Close Grip Upright Row Good Or Bad

Posted by: Ron

Close Grip Upright Row A "Worthless" Exercise, According To Vince Gironda

How wide you appear is more important than how wide you really are. Doing the close grip upright row will make your shoulders seem narrow

Avoid the close grip upright row and do shoulder width upright rows instead

Vince Gironda always strived for an aesthetic physique. Broad shoulders, narrow waist, well developed and balanced legs, including calves. Everything in proportion.

He was very outspoken about exercises that worked the glutes and abs, thickening the areas up, taking away from the illusion of a tiny waist. He's always said that if you can make your waist seem narrower, you're making your shoulders seem broader. The opposite is also true, if your waist and hips get thicker, your shoulders will seem narrower.

If your shoulders get broader (his focus on the later head of the deltoids) it will make your waist seem narrower. It's an illusion and he was the master of it through nutrition, training and posing.

This is the reason he disliked the close grip upright rows. He wrote: "The close grip utilizes Trapezius instead of Deltoid. As soon as you start to lift the barbell, the shoulders travel up and in towards the neck, which is the function of the Trapezius." The thicker your traps are, the more drooping your shoulders look which makes them seem narrower than they are.

Just with the change of the grip, you can turn a "worthless" exercise to one that packs inches on your width. Vince further wrote: "If the barbell is gripped at a shoulder width and raised, the deltoids are activated, and provided you do not raise the barbell higher than the base of the neck, you will not use the trapezius muscles."

When done, correctly, the shoulder width upright row targets the lateral head of the deltoid with immense accuracy. Give it a try and only lift the bar as high as the base of your neck.

Try it during your next shoulder workout and report back on how effective you find it.

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