Starting Strength, 3rd Edition - Mark Rippetoe [150]
Heavy shrugs make the traps grow; there is no doubt about it. At lighter weights, done with sets of five at the 1RM deadlift weight, they are good for cleans, and at heavier weights, they prepare the traps for the top of the deadlift and prepare the brain for the feel of very heavy weight. The heavier sets will always be done with straps, due to the snap that must be present at the top when the traps shrug the bar. One work set after warm-ups is enough; sets across are extremely stressful due to the heavy skeletal loading involved in supporting this much weight, even for the brief time it takes to complete a rep. Likewise, barbell shrugs should be used conservatively in the schedule, maybe once every two weeks in the appropriately designed program.
Notes about the power rack. The rack pull and the barbell shrug obviously depend on the power rack, and its design is critical for these and all the other exercises in this program that can be done in one. A good rack should not be too expensive, and some of the simplest designs are actually the best. The rack should have a floor – it should not be merely on the floor, with you standing on something that is not also holding the rack down. A heavy plywood floor inside the rack and attached to the frame ensures that the weight of you and the loaded bar is always acting to stabilize the rack, so that when you set the bar back down on the pins, the rack does not move. Your position between the uprights will be determined by the depth of the rack (the distance between the front and back uprights).
Shallow racks are a pain in the ass, and if the dimensions are wrong, the rack can be very hard to use. It should be deep enough to squat inside of, with some play front to back not being a problem. Drift during the set will occur no matter how careful you are, and if the uprights are so close together that you keep bumping them when you move a little, the quality of the set will suffer. If the rack is too deep, the pins will have too much “bounce” because the long span between front and back uprights requires longer, and therefore springier, pins. Having the bar bouncing around on the pins is also disruptive during the set. The rack pictured in Figure 7-2 is 22 inches deep.
If the rack is not wide enough, it can make loading the bar a problem. A narrow rack will allow an unevenly loaded bar – which they all are while being loaded – to tip. This, and the fact that a narrow rack is potentially very hard on the hands when you’re racking the squat, makes 48–49 inches outside to outside a very handy width for a power rack. The holes in the uprights should be on 3-inch centers or closer. This spacing allows for fine enough adjustments in height that it is useful for all exercises inside the rack, as well as for squatting and pressing outside the rack. (For more details about racks, and the plans for building your own, see the Equipment section of the Programming chapter.)
Partial squats and presses
These same principles – using different versions of the parent exercise or portions of its range of motion as assistance exercises, which we lump together under the term “partials” – can be applied to squats and presses. Squats and presses, however, respond differently due to the fundamentally different nature of the exercises. The deadlift starts from the floor without a stretch reflex, distinguishing it from a squat in more ways than just the location of the bar. The hip and knee angles in the squat are already more acute