If youโve ever been worried about how weak your back looks compared to your chest, then youโre probably neglecting your back.
Keeping your body balanced is one of the keys to making sure your gains arenโt ruining your joints or crushing your posture.
Your body needs balance, andย your back needs to look strongย if youโre not trying to look like your chest collapsed under the weight of your own pecs.
Before you spend any of your time learning about any trap exercises, you need to understand what your traps are, where you can find them, and how they work in your body. Otherwise, youโre going to be spending a lot of your time in the gym missing out on gains.
Your trapezius muscles are an easy set of muscles to mis-identify if youโre not familiar with your anatomy. Theyโre located along your back, and they stretch farther than you might think if youโre not taking a look at a diagram. Theyโre also shaped a little odd given the movements they control if youโve only isolated them with certain exercises.
Your traps are probably the closest structure along your back to wings. They extend from the back of your head, out towards your sides, and almost all the wayย down to the bottom of your back.
In technical terms, they extend vertically from the occipital bone (the lower part of your skull) to the lower thoracic vertebrae (the part of your spine that makes up the second section of your back). They also attach to the sides of your spine and out towards your scapula.
This makes their iconic trapezoidal shape, and it makes them indispensable to the structure of your back.
You use your traps mostly for moving and flexing your scapula and they act as a general secondary support structure for your arms. Your traps, while they seem like a pair of single muscles, are split up into three major segments.
The upper segment of your traps is the arm support. Your traps serve to resist weight being pulled away from your body. Whenever youโre holding something heavy and you engage your back to stay upright and lend some support to your biceps, thatโs your upper traps kicking in.
Theyโre responsible for assisting lateral movement, and once you realize that youโll see that you engage your back much more often than you think.
This middle section of your traps is all about keeping things attached. The middle section of your traps acts a lot like a winch strap. This part of your traps adds a lot of tension to your middle back and they work in tandem with the origin of your biceps to keep your scapula attached to your body.
If you look at a diagram of your body, you can see the connection points of your transverse traps and your biceps locking your scapula into place. The transverse segment of your traps also pulls on your scapula when youโre bringing weights towards your body. You can feel this in action when your shoulder blades pushing outwards when youโre rowing.ย
This region of your traps is all about medial rotation and keeping your scapula depressed. Your scapula is under tension from a lot of different sources, and frankly, it wants out. If your lower traps gave up, your scapula would pop away from your back like a soda can tab.
The lower region of your traps keeps your scapula in line and allows you to rotate it in towards yourself so your shoulders gain a larger range of motion. If youโve ever strained to reach behind yourself, that your lower traps at work. All of this together makes your traps an incredibly important part of your body. They keep your back tethered together.
Your traps connect your spine and all of these different structures long your back working in concert. They create a complex system of tension so your body can operate. The front half of our bodies is what we tend to think about the most when it comes to movement and weight lifting, but our backs provide so much indispensable support that we really canโt do without it.ย
All of this importance has created a group of muscles along our backs that serve a purpose beyond their physical function. Your traps are also beautiful to behold. Strong traps have a breathtaking effect when theyโve been properly chiseled out. One of the keys to looking great in a strong man competition is ensuring your back looks like a rippling torrent of muscles.
We mentioned earlier that you need a variety of exercises to isolate your traps effectively. Your traps are quite broad and they control a relatively broad range of motion. If you want to really work your traps thoroughly, then you should find a few of these exercises and work all of them into your routine.
Weighted shrugs are some of the most straightforward exercises for isolating your traps. If you have a pair of dumbbells lying around and a few minutes to bang out a couple reps, youโre going to be able to tone up your traps without having to expend too much brain power or setup.
We love shoulder squeezes. Theyโre an incredibly simple exercise that you can do even if youโre not out at the gym, and theyโre an excellent reminder of exactly what your traps do within your body. Shoulder squeezes are an exercise you can do with or without equipment and you donโt necessarily need a lot of room to swing your body around.
If you want to keep your traps in tip-top shape, but you donโt have the time or the equipment to commit to a more full workout, shoulder squeezes are one of the best ways to make sure your back muscles are getting some love.
Face pulls sound dangerous and painful if youโve never heard of them before, but that couldnโt be further from the truth of the matter. Face pulls are just a reference to the height of the exercise and the motion youโre making with your shoulders.
Youโre going to need a cable machine or a resistance band and a pole. Make sure youโre not eating your gains by slouching, leaning forward, or pulling your bands at an angle, and youโll be fine.
Military presses are a good way to work on the stabilizing functionality of your traps. They have the added benefit of working on your shoulders and upper arms. This is a good compound exercise that will give your traps a thorough workoutย and burn a lot of energy during your workout.
Make sure youโre protecting your rotator cuff when you start military pressing. Your natural inclination might be to put the weights directly above your shoulders, but thatโs going to create all sorts of trouble for your joints in the long run.
This exercise gives your lower traps the chance to shine. This is another exercise you should pay a lot of attention to so youโre not overburdening your shoulder joints. We recommend starting with a lighter weight than you think youโll need and slowly working your way up to ensure proper technique and safety.
Youโre probably well familiar with pull-ups. Theyโre a tough exercise to master because youโre using a relatively small group of muscles to handle the entire weight of your body. There are a tremendous amount of ways to train yourself to start working on pull-ups if youโre hitting a stumbling block, but for now, letโs just focus on the exercise itself.
Pull-up shrugs are a happy medium between the low-impact of shoulder shrugs, and the frustrating difficulty of a proper pull-up. These shrugs are a great way to build your way up to higher pull-up reps as well as an effective exercise on their own.
Admittedly, these are a little weird. If youโre self-conscious about getting looks in the gym, you might want to find a private space to try them out. If you canโt take it, we understand, but youโre going to be missing out on good gains if you canโt get over looking a little goofy in the gym.
These take dumbbell shrugs and add a plyometric aspect to them. The hop is going to give you a nice little cardio boost, and following through with your whole body is going to keep your shoulders from resenting you for this exercise.
Farmerโs carries are basically laps taken to the extreme. In a practical sense, theyโre great for training up your ability to carry in your groceries in a single trip. The key to a farmerโs carry is engaging your upper body and building the endurance over time to just power through it. Theyโre a great full-body exercise, with a focus on your upper back.
Dumbbell rows are great for building up your trap strength. As long as youโre careful to watch your form, youโre not going to be running the risk of injury or anything like that. Try to avoid doing totally upright rows because theyโre hard on your shoulder joints. If youโd rather do your rows with a barbell than a set of dumbbells, weโd suggest an EZ bar so your arms can rest against the weights in a more natural position.
These ten exercises are sure to get your traps looking tremendous. The only thing they canโt do on their own is build muscle. Building muscle is a natural process that comes after these workouts. You need to pair them all with rest, protein,ย and lots of stretching.
Rest days come after a couple of hard days in the gym, theyโre an indispensable part of a well-rounded workout routine. Your body needs time to repair the muscles youโve worn down during your workouts.
Protein in your diet, during those rest days, is given the opportunity to become fresh muscle fibers, giving you more muscle mass. You need to incorporate a healthy balance of work and recovery if you want to see some real results.
If you want to look ripped all over, then you absolutely have to beef up your traps. They make a strong, well-defined shape along your back when youโve taken the time and care to sculpt them.
Itโs a simple and effective way to look powerful, and now that youโre equipped with this knowledge, you have all of the tools to create the perfect trapezius muscles, letโs get them shredded.
