Heavy hangs that build mountain traps.
Keep your arms straight and just elevate the shoulders. Don't bend the elbows to curl.
Shrugs strip trap training to its purest form, straight-arm elevation of the shoulders against heavy weight hanging at your sides. With dumbbells the arms hang naturally at the sides rather than in front, letting the traps pull through their true line and reach a deeper stretch at the bottom of each rep. It earns its place because the upper traps respond to exactly this, heavy loading, a hard squeeze at the top and a full controlled stretch.
No. Rolling adds nothing for the traps and grinds the shoulder joint under load. The traps lift the shoulders straight up and down, so shrug vertically, squeeze at the top, and lower on the same line.
Heavy, but only as heavy as you can lift with a visible squeeze at the top and a controlled lowering. Quarter-inch bounces with monster dumbbells build nothing. If the range shrinks, so should the weight.
Grip is the weak link in every heavy shrug. Chalk helps, and squeezing the handles hard actually improves trap drive too. If grip consistently ends your sets early, straps are reasonable here since the traps are the target.
