reckonerCable shrug
A shrug against a low cable. You stand over the pulley with a bar or handles and lift your shoulders straight up toward your ears. The cable keeps pulling at the bottom, and the pause at the top is where the traps do their work.
Shoulders straight up to the ears.
- Pattern
- Shoulder isolation
- Trains
- Traps
- Kit
- Cable
- Loading
- A weight you choose
- Reckoner prescribes
- 3 sets of 12 to 15 reps at RPE 8
- Progression step
- 2.5 kg once the top of the range is clean
- Skill
- Simple to learn
- Recovery cost
- Very low
- Not prescribed if you have declared
- Neck
Muscles worked
How to do it
Stand over a low pulley
Clip a straight bar or two handles to a low pulley and stand facing it, close enough that the cable runs nearly straight up, so it pulls your shoulders straight down.
Long arms, tall body
Hold the bar with straight arms and let the cable pull your shoulders down. Stand tall. Starting from the bottom is what gives the shrug its range.
Shrug straight up
Lift your shoulders straight up toward your ears. The arms stay straight, so the elbows do not bend and the traps do the lifting.
Pause, then lower
Hold the top for a moment, then lower your shoulders slowly all the way down before the next rep. The pause is where the traps do their work.
What goes wrong
Rolling the shoulders
Rolling feels like it works more of the muscle. The traps lift the shoulders up, so straight up and down is the movement.
Bending the elbows
A little arm pull feels like it helps a heavy stack. It becomes an upright row. Keep the arms long and let the shoulders move.
Bouncing the reps
Fast short reps let a heavy stack move and the count climb. They skip the pause. Hold the top a beat every time.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, from 30 kg, run through the real engine. Nothing below was typed in: the prescription, the decision and the sentence beside it all come from the same code that writes your week.
| Week | Prescribed | What it did |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 x 12 at 30 kg | More reps 12 → 13 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 2 | 3 x 13 at 30 kg | More reps 13 → 14 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 3 | 3 x 14 at 30 kg | More reps 14 → 15 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 4 | 3 x 15 at 30 kg | Load up 30 kg → 32.5 kgYou hit the top of the range with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7), so the weight on the cable stack goes up 2.5 kg to 32.5 kg. The weight went up, so the reps come down to twelve. You are now working 12 to 15. |
| 5 | 3 x 12 at 32.5 kg | Deload 40% of sets offFive weeks of building, then one week lighter. About 40% of the sets come off. The load holds and your reps stay where you earned them, so you keep the strength and lose the fatigue. |
| 6 | 2 x 12 at 32.5 kg | More reps 12 → 13 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. The lighter week is over, so this is back to three sets. |
Real engine output, not an illustration. Every row was produced by running the engine itself when this page was generated.
The full rule, and why the reps move before the load does, is in how Reckoner decides to add weight.
Questions people ask
Cable, barbell or dumbbell shrug?
All three lift the shoulders straight up against a load. The cable keeps tension at the bottom. The barbell and dumbbells let you load heavier. Reckoner keeps them together in the shrug group.
Should I roll my shoulders?
No. The traps lift the shoulders up, so straight up and down is the whole movement.
Will Reckoner put this in my plan?
Not by itself. The shrug group already has two lifts the engine places, so it never chooses this one for you. Choose it in the lift picker or as a swap for a shrug. Neck is recorded against it.
Similar movements
Reckoner eases the load first when this lift stalls, and offers one of these only if it stalls again after that. A lift already as light as your kit goes has no load left to ease, so the offer comes straight away. Each of them has a page.