[Heavy metal music playing] Yeah, no, don t keep rolling.
What's up guys, Jeff Cavaliere, athleanx.com. What you see behind me is a bunch of different
trap exercises, many of which you either do right now or you're going to want to start doing by the
time this video is over. And I'm going to make your job a lot easier, because I'm going to
show you the ones you should focus on by ranking them from the worst all the way up to the best,
so that you know which ones you should invest your time in to get the gains that you're after.
Now, as always, it's important to understand the criteria for which these exercises are
going to be judged on. Because they all, first and foremost, have to be able to build muscle.
And before you think, yeah, here. Well not really, that's just part of the traps. We
want them to be able to build here, here and here because that is the entire trap muscle. And it's
possible with the right exercise selection to cover all your bases. That being said,
all the exercises on this list always have to be safe exercise choices. As you'll see here at
the bottom of the list, some not so much. And we kick it all off at the bottom of the
barrel as I break out my red marker to cover the first of the Worst exercises. And can we
just get this one out of the way? Can we talk about the Upright Row? Now, look,
I understand you might point me towards a video that you got click baited into thinking you were
going to find the reason why the Upright Row was actually good. Only to have the person essentially
backtrack with all the same reasons why I've been saying they're not so good for all these years.
Guys, there's a better alternative to the Upright Row. Sure, they can hit the traps,
but at what expense? When you raise your shoulders up and then drive them down
with additional weight into internal rotation, you're recreating one of the physical therapist
tools for provoking pain and testing for impingement. I'll pass. So, for me, guys,
I'll put the big red X first and foremost through the upright row and the Worst of the Worst.
Moving on, I get to stick with my red marker as we stick in the Worst of the Worst category. This
time for a Shrug, but not any Shrug. This Shrug, the Rolling Shrug. I m not sure who invented this,
but it does no extra benefit for you, and it does a whole lot of detrimental things. The
bottom line is, when you allow your shoulders to round forward, you do two things to that
glenohumeral joint. One, you're bringing it into internal rotation, which again will start to cause
some of that stress onto the anterior shoulder capsule. The second thing is you're adding a
compressive force to that joint that has an effect on the clavicle or collarbone.
As the collarbone sits down onto something called the thoracic outlet, you can get some of the
symptoms of Thoracic Outlet Syndrome, which can lead to numbness or tingling or vascular issues
in your arm. And the rolling component isn't helping you at all anyway, because the real
main function of the upper traps is simply going to be lift up and down. So, what I do here with
the Rolling Shrugs is just roll right on past them to better exercises that lie ahead.
I stick with my red marker one more time as we finish up the Worst of the Worst, this time with
the Above the Knee Rack Pole. And once again, this exercise is causing a lot of the same issues that
I just had with the Rolling Shrug. When you have that much weight in your hand held out in front of
your body, it sends those shoulders into that protracted state and causes that compression,
also traction down the arm that can create some of those thoracic outlet issues. That being said,
there is some light at the end of the tunnel. There is a version of the Rack Pull that you
could do coming up later on. That's going to rank higher because it alleviates a lot of those issues
that I have. But for now, let's suffice it to say that it also gets a big red X and belongs
in the Worst of the Worst category. And so, with that, I now get to break
out my blue marker as we work our way up into the Better category. All good trap exercises,
but still some limitations that are holding them back from being up at the top with the best. That
being said, I want to start with the Incline Y Raise and most of the exercises in this category
are more corrective in nature. In other words, not the biggest muscle builders, but doing an
all-important job of hitting different areas of the traps that you're not used to hitting. And
with the Incline Y Raise, we're getting the lower traps very effectively. A lot of people out there
don't even train their lower traps or even know, again, as I mentioned in the beginning, that they
even exist. But you can train them really well with this exercise and very, very light weights.
The key to lower trap development is that whenever you perform any overhead weighted exercise,
even like an Overhead Shoulder Press, you're going to provide more stability for the scapula,
giving you safer biomechanics on the exercise. The bottom line is bigger weights don't always equal
bigger traps. Especially when those overlooked areas just aren't getting hit often enough.
And that's why the Incline Y Raise gets the first blue circle in the Better category.
Next up is an exercise that you would think would be at the top of every one of my lists. Hell,
I would even try to find a way to do it as a leg exercise. We're talking about Face Pulls,
but not so fast, because the Face Pull does a really good job of hitting some of the traps,
but not everywhere. You see, there's no elevation going on here, so the upper traps are not really
in focus, and the lower traps here are not really doing much of anything either. But we
do know that this is a good middle trap exercise, as well as obviously hitting the rhomboids and the
rear delts, and it's just a great exercise for building up the overall health of your
shoulder. It belongs in the Better category, but we'll make it better, just stick around.
Next up is another one of those small exercises that pays big dividends if you
start to incorporate it into your programing. And again, this is another one of those corrective
exercises that actually plays an important part in all my Athlean-X programs. It's called an
Urlacher. And what's nice about this exercise is it's also incorporating some rotator cuff into
the already existing upper trap and middle trap work that it's accomplishing. Again,
this is not an exercise that you're getting your benefits from the amount of weight you're using,
but more so from developing that synchronization between the components of the exercise,
moving smoothly through elevation and retraction and external rotation as you bring the dumbbells
up to the top. Again, good shoulder biomechanics rely on you having good segmental ability to
control all portions of the shoulder movement as your arm moves through space. Remember, it's a
three-dimensional joint with a lot of available movement. If you don't get it right, you can be
asking for some issues down the road. So why not invest just a little bit of extra time into good
shoulder exercises? The Urlacher is one that's also going to help you to develop your traps.
This next exercise in the Better category is an interesting one, because it introduces
a different function of the traps that you might not be leaning into right now,
and we call it the Trap Pulldown. And we lean into the shoulder stabilizing action of the upper traps
during traditional pulldown. See, what you do here is you take a much narrower grip, and your
goal is not to drive with the lats, or even bring your elbows very far down at all. Instead, what
you're going to try to do is pull the bar down by shrugging up with the shoulders. In other words,
counteract that pulldown by driving up into the weight with your Shoulder Shrug. Trust me,
you'll feel that right away. And what's happening here again is you're tapping into
that stabilization capability of the traps during a weighted pulldown. And what's nice is you can
use a pretty good amount of weight here to create this big contraction that you're feeling.
Don't be misled by the behind the neck positioning of the bar. Your elbows are squarely in the
scapular plane out in front of your body, avoiding any of the issues that would come from behind the
neck pressing or pulldowns. The bottom line is, we know that isometric contractions can contribute to
overall muscle development, especially if they occur in the stretch position. We'll get to that
later, but for now, the Trap Pulldowns wrap up our Better category with another blue circle.
And now we continue up the ranks. This time I break out my yellow marker as we move into the
Better Still category. And the first exercise up for me here is the Farmer's Carry and talk
about isometric based exercises. This is one, and it's just a little bit more superior to the last
one because there's some additional benefits here. Number one, the isometric contraction is occurring
more in that lengthen or stretch position of the traps, which has been shown to be a good stimulus
for hypertrophy. But we also have those additional benefits making this a more multidimensional
exercise option. You have the ability to train your forearms and grip strength here,
or to perform this as a conditioning exercise, or really even just to work on your mental toughness,
because this could be a ball buster if you have to do it for any length of time. But because this
exercise has an incredibly high capacity to be loaded and more importantly, progressively loaded,
you'll find that this exercise will be able to pay big dividends not just now,
but in the future for you as a means of building bigger traps. And therefore, it belongs as
the first in our Better Still category. Remember I told you I'd fix those Rack Pulls?
Well, it's time to fix the Rack Pulls, and all we have to do is take them from above the knee
to below the knee. Because that fixes everything. Why? Because we're changing the mechanics of the
upper body when you perform the exercise. You see, when you perform an Above the Knee Rack
Pull like we talked about, you're getting all that protraction stress on the shoulders that
leads to all the issues I already said. But when you perform them from below the knee,
you're transitioning this more closely to a deadlift, and by performing them from that
lower elevation, you're forcing your torso to tilt more forward and allowing your scapula to
have to be retracted and set before you perform the exercise. The setting of the scapula prevents
that excessive thoracic rounding that leads to all those issues we already discussed. Not to mention,
this is a great accessory exercise for those that are trying to build up to the full deadlift from
the floor. The point is that even though certain exercises look very similar; the details always
matter. And that's what I stress to you on this channel. And because of those details,
the changes were made to pull this exercise all the way up into now the Better Still category.
Third up in our Better Still category now is something called the Plate Trap Raise. And this
is another one of those exercises that could be considered a little bit more corrective,
but you can perform it with slightly more weight. But the goal here once again,
is to get your focus all the time off of the upper traps, and this time shifted all the way down to
the bottom once again to those lower traps. And this exercise does a great job if you perform it
correctly. You want to take that grip on the sides of the plate rather than a palms down positioning,
because as the plate gets up overhead, you don't want to be an internal rotation, but be more in a
neutral position. Also here, yes, the shoulders will be working the front delts specifically
during the first half of the exercise, but the real action actually happens from the shoulders
up as we go into that elevation overhead. If you wanted to, you could actually shorten the range of
motion to perform just the upper half from fully extended overhead down just to parallel to the
floor. Whichever way you perform it, there's no way around it, this exercise is a great way to
hit the lower traps with a good amount of weight, and it belongs as a Better Still exercise.
Next up in the Better Still category is the anti-upright row and that for me is the Dumbbell
High Pull. Now look I'll stand here and defend this exercise all the way till the day I die
because I'm that confident in its superiority to the Upright Row. Why? Because I can accomplish the
same exact things that we were trying to do with the upright row in that safer shoulder position,
because I can keep the elbows beneath the wrist. And what that does is it takes me out of internal
rotation and puts me into external rotation. At guess what, no compromise to what you're
doing for your traps or even for your shoulders in this case. And the only thing that's keeping
this exercise from ranking even higher is that when it comes to building traps, it's one of the
secondary benefits, it's also obviously building those middle and rear delts. But because you're
also performing this exercise with a slight lean forward, you're going to also effectively hit
those rhomboids and here in the middle traps to make this even a more well-rounded trap exercise.
If you want the cliff notes Upright Rows suck and the Dumbbell High Pull doesn't. And any attempt
to say well, I haven't gotten hurt yet with the Upright Row just isn't good enough for me. So,
the dumbbell high pull gets yet another yellow circle for a Better Still exercise option.
Next up, we wrap up our Better still Category, this time with an interesting variation of a
shrug, and it's called the Haney Shrug, and it's named after the eight-time Mr. Olympia, Lee Haney.
And he used to say, if the traps are a muscle on your back, then why are we training them from the
front, why don't we train them from the back? And all you did was put the bar behind his back
and pull up like this. And it's an interesting exercise variation because you're still getting
that elevation, getting that upper trap work that you're looking for. But you also can get
more of that middle trap work because you can get more shoulder retraction due to the fact that you
have to lean forward when you do this. Now, the compromise is you're not going to be able to use
as much weight. That's fine, except you're going to be able to get a better contraction. And Lee
Haney, like myself, is someone that believes that it's not always about the amount of weight you're
lifting on Shrugs you've probably lifted a ton of weight throughout your entire lifting career on
shrugs. But have you ever dropped the weight and focused more on the quality of the contraction?
If you haven t, this is a great opportunity to do it, and the exercise itself is going
to force you to. But it wraps up our Better Still category, the Haney Shrug deserves to be here.
And next we continue our way up the rankings, this time I get to break out my green marker for the
first time as we work our way into the Almost Best category. That's right, Almost Best. But
we do get a chance to take one of the almost best exercises of all time, that Face Pull I promised,
and make it even better with the added extension at the end of every repetition. And what this does
is it adds on to the already existing work that we're doing for those middle traps by
incorporating that lower trap work that happens whenever we raise our arms up overhead. But look
what else is happening. Because the resistance is not just below us, but in front of us too.
It's also resisting that overhead shoulder extension and retraction, which gives us
additional benefits for the exercise. This truly is one of the best exercises you can possibly do,
taking that Face Pull and making it even better. And it belongs in my Almost Best category. You
just can't weight it a whole ton, but you're not going to need to to see its benefits. This
one deserves to be surrounded in green as the first in the Almost Best Category.
Now, up to this point, any time we talked about middle trap development our exercise selections
were those that were probably a little bit on the lighter end in terms of how we're weighting
them. But not anymore, because the Wraparound Row is one of my favorite ways to start to
introduce some real weight to the development of those middle trap muscles. And the key here
is to actually perform this with a crossover grip. With the right hand holding the left grip handle,
and with the left hand holding the right grip handle. And keeping your
elbows as tight to your body as you wrap them around and almost try to touch them together,
with your spine being the meeting point. Of course, it's not going to happen, but what will
happen is you're going to light up these middle traps like you never had before. And again, with
equal parts ability to feel the contraction and still load them enough to create that overload,
this exercise is just one you don't want to skip. And because it does it so well, I put it all the
way up here in the Almost Best category, because it hits this area in such a good, focused way.
Now, as we continue on here and work our way all the way to the tippy top of this list,
it's about time we start talking about the Dumbbell or Barbell Shrug. But to me there's
a difference and actually, it really matters to you what you're doing already. Because you see,
like Lee Haney said, it's not always about having to load the exercises up when you're
trying to train your traps. So, for me, if you're already deadlifting a lot and are doing it for a
long period of time, you're likely not going to benefit from the continued focus on heavy,
heavy Barbell Shrugs. Instead, I would invite you to actually start to consider Dumbbell Shrugs as
an option. On the other hand, if you're not doing a lot of deadlifting right now,
then that's where I would say to do the Barbell Shrug, because you can load it heavier and expose
your traps to more of that tension stress, as well as just the overall loads. That being said,
the Dumbbell Shrug has the additional benefit of being able to be held in neutral out at your
sides, which will put less of that stress on your shoulders. That would come from having that bar
out in front of you and the Barbell Shrug. Either way, it goes without saying, no matter which you
choose, the Dumbbell or Barbell Shrug does a great job of building up those upper traps of yours,
and therefore belongs in the selections when you're talking about the Best of the Best,
or in this case, Almost Best trap exercises. Now, before we get to the trap exercise that wears
the crown, there is one more that demands your consideration here in the almost best category,
because it applies the science of trap training. And we're talking about the Cable Angled Shrug.
What's interesting here is if you were to look at the direction of the upper trap fibers,
it doesn't run straight up and down. Meaning that a straight up and down movement like the
traditional Shrug wouldn't ideally hit the muscle or allow it to contract to its fullest. So,
what will? The Angle Shrug. Because we can do this with a lot of weight and perform it with just a
simple cable machine down the low angle position. And what you're trying to do is basically allow
your arm to drift out to the side to put those trap fibers in a better alignment to pull. What
results when you do this is perhaps one of the strongest contractions you've ever felt during
a trap exercise. And maybe even more superior to you because of the novelty of it then any Dumbbell
or Barbell Shrug you've already done. It's one of those exercises that, ever since I discovered it
for the first time, have never stopped using it in my trap training approach and it's definitely
one that I think you should try as well. But it caps off our list of the Almost Best exercises
with that well-deserved green circle. And so, with all exercises bearing some color
here behind me except for one, it leaves only one to be the best of the best. And yes, it is a shrug
variation, but it's the Trap Bar Shrug. And for the same rationale we just talked about, it gives
you better alignment for targeting those trap muscles effectively, or at least the upper traps,
because with the trap bar I have a wider grip. My arms are held out about 20 or 30 degrees from my
side, again giving me a better angle of attack to hit those upper traps. And again, when it comes to
loading here, it certainly meets that criteria. We can load this exercise incredibly heavy. And once
again, because of the neutral grip positioning of the handles at your sides rather than out in front
of you, I find it to be a safer option for those of us who are going to load the exercise up with a
lot of plates. The bottom line is through safety, science and strength capacity, there is only one
best and for me it is the Trap Bar Shrug getting that green star here or crown whatever it looks
like to you, in the Best of the Best category. If you're looking for others in this series, check
out the Chest Exercises Ranked video here and also the Shoulder Exercises Ranked video there. Guys,
if you haven't done so, click Subscribe and turn on your Notifications so you never miss a video
from me when we put one out. Full programs available over at athleanx.com. See you!