Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Health & Fitness
  3. Evergreens

Dumbbell shrugs: A powerful move for a stronger upper back

Target your traps and amass upper body power by shrugging your shoulders

By
man doing dumbbell shrug holding dumbbells outside standing in parking lot
Anete Lusina / Pexels

Dumbbell shrugs are a simple yet highly effective exercise to target your traps and help you build a more powerful upper back. All you need is two dumbbells, and you’re good to go. Even though it’s a simple exercise, there are plenty of common mistakes to avoid that can hamper your muscle-building success. Let’s look at how you can improve your form, the benefits of dumbbell shrugs, the muscles worked, and more.

What is the dumbbell shrug?

man standing black and white in gym holding dumbbells doing shoulder shrug
Taylor Daugherty / Unsplash

The dumbbell shrug exercise involves holding two dumbbells down at your sides and shrugging your shoulders up and back down again. It’s a variation of the shrug exercise that isolates your trapezius muscles.

Recommended Videos

What muscles are targeted during the dumbbell shrug?

muscle man upper back black and white picture muscles traps biceps flex
Marcus Chan Media / Pexels

This single-joint isolation exercise mostly works your trapezius muscle as well as stabilizer muscles like your erector spinae.

Trapezius

Your trapezius muscle is a three-pronged muscle connecting along your upper spine. It’s the largest in your back, beginning from your head and neck and extending towards your shoulders. The muscle joins in the middle of your back to form the geometric shape of a trapezoid. Your traps help you shrug your shoulders, turn and tilt your neck, and stabilize and move your shoulder blades. 

Forearms

Your forearm muscles isometrically contract so that you can keep a closed fist around the dumbbell. You’ll feel the burn in your forearms when you go to town with dumbbell shrugs.

What are the benefits of dumbbell shrugs?

Shirtless man fist in the air punching air by a waterfall outside in nature back muscles
Karsten Winegeart / Unsplash

The benefits of dumbbell shrugs include:

  • Increase upper body strength and muscle mass.
  • Work with your hands at your sides.
  • Help correct certain muscular imbalances and reduce neck and shoulder tension.
  • Improve your posture by strengthening your trapezius and supporting muscles around your upper back and shoulders.
  • Improve your grip strength.
  • Isolate your traps.
  • Stronger traps level up your ability to perform other exercises like deadlifts.
  • It’s a simple and convenient exercise.

How to do the dumbbell shrug

Man doing dumbbell shrugs.
Anete Lusina / Adobe Stock

You’ll need two dumbbells.

Here’s how to do the dumbbell shrug:

  1. Stand upright, holding a dumbbell in each hand. Your arms should be down at your sides.
  2. Your feet should be planted directly under your hips, and your gaze should be straight ahead in the starting position.
  3. Engage your core and use your traps to pull or ‘shrug’ your shoulders up to your ears.
  4. Pause for a moment before slowly lowering the dumbbells back down to the starting position.
  5. Repeat until the set is complete.

Most common mistakes to avoid

man holding dumbbell red black shorts wooden floor dumbbell shrug
Eduardo Cano / Unsplash

Master the dumbbell shrug by avoiding these common mistakes:

  • Arching your back or slouching your spine.
  • Bending your elbows.
  • Using momentum to swing the weights up.
  • Shrugging the weights too high up. Try to pull the dumbbells up about 3 or 4 inches for the full range of motion.
  • Lowering the weights too quickly.
  • Gripping the dumbbells too hard, which can accelerate fatigue in your forearms.
  • Tilting your torso and not bracing and stabilizing your core.
  • Rolling your shoulders.
  • Not squeezing your traps.
  • Not moving both of your shoulders together in unison.

Top tips

man holding dumbbell in hand dumbbell shrug close up pic tattoo
Cotton Bro / Pexels

Get the most out of dumbbell shrugs with these top tips:

  • Let your arms hang down freely at your sides, and avoid bending your elbows.
  • Focus on targeting your traps and performing the dumbbell shrug motion mostly with your shoulders.
  • Focus on deliberate shrugging motions at a steady pace using a medium-heavy weight.
  • Pause at the top of the movement to amplify results.
  • You can work your traps more frequently with high reps once you’ve perfected your technique.
  • Try to make sure your core is engaged and you’re breathing properly.
  • Try to keep your neck neutral throughout the movement.

Variations and alternatives

man holding one dumbbell in his hand dumbbell shrug outside in parking lo
Anete Lusina / Pexels

Mix things up with these dumbbell shrug variations and alternatives.

Variations:

  • Single-arm dumbbell shrugs — Work one arm at a time and place your non-working arm on your hip or braced against a stable structure.
  • Kelso shrugs — You’ll need to lean forward and rest your torso on an adjustable weight bench for this variation. Set the weight bench between 45 and 60 degrees for optimal muscle engagement.

Alternatives

  • Smith machine shrug — You can practice the shrugging motion using a Smith machine. Set the bar so it rests around knee level or a little higher.
  • Rack pull — To perform the rack pull, you’ll need to set up a barbell at around knee height in the power rack and address the bar with a conventional deadlift stance. You’ll hinge forward at your hips to lift the bar as you would the conventional deadlift. The rack pull has a shorter range of motion, so you might be able to lift more weight than the deadlift.

FAQs

Frequently asked questions FAQs on paper looking through black magnifying glass
Pixabay / Pexels

Who should do dumbbell shrugs?

Dumbbell shrugs are an excellent choice for anyone looking to specifically target and grow your traps. It’s suitable for beginners and more advanced exercise enthusiasts. If you have a shoulder injury or you’re not sure if dumbbell shrugs are suitable for you, consult with your healthcare provider, physical therapist, or personal trainer.

dumbbell outside on floor weights stack rack
Anete Lusina / Pexels

How much weight should you choose?

Your upper traps are large muscles, and you should be able to lift heavier weights with dumbbell shrugs. That being said, you should always focus on perfecting your form before trying to increase the weight. How much weight you should lift depends on your individual fitness level and your goals. Generally speaking, a male beginner lifts around 32 lbs for the dumbbell shrug, and an intermediate-level male lifts around 101 lbs.

Can you alternate dumbbell shrugs?

You can alternate dumbbell shrugs if you’d like to switch between shoulders. Just make sure you’re working each side evenly, engaging your traps and core, and focusing on proper form.

How to include dumbbell shrugs in your workout routine

man holding dumbbell arms down by side close up dumbbell shrug
Andres Ayrton / Pexels

You can include dumbbell shrugs in your back workouts, shoulder days, upper body days, and full-body workouts. If you’re just starting out, shoot for 3 sets of 10 reps with a moderate weight. If you’re looking to ramp up hypertrophy, aim for 2 to 4 sets of 8 to 12 reps with a moderate to heavy weight. You can work your traps more frequently than many other muscles, but be mindful that lots of other compound exercises also hit this area, like one-arm dumbbell rows and face pulls, so you don’t want to overdo it and reach burnout.

Shrugging your shoulders is one of the best ways to target your trapezius muscles and develop robust strength in your upper back.

Steph Green
Steph Green
Steph Green (Steph Zee) is a singer-songwriter and professional writer with over 12 years of experience in healthcare and… Read Full Bio
Topics
Health & Fitness
Tired of shaky workouts? Meet the MERACH UltraWalk W60 Plus – a walking pad built to last
Animal, Canine, Dog

Finding time to exercise is hard enough. The last thing you need is fitness equipment that feels unstable, sounds like it’s about to fall apart, or struggles to keep up with your pace. Yet that’s exactly what many budget walking pads deliver. Lightweight frames, noisy motors, and limited performance often turn what should be an enjoyable workout into a frustrating experience.

The MERACH UltraWalk W60 Plus aims to change that. Instead of simply offering another compact walking pad, MERACH has built a treadmill-grade under-desk fitness machine designed for long-term reliability, stability, and everyday convenience. Whether you’re walking while working, squeezing in a quick cardio session, or looking to stay active without leaving home, the W60 Plus is engineered to make movement feel effortless.

Read more
Health & Fitness
From wheelchair to walking: The power of mindset, movement, and never giving up
Steph Zee Christmas Secret Music Video Steph Green

I never expected I’d have to learn how to walk again. That journey took me from writing for doctors and magazines to spending thousands of hours researching health and autoimmune disease. When we have excellent health, many of us don’t give it much thought until those sneaky symptoms start to show, and one day it all comes crashing down. Now, our health becomes one of the most important priorities. When we feel good, we can be more productive and chase our dreams. When our health declines and we don’t feel so good, one of our biggest dreams is just to feel better. 

I became a health writer 12 years ago, shortly after graduating with my creative writing degree and getting a diagnosis of the autoimmune bone condition, ankylosing spondylitis. In an effort to improve my health, stay mobile, and help prevent my bones from calcifying and fusing, I spent thousands of hours studying everything from nutrition and naturopathy to conventional medicine and holistic healing. I heard this somewhere, so I can’t take credit, but I like to say I went to “save my ass university”, because pain and illness are some of the biggest motivators.

Read more
Health & Fitness
I tried Magic Mind for a month and here is what happened to my productivity
Furniture, Business Card, Paper

I am proudly an all-brown beverage man. I say it often: I am coffee in the morning, bourbon in the evening, and Pepsi/Coke in between. I know what you’re thinking: What about water? Well, all of those are mostly water. And who wants to drink the same thing they bathe in? That sounds gross. All jokes aside, the coffee addiction is real, and I am not alone. Who thinks they can truly conquer a day without a hard shot of caffeine? I would get it in an IV if it were feasible to do on the subway instead of a cup to go. But that doesn’t have to be the only way you develop your productivity. Instead, you can look to the more natural and healthy methods to maintain and increase your effectiveness. I got my hands on some Magic Mind recently, one of the many different products that claim to elevate brain health, increase mental performance, and, of course, replace the coffee without losing the energy boost. But does it work?

The scientific hoolah

Read more