What is the best way to target your back muscles? Do you keep doing the same exercises with reduced results? Or do you suffer from lower back pain which limits your exercise choices? Then it is time to include Kelso shrugs into your back routines.

How To Do a Kelso Shrug

The traditional upright dumbbell shoulder shrug involves scapula elevation that targets the upper traps, the Kelso shrug squeezes the shoulder blades together in a retraction movement. This put all the focus on the middle and lower traps. Our model is using 20kg Dumbbells, make sure to use a weight that is suitable for you.

• Lie face down on a Foldable Weight Bench.

• Hold a pair of dumbbells with your arms hanging perpendicular to the floor.

• Pull your shoulder blades down your back.

• Holding this position, squeeze both shoulder blades together while keeping your arms straight.

• Slowly lower the dumbbells back to the floor.

Benefits of Kelso Shrug

• Isolation of middle and lower back muscles - targeting the traps is difficult. Rowing movements utilise additional muscles such as the lats and biceps, but Kelso shrugs isolate the traps and rhomboids.

• Shoulder stability - In daily life, our scapulas tend to protract, causing rounding of the shoulders leading to shoulder pain. This can be exacerbated by training the chest without training the back.

The Kelso shrug is an excellent exercise to focus on your back. By resting your chest on a bench, you are forcing the back muscles to work independently for increased strength gains and an elimination of the strain on the lower back.

Seal rows are a multi-jointed exercise that target a wide range of back muscles such as the lats, traps and rear deltoids. The Kelso shrug is an isolation exercise that focuses on the middle traps and rhomboids.

Both exercises can increase the activation of your back muscles for increased strength and muscle gains, so add them into your back sessions today.

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Tags: Equipment > Bars and Weight Plates ; Equipment > Benches ; Exercise Type > Strength