Upper back exercises

Where do you pull the weight?

The catalog is surprisingly precise here and it is worth reading closely. The bent-over barbell row brings the bar to the lower chest, the Pendlay version to the stomach, the seated cable row to the lower abdomen, and the one-arm dumbbell row toward the hip. These are not the same movement described in different words.

The higher the pull finishes, the further the elbow travels from the torso, and the more work lands on the mid back and the rear delt. The lower it finishes, the closer the elbow stays to the ribs, and the bigger the share the lats take. That is why plenty of programs carry one movement from each end of that range instead of three versions of the same one.

What they all share is how the rep ends. Squeezing the shoulder blades together at the top shows up in the catalog on the barbell row, on the Pendlay version and on the seated cable. If the shoulder blades never move, the arms are doing most of the pulling and the back is only holding position.

Why shrugs on their own?

Shrugs are the only movement in this group where the elbow stays straight the whole time. The shoulders travel straight to the ears and straight back down, and the work goes to the upper traps - the part rows load in passing, but never as the main target.

There is no shortage of variants: barbell in front and behind the back, trap bar, dumbbells on an incline bench face up and face down, even overhead. What mostly separates them is the angle the weight hangs at relative to your torso, and therefore where in the range the movement gets hardest.

Whether you need them at all depends on the rest of your program. Heavy rows and deadlifts already load the traps just by keeping the weight in your hands, only without moving. Shrugs add work through the full range of the shoulder, which neither of those movements does.