Barbell · intermediate · back
Barbell hex bar deadlift to shrug
Also called Trap bar deadlift to shrug, Hex bar deadlift shrug, Trap bar shrug.
You stand inside a hex bar, pull it to lockout, then lift your shoulders toward your ears before putting it down. The hamstrings and glutes do nearly all of the lifting, and the trapezius does the piece at the end that the name is about. Both halves happen to run out at the same place, which is unusual for a combination lift: what your hands can keep hold of decides the weight for the pull and for the shrug.
How to do it
- Step oneStep inside a hex bar with feet hip-width apart and grip the handles.
- Step twoHinge at the hips and bend your knees to lower to the bar, keeping your back flat.
- Step threeDrive through your heels to stand upright, performing a deadlift.
- Step fourAt the top of the movement, perform a shrug by elevating your shoulders toward your ears.
- Step fiveLower your shoulders and then lower the bar back to the ground with control.
What usually goes wrong
Each starts with what you would notice.
You reach the top and cannot really tell whether the shrug happened.
WhyThe bar was loaded for the pull. Your hips will stand up far more weight than your shoulder blades will lift, so at lockout the shoulders barely leave where they were and the rep ends anyway.
FixChoose the load from the shrug half and let the deadlift underneath it be a light one. If someone standing side on could not see your shoulders rise, the second half of this exercise is not taking place.
Your hands are what ends the set, well before your legs or your traps.
WhyOne rep holds the bar through a whole pull and a whole shrug, so your grip is under load for roughly twice as long per rep as it would be in either exercise on its own.
FixKeep the sets short, or use straps and let the set finish where the muscles finish. This is the one part of the movement that gets harder purely because two lifts were stapled together.
The last few reps are all deadlift and no shrug.
WhyThe trapezius half is much the smaller of the two, so it runs out first. The pull carries on looking fine while the shrug quietly disappears.
FixJudge the set on whether the shoulders are still traveling. When they stop, the set is over, even if you could pull another five.
Deadlift to shrug, or the two on their own
Nobody has measured this. There is no study putting a shrug at deadlift lockout next to a shrug done by itself, on any bar, so anything you read ranking them is somebody guessing in a confident voice.
What can be said is mechanical, and it is more interesting than the usual answer for a combination lift. Most of them are held back by whichever half is weaker. This one is not, because a heavy shrug and the top of a heavy deadlift give out at the same place: your hands. Neither half forces the other to be light.
The cost is that the shrug always arrives on a grip that has just done a pull. If the shrug is the reason you are here, doing it separately gives it a fresh start and a heavier bar.
What the trap studies actually tested
The pitch for this movement is that it works the traps maximally. Nothing measured it. The one study that ranked exercises for the upper trapezius tested ten shoulder exercises in 30 healthy people and put a one-arm shrug at the top. That is a ranking inside that set, and nothing from the deadlift family was in it.
One thing has been measured about the implement, and it is narrow. In an isometric test on 35 adults, 16 of them recruited because they had acute low back pain and 19 without, a hex bar produced higher upper trapezius excitation than a conventional bar at the same task, and the two groups did not differ from each other. That was a held position rather than a moving rep, it is a single result, and it says nothing about the shrug bolted on the end. Worth knowing, not worth choosing a bar over.
The rest of the trapezius stays out of it, for the reason the shrug entry sets out: raising your shoulder blade is one action, and that muscle has others that no amount of shrugging asks for. And the hex bar putting less load through the lower back is a fact about force, not a promise about what will happen to you.
What it is for
The hex bar deadlift to shrug combines a deadlift with an end-range shrug to maximally target the traps and posterior chain. The hex bar reduces lower back stress compared to a straight bar, making it a safer option for developing the traps, hamstrings, and glutes together.
Questions people ask
- What muscles does the hex bar deadlift to shrug work?
- Hip extension lifts the bar off the floor, so the hamstrings and glutes are what stand it up, and the quads take a real share at the knee because the frame surrounds you instead of sitting out in front. Your lower back keeps the torso where you put it. The trapezius then raises your shoulder blades at the top, which is the part this version adds.
- How much weight should you use?
- Whatever lets the shrug at the top actually travel. That will be lighter than your hex bar deadlift and it is supposed to be. A rep where the shoulders barely move is a deadlift with an intention on the end of it.
- Is this better than doing deadlifts and shrugs separately?
- No study has put the two arrangements side by side. What is unusual here is that both halves are capped by the same thing, your grip, so neither one is forced to be light. The trade is that the shrug always happens on hands that have just pulled.
- Does a hex bar work the traps more than a straight bar?
- One isometric study of 35 adults, 16 of them recruited because they had acute low back pain, found higher upper trapezius excitation with a hex bar than with a conventional bar at the same task. It was a held position rather than a moving lift, and it is one result. Treat it as an interesting measurement rather than a reason to change implements.
- Why does my grip give out before anything else?
- Because a single rep holds the load through a full pull and a full shrug, so your hands work for about twice as long as they would in either exercise alone. Shorter sets or straps both answer it.
- Should you shrug at the top of an ordinary deadlift?
- Not if you are deadlifting for the deadlift. Adding a shoulder action at lockout changes what the rep is for, and it means picking a weight that suits your shoulders rather than your hips. Do this as its own exercise, or leave the lockout alone.