Everybody wants traps. But the question is what are the best ways to build them? In this article, we will provide you 13 tips to do just that.
1. Keep your tension for a longer time
There are so many people that struggle to work on their traps with high volume and heavy loads and receive almost no results. This is usually happening due to the fact that they are not doing the type of training the traps respond best to.
The main purpose of the traps is to keep the neck, mid-back, and shoulders stable. The muscular area consisting of the upper, middle, and lower trapezius.
Most of the trainers are interested in the functionality and activation of the lower trap in isolation. But the upper trap responds well to increased time under tension. This doesn’t necessarily include velocity-based movements or heavy loads. The secret here is to slow down and isolate the traps. To do so start to build stability through the hips and shoulder girdle. After this, you should make shoulder elevation plus slight rotation. They will increase the activation of the upper traps under loading.
2. Do Olympic lifts
This sounds very hard to implement, but you don’t have to go full bore and compete. If you will add some athletic barbell movements in your training program, will help you twitch the fibers of the traps. Don’t rely only on shrug variations. Make so that you can use explosive exercises for trap building.
This technique needs to be focused on lower rep ranges. This means 5 or under. You can increase the volume with the addition of sets. This way you can perform a cumulative high number of loaded reps. By doing so, you will increase your resistance and will keep the nervous system active throughout the workout period.
3. Fix your front raises and shrug better
For a good trap development, heavy deadlifts alone aren’t going to improve your condition. Also, you shouldn’t count on ultra-heavy shrugs as well. What you actually need is enough time under tension. The best way to do so is to use dumbbell shrugs with a 3-5 second hold at the top. Make 10-12 reps and do 4 sets. This works because:
You will lighten the load a little.
The time under pressure is extended and more tension is distributed on the traps
Another version of this workout is to do a front raise with a 25 or 35-pound plate. Make ultra-high reps. It will work on your traps but only if you ake the plate all the way over your head.
4. Farmer’s walks with shrugs
If you do the 2 exercises, farmer’s walk and shrugs, separately, they are considered a great way to workout your traps. However, if you mix them, things are even better. So this is how you need to proceed:
Don’t pick all the weight you’d normally use on a dumbbell farmer’s walk. Pick only of it.
With this weight, go on a 20 meters walk and keep a very slight shrug throughout. When you finish this distance, do 5 shrugs with 3-second holds at the top of each rep.
Make the same walk back until you reach the starting position and do another 5 shrugs with 3-second holds.
Rest of a minute, a minute and a half. Repeat the process for 3-4 times
This is considered the lighter trap workout. So you should do a heavier trap workout on another day.
5. Do clean pulls or snatch pulls
If you will workout in this manner the traps will grow no matter what, making them the best kind of exercise. To do a clean pull you can either use a wide grip and go from there to a snatch pull or you can do them from a variety of rack heights. Don’t forget to make a pause at the top so you can increase the rap activation. In the last 10 minutes of the training, try to do the following:
Do clean pulls from the floor. You should make 3 sets of 12 reps, 10 reps, 8 reps. When you reach the half of each set, make a pause for 3 seconds at the top of the movement with your shoulders to your ears. Be sure you rise up on your toes at the end.
Make a superset of rack snatch pulls and rack clean high pulls. When you do the snatch pulls, you should pause at the top. Make 3 sets of 6.
In the end, do a snatch or clean from the hang position. Make 3-5 reps per set and repeat them 3 times.
If done properly for twice a week it will build your traps.
6. 3 exercises in one
Another way to workout on your traps is to make a mix like the one below:
1 – Hold the peak contraction.
This can be done in several ways. The simplest way to do it is to hold the weight in the top. From this moment contact the position for two seconds on every rep. This will increase the time under tension. There is a second way to achieve this. For it, you need to dd bands to whatever you’re using to hoist weight. They help because they cause you to fight for the peak contraction and not just holding it.
2 – Use a wider than shoulder width and semi-neutral hand position
For this, you should consider the Dead-Squat® Bar. You will feel the contraction better when you lift and lower the weight.
3 – Get a loaded stretch
This is actually about finishing each set with a 10-second hold at the bottom of the shrug to allow the weight and bands to stretch your traps.
7. Make the Reeves deadlift, but use a better-suited bar
The Reeves trap bar deadlift is one of the best things you can do for your traps. The traditional form of the Reeves deadlift uses a traditional barbell and was created by bodybuilder Steve Reeves who was legendary for his upper back and traps. His body looked so amazing that he was even cast as Hercules in a few movies.
However, for the technique, you need to make a wide grip that it can become awkward for many lifters, making the overload process to be difficult. Luckily, this can be fixed if a trap bar is used. This makes the grip placement to be with 25-30% narrower than Olympic barbells.
Using a trap bar you can use a wide enough grip that will crush the traps but will not feel difficult to grip the plates. The exercise also allows a natural starting position. You will be starting in a position with a 90-degree joint angle. In the barbell variation, you are required to stoop down much lower to reach the plates.
The original Reeves deadlift involves lighter loads but is known to be hard on the low back. The trap bar version allows maintenance of a neutral spine because of the better pulling height.
For a great trap result, you can consider doing also squat jumps, RDLs or bent over rows.
8. Do power cleans for triples
Train your traps only shrugs doesn’t make too much sense. You want to hit the entire trapezius and to do so power cleans are the best choice.
So you should start your training with 4-5 sets of power cleans and work up to a heavy set of 3. The lower reps are good for this type of workout because they are an explosive exercise. You should actually consider doing a few very low-rep sets just before deadlifting. Try this for a month or two if you are really focused on growth.
9. 2 trap mix
1. Snatch-Grip High Pull.
For a great result, you should do sets of 5 reps from blocks when you want to go heavier.
2. Zercher Shrug.
This offers a better feeling than regular shrugs. However, you should avoid leaning back or cheating by bouncing the weight up.
To to the exercises you should
Externally rotate the shoulders when doing barbell shrugs. Move your elbow pit/biceps to the front. This way you will put the scapulas in a better position but also you will remove the tendency to use the arms to shrug, making it more effective at isolating the traps.
Hold the peak contraction 2-3 seconds on every rep. The short range of motion of the traps makes it important
10. Do the Urlacher
This movement involves a seated shoulder shrug which is followed by a hammer curl and the retraction and externally rotation of the shoulders.
The secret here is to prevent any kind of shoulder injury. For this you need to squeeze your shoulder blades together and rotate your palms forward. Also, if you will maintain the shrug the entire time will increase the contraction in your traps.
11. Increased range of motion for lateral raises
The main functions of the upper trapezius are scapular upward rotation and elevation. So what you want to do is to activate them either dynamically or isometrically. Researchers showed that in the scapular abduction period, upper trapezius activity progressively increases from 0 degrees to 60 degrees, remains relatively constant from 60 degrees to 120 degrees, and continues to progressively increase from 120 degrees to 180 degrees.
The translation of this is that you increase the range of motion on the front and lateral shoulder raises. This will let you build big traps.
12. Loaded carries
In order to build thick traps you need to use big compound movements such as snatches, cleans, and deadlifts.
One of the best thing you can do is the farmers carry. This exercise will help you have huge forearms, an amazing grip strength and of course big traps.
13. Take time to know the anatomy
The first thing you need to understand is that the trapezius is formed by three regions:
– Upper – Shrug shoulders upwards
– Middle – Squeeze shoulder blades together
– Lower – Bring shoulder blades downwards
The next thing you need to understand is the muscle fiber makeup of the traps. They are made up of 45% fast twitch and 55% slow twitch muscle fibers. All this makes it very easy to recognize the fact that they should be trained with heavy weight and low reps but also with lighter weight and high reps.
So, for the half the time you should be workout in traps with 6-12 reps at 60-80% of your 1RM. For the other half, you should workout in traps with 12-30 reps at 50-60% of your 1RM.
The trap activation is greatest on a deadlift. So, upper traps are activated at their maximum potential during the middle phase of the lift.