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 irrelevant here. You don't even really need to use any weights at
all if you don't have the ability to use them. But the point is that you keep yourself in this
slightly retracted position to get a little bit of that middle trap engagement, but most of all,
it's about raising your arms fully up overhead as much as you can and providing that stability from
the lower traps to make that work as smooth as possible. That said, if we shift the focus away
from the long duration to the short duration rep measured way to train this area, then the
first exercise here that I want you to do is the plate raise. As you raise your arms up overhead,
the lower traps now have to fire and engage. Make sure those lower trap fibers are doing their job
to stabilize your arm in the overhead position. You slowly lower it down to work on the eccentric
component of that muscle, and again, you raise it back up again. This is not going to go on for
a long period of time here, guys. You're looking for that 12 to 15 repetitions always high quality.
And then of course, you know I had to cover the face pull. But this is a variation of the face
pull that I've showed you more recently that I love even more than the face pull. Because it's
got all the elements of the perfect face pull with the additional arm reach that we get here with
this overhead press. And we know, once again, that as I press up overhead, as lower trap fibers are
going to be recruited quickly to make sure they do what they always do to provide that stability
as those arms go up overhead. But it's got all the components here, even has the retraction component
that we get for those middle traps too that makes this just a winner exercise every single time,
no matter which way you look at it. And now having covered the upper fibers and the lower fibers,
I saved the middle fibers for last for a couple reasons. Number one: they usually get relegated
to last place because nobody ever really trains them. That's going to change right here today.
And secondly, they kind of have a hybrid function. You could hear that I've already mentioned that
they want to kick in while we're doing some of the upper trap work, and even some of the lower
trap work. So their function is a combination of high tension, high-low capabilities, and focused
tension capabilities that we get from the lower traps. Well, I've got two exercise options for
you. Number one: a body weight one, and this is called the back widow. And the back widow is
key to hitting this area because we're driving the elbows into the ground. You see, if I were
to take my elbows out the ground and drive with my hands, I get more extension of the arm back behind
my body, but this is going to shift the focus more towards the rear delt, and even the triceps as I
extend my elbows. We don't want that. To really get to those middle traps, which are a harder
to hit area, we want to make sure that we drive with the elbows. But from there, we could actually
go into a long duration hold. And that's just by simply getting in the position, and like I said,
holding it. So we have the ability to do the same exercise in two different ways just by
simply either getting there and staying there or doing this more as a repetition focused exercise.
Which gives me that second option here, which is one of my favorite ways to train the middle traps,
and it's the wrap around row. And once again, we could do this in two ways. We could do this either
as a long duration hold or as a short duration rep focused exercise. And the key here though is the
set-up. You can see that I have my cable machine set wide. Why are we doing this? Because we're
actually trying to get a good pre-stretch here on the middle traps. And I could do that here because
by getting my arms across my body, I've opened up my shoulder blades as much as I possibly can.
I've protracted them around my body as much as I possibly can. This sets the stage for a better
recruitment of these harder to reach fibers right from the get-go. The fact is, this is one of the
best ways to overload this area if you want to load the weight up, or decrease the load a little
bit more, and focus more on that high tension. Remember, this area is capable of both, which you
do is up to you. So there you have it, guys, all about the traps, breaking it down scientifically,
and most importantly, showing you what you need to do to train this area and to train it right.
Remember, guys, there's no unimportant muscles here. You got to make sure you train them all.
When it comes to muscles in the back you got to make sure you train them even all more. Because
those areas tend to get neglected, but not after this guys, remember we're going to hit all three
areas-- upper, middle, and lower, and now you've got the attack plan to do that. If you're looking
for a program that builds in all of the muscles when we need to train them, and how we need
to train them, for most of the efficacy in your workouts, head to Athleanx.com right now and check
out our programs. In the meantime, if you found this video helpful, if you like this series, leave
your comments below, let me know what else you want me to cover, I'll do my best to do that for
you. And if you haven't already done so, make sure you click subscribe and turn on your notifications
so you never miss a new video when we put one out. All right, guys, see you soon.