All About Traps (COMPLETE GROWTH GUIDE!)

If you want bigger traps, then you will want to watch this video as it will guide you to more growth in every area of your trapezius muscles - upper, middle and lower. Many people are not aware that the fibers of the traps are divided into these three main zones. The effect of this is that this allo

What’s up, guys? Jeff Cavaliere. Athleanx. com. Today we’re talking all about the traps.

A new series here we’re going to break down  the anatomy, the function of the traps, and most importantly, all the exercises—  Jeff, Jeff, Jeff! You forgot my intro. But you’re not even in this video. Well that’s  why I’m here now. I’m in the video.

Run it.

Jesse. Ooh. Jesse. How is that any different  from the last one? Clearly you didn’t hear the explosion then.

Of course this is spoken by  someone that doesn’t understand the nuances of introduction creation. Yeah, I just heard  a lot of noise, that’s it. You know what? You’re a lot of noise, dude. A distraction.

Can you just get out of here? All right, fine. But the next introduction is going to  be even better, I promise. Back to the regular scheduled programming here, guys, the traps. Today I want to show you what to do, how to hit these muscles the best.

Let’s get it started  guys. A lot of information to cover. So when it comes to the anatomy of the traps, like any other  muscle, it’s important to look at the orientation of the fibers within that muscle. I say it all the  time, if you want to see how a muscle functions, then follow the fibers. And with the traps having  three different zones and areas really, we know that there’s three different orientations of the  fibers that we’re talking about.

In the upper area of the traps we’re talking about an orientation  that runs down and out, starting at the back of your skull on that bump that you can feel back  there, and running out towards the tip of your shoulder. And because we know that they’re running  up in this direction, some type of elevation of the shoulder girdle is a dead giveaway. But  beyond that, take advantage of the fact that these things do run this way and not just straight  up and down, it’s going to give us an indication of something we might want to include when we  talk about upper trap training that I’m going to show you in a second. When we move down,  we start to work towards the attachments on the thoracic spine. We see that it becomes more  of a parallel orientation, just east and west, and that’s going to give us an idea that they’re  not necessarily responsible for shrugging up and down in the middle trap area, but they’re actually  responsible for retracting the shoulder blades and bringing them and pinching them back together.

So  exercises that favor this motion are going to be able to hit these fibers more appropriately. And  we work ourselves down to the bottom in the lower traps and we realize that the fibers now start  to go down in this direction. Now we’re looking at something that wants to pull the shoulder blade  down and back help to depress them particularly as we raise our arm up overhead for stability, and  we realize that the exercise options available to us there are going to once again reinforce  that function. So with that being said, guys, let’s start breaking them down zone by zone,  upper, middle, and lower traps to really find out not just how these things work the best, but  most importantly, what exercises work these areas the best. All right, so when we start with the  upper traps, the thing I want to jump out at you more than anything else is because these fibers  are doing this and running in this direction, they’re the ones most responsible for everything  that gravity is trying to make more difficult for you.

Meaning that this area of the traps is the  one that bears the greatest load on a day in, day out basis. Meaning that it is the one that  responds best to higher tension loads. So as we talk about when it comes to any muscle function,  there’s a couple ways to do this. Number one, we could do it for more duration, and the traps  happen to be a good, long duration muscle because of the responsibilities of carrying your arms in  the proper position day in and day out. But again, beyond that, they have a much higher capacity  for load.

So here I want to go long duration, I’m looking at exercises like the carry. And I’m  talking about either done with dumbbells. Right, you could use up any pair of dumbbells and walk  around your living room if you’re training at home, or walk around the gym, obviously. Or you  could use a trap bar, which makes it a little bit more challenging to balance this for a little bit  more stability of the upper traps. Or you could hold a pair of kettle bells as well.

Again, all  of them reinforcing the same function, and do it for time. See, these long duration exercises are  best performed for time when we’re talking about at least 60 seconds and upwards of two minutes. If you want to go for a high tension load where we want to do it for more of a short duration to  try to create more strength in this muscle group, then the thing we should be looking to do here  is some version of a shrug. Right, the shrugs are not necessarily measured in time, but in  reps. So here we talk about loading up a bar, and again, performing this upward shrug of the  shoulders, just pulling them up towards your ears.

We know that’s one of the main functions of  the muscle. Hold on for a second for a variation that could be even slightly better. The same  thing here could be done obviously with a trap bar as well. The difference though, as I want you  to see, is that the angle of the arms becomes not just completely vertical, but angled outwards,  and that should jump out at you as well. That means it’s reflecting more of the orientation that  the fibers are following in the first place.

Where we talked about how they don’t just go up and  down, but down and out. So the trap bar shrug gives us a little bit better angle to mimic  and mirror that so it’s a great way to do the exercise. But I’ve been talking about that other  variation. And this is the one I like to do with a cable. And now I’m doing that shrug and pulling  my shoulder up towards the back of my head here, right towards the origin, except this time I’m  doing it directly in the same orientation as those upper trap fibers, giving me a better angle  of pull, giving me a chance to really overload and create significant tension here, especially if I’m  trying to build this muscle up for more strength and size.

So instead of working our way down to  the middle traps, I want to skip that zone for now and go down to the lower traps. Because, see, if  the upper traps are responsible for high tension, then the lower traps are responsible for focused  tension. Meaning that their job is really more about stability than necessarily providing  overload. But we can do the same thing here, we can apply more of a long duration load or a short  duration load, depending upon the exercises that we pick. If we’re talking about long duration,  then the exercises that I like here are number one: the Y press.

We know that the lower trap’s  job is to provide that depression of the shoulder blade and the stability of the rotation of the  shoulder blade as our arms raise up overhead. Well, the Y gives a sort of an on ramp to rotation  overhead. Right, because we don’t go all the way straight out overhead, we’re just going up at an  angle of about 45 degrees. So it’s a good place to start, but again, the key here is not to rush  through this or to try to load this up, the key is to provide a good solid contraction. If you’re not  feeling it, then you’re wasting your time.

Quad repetitions is the only thing that matters here. But if you’re looking for that next step, then instead of just going at that Y angle, go for it  up overhead. This is called the prone press. And once again, the load is sort of i