What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
We're talking about the traps today and I'm giving you six trap exercises that you have
never done, or likely never done, depending upon your training experience.
The thing we want to clarify first and foremost; when it comes to the traps, it's not just
the upper traps.
The things that connect your ears to your shoulders.
We have to – if we're going to be balanced here – remember the importance of the lower
traps.
I'm going to hit both areas today with these six exercises.
Let's get going.
First up is the kneeling dumbbell shrug.
The key to this movement, and the effectiveness of it is the kneeling position.
We're taking the lower body out of this exercise.
A lot of times when people do standing shrugs, either with a dumbbell, or a barbell, they
allow way too much momentum from the lower body, and they're basically catching the weight
at the top.
Here, I want you to drive the weight up.
You can see the lower body is completely out of it.
Now I have to use my traps to actually lift those dumbbells up.
I'm trying to get as small as I possibly can.
Meaning, as crunched up, and as tightened up as I possibly can.
Bring those shoulders, not just up, but in toward my ears on every, single rep.
Again, I'm not allowed the benefit of my legs here helping this movement.
Try to switch out to this exercise and I promise you, you're going to see more work being done
by the traps, and in the long run, better gains.
Now let's stay down in that kneeling position for this second exercise.
I mentioned it in the open.
The lower traps are incredibly important if you want true shoulder balance, and really
long-term health of your shoulders.
What we can do here is with two cables set down low, reach across, and grab the right
cable with the left hand, and the left cable with the right hand.
And now in that same kneeling position you're just going to what we call a 'trap raise',
or an 'overhead trap raise'.
Now we can do this standing with a plate, but again, we're using the same concept of
eliminating some of that lower body momentum by getting down onto our knees.
We're going to lift straight up, overhead.
You can see as I get all the way up – you want to get as high as you possibly can – you
can see the lower traps here have to fire to make sure our shoulder blades stay in contact
with our ribcage, and move accordingly.
Try this and, at least, mix it in.
If you're going to be doing your upper trap exercises, make sure you're mixing in at least
one for one, the lower trap exercises, too.
This next exercise is one that I broke out in our complete back workout, that I'll actually
link at the end of this video because it's got a lot of other exercises that hit the
other areas of the back that you'll want to check out.
But it's our twisting trap shrug.
Here, the key is the position of our body in relation to the cable machine.
I'm perpendicular to it.
What we're going for here is, we're allowing the muscle to be aligned in a way that puts
on maximum stretch, and when we contract it, it allows us to follow the fibers.
I say that all the time.
The trap fibers, we know, come down, and out; away from the back of our heads, and down
toward the outside of our shoulders.
So if we align ourselves this way, and we contract from here, you can see we're actually
contracting along that direction of the fibers.
But we know the traps are capable of retracting the shoulder blades as well.
So we don’t just end it with that shrug, we then twist, and pull back into a retraction.
So again, every, single rep here is getting the benefit of following the fibers on the
initial shrug, and then with that quick twist, and pull we're getting that powerful retraction
as well.
It's a great exercise combo, and again, something – if you haven't tried it already, you're
going to want to try it, and feel the difference that this one allows.
The next one up here is actually one of my all-time favorites.
It's the dumbbell shrug row.
We know that whenever we do a one-armed row, depending upon where our elbow is in relation
to our body, or how it travels on the way up, we can hit different areas of our back.
We can keep it nice, and tight, and we can hit the lats.
We can let it flare way out, we can hit the rear delt, but we can also initiate the row
with a different muscle.
That is exactly what we're doing here.
You can see that every, single one of these rows is initiated – the first movement – is
initiated by the traps.
We're shrugging first, and then rowing, maintaining the shrug throughout the row every, single
time.
I promise you, the intense contraction that you're going to feel here in the traps is
one that you've probably never felt before.
Start mixing in this exercise when you're doing all your other rows because again, you
have an opportunity for you to not just hit those bigger muscles of your back, but work
your way all the way up to the top so you can start hitting these traps as well.
Now we head into the lighter weights portion of this video and, I swear, the harder portion
because if you try this you might not even be able to navigate through these final two
exercises with any weight at all, let alone light weights.
We start off with the dumbbell prone press.
Now again, this is another one of those incredible lower trap exercises that is going to really,
really be difficult.
Especially if you've been ignoring these critical muscles all the way along here.
So what you want to do is, take a pair of dumbbells – I've got 5s here.
I promise you; it's very difficult.
What I'm doing is, I'm lying on my belly, and I'm going to press the dumbbells straight
up, overhead as far as I possibly can, up, overhead demanding that the lower traps stabilize
throughout this entire exercise.
Then, not allowing the dumbbells to touch the ground below me.
So I have to keep them raised up.
So we're even working a little bit of the rhomboids to be able to keep these dumbbells
off the floor, and integrate them with the muscles that are right there next to them
in the first place.
It's those lower traps.
You're basically doing a shoulder press, except this time, on your stomach.
Finally, we have our reverse trap fly.
Once again, light is not going to mean 'easy'.
We're using a piece of tubing here, for crying out loud, to get this exercise done, but I
find it to be incredibly challenging.
The key here, again, is to try and integrate those muscles of the upper back with the traps
to allow those muscles to work together.
Now, as I go to pull the bands back – yes, it resembles a little bit of a cable face
pull, but that's not the goal.
The main initiative here is to shrug your shoulders as you pull back into the reverse
fly.
Every, single rep go for that shrug and pull back at the same time.
You'll feel an intense contraction here if you're doing it right.
As always, the return is key.
You want to make sure you come back nice, and slow to get that eccentric component as
well, and then rep out again.
You may not be able to do a lot of reps here, but it's the quality that matters most.
So there you have it, guys.
Six trap exercises you've likely never done before.
Even if you have – first of all, thank you for being a loyal viewer – but I want you
to break them out again because it's always good to mix things up.
I promise you, there are better things waiting for you and your traps on the other side if
you do.
If you're looking for a program that puts the science back in strength, guys, gives
you a lot of different exercise options to make sure you can keep those gains coming;
head to ATHLEANX.com right now and get one of our training programs.
In the meantime, if you've found the video helpful leave your comments and thumbs up
below.
Tell me what else you want me to cover in these videos, and I'll do my best to do that
for you in the days, and weeks ahead.
All right, guys.
See you soon.