The upper, mid and lower fibres aren't seperate muscles, it's just that the fibres run in different directions and the muscle has 3 functions and insertion points.
The upper portion elevates the shoulders...shrugs and upright rows..etc. the middle fibres pull or retract the the shoulder blades together (rowing/back exercises) and the the lower part is there to draw the shoulder blades downward (depression) while keeping the arms almost straight and stiff...so actually, when you think of the function of the lower fibres and how they move, it's likely this area will get worked more with shoulder work than back exercises...overhead press in particular...although this isn't to say the upper and mid fibres will "switch" off.
Not the same to compare individual fibres or heads to individual muscle groups (as you mentioned with biceps and triceps) however.
For example, triceps have 3 "heads", but it's impossible to isolate each of them without contracting the muscle as a whole. This is effectively the same principle here in regards to traps.
Having said that, it may be possible that certain fibres will contract
more over others based on the angle or exercise selection, especially since the trapezius has three different functions as described above and is a large muscle.
This is essentially what I meant in regards to muscle "isolation" being a myth...it's not to say certain exercises aren't worth trying or don't work, just to be aware that it's impossible to work a muscle half way or only contract certain fibres while switching off the others. Muscles contract fully or not at all (all or none law).
