The 3 Movements Every Trap Monster Uses

Here are a few quick movements to help you understand the many actions of the traps:

We’ll start with an easy one. Sit or stand straight up with your arms relaxed by your side. Now, try to push your hands straight down through the floor.

• This is scapular depression.

• If you were to hold this position and look straight down, it would result in a lengthened upper trap.

Next, sit or stand straight up with your arms relaxed by your side. Try touching your shoulders to the ceiling while keeping your arms by your side (shrug).

• This is scapular elevation and works the upper traps through their mid-range.

This one is a bit difficult, but crucial to understand. Sit or stand straight up with your arms relaxed by your side. Raise your arms straight out to the side with your thumbs facing up towards the ceiling. As you approach 90-degrees (or parallel with the floor), you will feel your scapula start to move. This allows you to comfortably raise your arms all the way overhead (like a slow motion jumping jack).

Trust me, she only wants the traps.

Finally, sit or stand straight up with your arms relaxed by your side. This time pull your shoulders backwards like you’re trying to squeeze your shoulder blades together.

• This movement is scapular retraction and results in a shortened mid traps.

• By doing the opposite and rolling your shoulders forward (protracting the scapula) you would fully lengthen the mid traps.

Whipping up some dinner to feed the traps.

#1 Big gains from shortened traps - the overhead shrug.

• What, a shrug... over your head? It sounds awkward but it’s an effective way to work the upper traps in their shortened position, which almost never happens. As you just learned, the upper traps have three major actions and they all come into play here.

• To get the upper traps into their shortest position, we need to rotate the scapula upward, extend the neck (look straight ahead), and then elevate the scapula.

Here is how to perform the movement

• Hold a barbell or dumbbells overhead with the arms fully extended. While looking straight ahead, elevate the scapula (shrug) and hold the contraction for a full second. Keeping the arms fully extended, allow the scapula to return to their neutral position, and repeat.

  

  

• Here’s what you can expect from this movement: a serious pump, upper trap growth, and a stiff neck if you don’t do the stretch explained in #3 below.

#2 Overhead dumbbell lateral raises

• Listen, if you experience shoulder impingement during plain-ole dumbbell lateral raises, you might want to skip over this exercise. If you have good shoulder mobility and do not experience impingement during lateral raises, welcome to Gain City.

• We’re all familiar with the staple movement used for building monstrous lateral delts - the dumbbell lateral raise

Lateral raises - My favorite movement of all time. Well, tied with cable chest flies, when done correctly.

How to do the movement

• Using a fairly lightweight, perform a dumbbell lateral raise with your thumbs facing the ceiling

  

  

• Instead of stopping at 90-degrees, keep going to an overhead position in order to provide resistance against an upwardly rotating the scapula - one of the primary movements of the upper traps.

• Holy pump, Trapman!

#3 Standard shrugs - the right way.

• You don’t need 400-pounds on the bar to do shrugs, nor should you. What you need to do is complement your heavy deadlifts with moderately weighted shrugs. The deadlift does a very good job of working both the upper and mid traps from their lengthened positions.

• Use this moderately weighted shrug to work mid-range scapular elevation with quite a large range of motion.

Related: 3 Most Important Tips for Building Muscle & Losing Fat

The shrugging error:

• There’s more than one...surprise!

• First, most people shrug up to the top and look down or push their heads forward. Wrong!

• Second, moving the weight straight up and down with a very short range of motion. Wrong!

  Wrong!

  

  

Here is how to shrug correctly - or effectively

• Start with a lot less weight than you normally use.

• Roll your shoulders slightly forward at the bottom (under control)

• Begin the movement by retracting and elevating your scapula

• If you’re completely set on moving your neck up and down, like a chicken, start by looking down at the bottom and finish the movement by looking straight ahead with a neutral spine

• Hold the contraction for at least a full second

  

  Head slightly down.

  

  Head back to neutral.

• On the last few reps, hold a 2 - 3 second fully lengthened stretch at the bottom with depressed scapulae, shoulders rolled slightly forward, and looking down towards your feet.

  

  That stretch = The feel goods.

• If you are using a ton of weight, which you should NOT be, I would suggest skipping the last step and keeping a neutral spine by looking straight ahead. You don’t need to be flopping your head all around trying to impress your bros and risking serious injury.

Conclusion

This post has gotten quite long and I haven't even talked about the best exercise for building the upper traps. Click here to check it out and get some bonus material that includes a complete back workout focused on building big ass traps.

As per usual, I have just shown you how to work a muscle through its entire range of motion while applying tension at each point. It seems to be my recurring theme and one of the many reasons why my clients and readers see superior results.