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Regarding chest training actions, it's all old and familiar. Do we really have all chest exercises?

A ‘treasure’ action means it’s effective, not just simple and true.

The difficulty lies in finding the feeling of force and, from the action trajectory, it doesn’t look like other exercises to see where it’s targeting – whether it’s the back or the chest.

It’s the dumbbell shrug, and the dynamic stimulation process gives it the rare ability to stimulate both the chest and the back muscles.

Here are 5 benefits of the treasure action dumbbell shrug:

1. Muscle hypertrophy

We all want to gain muscle, and if this action doesn’t have a good effect on muscle gain, you won’t include it in your plan.The dumbbell shrug is a good exercise to train the chest and latissimus dorsi muscles.

Maintain a repetition of 8-20 to achieve muscle hypertrophy benefits.

2. Increase strength

Continuously increase weight and ensure that you perform specific strength training repetitions, around 10 repetitions.

But don’t be rigid about the fixed repetition range, you can mix it, if you find yourself improving, increase the shrug weight.

3. Mind-muscle connection

This is an action that requires concentrated energy to stimulate the muscle. Of course, all actions should be like this. But since you can choose to focus more on the chest or the back, you must be able to understand how to mobilize the muscles to get the best effect.

4. Trunk and shoulder stability

Mobilize the core muscles to stabilize the trunk; this is very important, especially for heavier sets. Like any back or chest action, shoulder stability is necessary to prevent overextension of the shoulders and ensure the function of the shoulder joint.

With these two points, training performance will improve and you can accurately target the desired muscles.

5. Improve shoulder range of motion

When your hands are behind your head, also keep your hands tightly together, which also requires sufficient shoulder stability. Through adding this action to the training plan, it can improve the movement of the shoulder in the eccentric process.

However, not everyone can effectively complete this action because structural issues may lead to limited shoulder flexibility, in this case, before training with dumbbell shrug, you should first solve this problem.

Let’s talk about the details of the dumbbell shrug. Remember, depending on your goal – chest or latissimus dorsi – the way to complete the action has slight differences.

Action starting posture

• Before starting the action, put the dumbbell on one end of the bench, so it’s more convenient to hold it when lying down.
• Stand vertically on the bench, leaning your upper back on the bench, with your feet on the floor, while ensuring your body is parallel to the ground, at the same time, make sure your body is parallel to the ground.
• Hold the dumbbell with both hands at the end, lift it over your chest, just like when doing a bench press.
• The elbows and body form a 45-degree angle, slowly lower it to allow the arm to move to the back of your head. Only lower it to the point where the dumbbell is at the same level as your head. If you’re targeting the chest, you shouldn’t lower it any further. If you want to train the latissimus dorsi, you can lower the dumbbell a little lower to feel the stretch.
• Raise the dumbbell above your head, contract the chest muscles, as if pushing your hands together, while slightly rotating your shoulders inward. The dumbbell should be above your chest, in the starting action. If the training goal is to target the latissimus dorsi, contract the latissimus dorsi when lifting the weight, don’t try to squeeze your hands together.
• Repeat.

Action tips

If you’re new to this action, start with a relatively light dumbbell, because starting with a heavier dumbbell will increase the difficulty and risk.Also, you won’t feel the muscles moving or achieve a complete action range.

The effectiveness of this action depends on the connection between your mind and muscles, and by making fine adjustments to your body position to ensure you’re focused on the target muscle.

Dumbbell shrug variation 1 – fixed barbell shrug

Use a fixed barbell to do this action, but pay attention to a few things.

Because using a barbell, the hand position relates to the target muscle.With a shoulder-width grip is better for the latissimus dorsi, because this is an ideal grip, applicable to any action targeting back muscles.

To better develop the chest, you should bring your hands closer together to get a better recruitment and contraction effect.

Dumbbell shrug variation 2 – crossed dumbbell shrug

For this variation, lie on a flat bench, just like when doing a bench press, so that it’s parallel to the bench.In addition, you can use a down-sloping bench to do this action, which focuses more on developing the lower chest.

This variation eliminates the involvement of the glutes and core, but you still need to keep the core contracted, which is irrelevant to the nature of the action.

Dumbbell shrug variation 3 – ball dumbbell shrug

This variation definitely requires the involvement of the core and hips. The stability ball needs to mobilize more auxiliary muscles. Nevertheless, don’t overextend your spine, because the movement of the arms is still the main content of the action. However, you can get more stretches through this variation.

Use a lighter or moderate weight to ensure the best action effect, because it’s not as stable on the ball as on the flat bench.

Dumbbell shrug variation 4 – rope shrug

For the latissimus dorsi, this variation may be a better choice. Nevertheless, it’s still a great action, which is beneficial for improving shoulder joint stability and developing the latissimus dorsi.

When doing this action, keep your arms extended.

How to arrange the dumbbell shrug. Remember that it is a good way to target both the chest and the latissimus dorsi, but it cannot replace bench press and pull-ups. And use a safe and effective weight to stretch the arm, rather than using the weight used in compound actions such as push and pull.

In a sense, the dumbbell shrug is closer to the fly, but you can still use a challenging weight to complete the action, and muscle hypertrophy is achieved through different techniques and different ways to stimulate growth. Sometimes you can use a lighter weight to perform more repetitions, so that you can focus more on activating the muscles and establishing the mind-muscle connection. It’s also great for getting a good stretch, especially when targeting the latissimus dorsi.

When you focus on muscle hypertrophy, maintain a repetition range of 8-12 to really challenge your muscles, while maintaining the muscles in a tense state for enough time.

The repetition range for muscle hypertrophy is also good for strength development, if your level improves, you can even try a repetition range of 5-7, but be cautious, don’t overextend when using this weight.

Overall, it’s an action that can stimulate both the chest and the latissimus dorsi, some would arrange chest-back antagonistic training, we recommend arranging it in such actions.

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