How To Build Your Traps

The trapezius is one of my favorite muscles because of the shape and size of the muscle.

It’s also responsible for a number of actions because of its presence in the neck, shoulders, back and thorax regions. Most of the action of the trapezius occurs in the shoulder complex where the muscle inserts onto the scapula. A lot of people tend to skip trap day or only do upper trap workouts.

It’s extremely important to develop and strengthen your lower and middle traps as well. They provide the bottom plateau to your upper body movements. Adding workouts for your lower and middle traps will add strength and stability to all upper body movements.

The trapezius all have different isolated functions in relation to the scapula.

This means each region of the traps are just as important as the other. The lower and middle traps are more present with concentrically accelerating scapular depression and retraction. While the upper traps concentrically accelerate scapular elevation. This states that the lower, middle and upper traps are the producers of force when isolated.

When all the regions of your traps are integrated the lower and middle traps work together to decelerate scapular elevation and stabilize the scapula.

When all the regions of your traps are strengthened properly and stabilized you will notice better shoulder adductions/abductions, shoulder flexions/extensions, and shoulder external/internal rotations.

So make sure you implement lower trap workouts on your trap/back days!!

Exercises that really target your lower and middle traps:
– Bent over barbell row
– Bent over two arm dumbbell row
– Bent over alternating dumbbell row
– Inverted row
– Reverse seated Incline dumbbell raise
– Reverse seated Incline dumbbell raise with rotation
– Incline dumbbell row
– T-bar row
– Pull ups, pull ups, pull ups!!!!!
– One arm kettle bell row
– Reverse grip bent over rows