Yay! My Traps Are Sore..

When your muscles do work, through exercise or just carrying heavy groceries or maybe lifting heavy boxes, there are lots of tiny fibers in the muscle that tear.. this translates into soreness. I laugh at the way TV shows and movies often show someone who has never worked out before, try some intense exercise, then become so sore the next day that they can't even walk good. (although I once did so many body weight squats, as part of a test to see how many I could do, and then just hours after I could not even walk.. I had to crawl back to my dorm room) Of course, the people on TV who tried working out and got all sore.. well, they quit working out before they even really try it. :(

When I first started to lift weights back in 2001, I experienced some soreness after each workout, but I was prepared for this and in fact, it is a very important part of the building process.. it's after this micro damage to your muscles that makes your body repair itself, and make the muscles bigger and more shapely.

There are a few muscles that are harder to damage because they are a lot stronger than the others. One of these is the trapezius muscle, on our backs..

For me, I haven't felt that soreness after working my traps in many years. I wrote a post about how I liked using dumbbells to exercise my traps, but I couldn't safely move the heavy dumbbells into position to perform that exercise. So, I decided to give this machine a try.

It does many different things as you can see here. I also like how it has a pullup bar and the dual weight stacks make for easy and fast adjustments.

Using the handle attachment on each side, and dropping the pulley all the way down, It is in perfect position for me to lift up on each and then shrug away like usual. (slowly and squeeze the traps at the top for a sec) I haven't done shrugs with more than 45 lbs. on each side ever since I left hawaii over a year ago.

I am pretty sure I couldn't even lift 100 lb. dumbbells (without breaking something), let alone a pair of 200 lb dumbbells. Yesterday, though, I started with a couple sets of shrugs (15 reps each) using the weight set to 100 lbs. After that, I added 20 more lbs. until I hit 200 lbs. (It's the max weight of the stack, but i think I'll stick to less weight for future workouts.. this heavy makes my knees hurt a little--it's good to go heavy sometimes) I only managed 6 reps at this weight.

So yeah, sore traps is good.. means those muscles can grow as they reapair now. Yay! I've found my solution for shrugs for now. Maybe someone out there has a similar problem.

cool,

Ben

ps. the pic of the trapezius muscle is from here