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When you want a complete development of all the muscles in your body, you have to train everything. Now, the back of the body is often a forgotten area for many athletes. You also see it in competitions: the athletes have a well-developed chest, the arms look great, and even the front of the legs is developed.
Check the following link for all
trapezius exercises.
When they turn around, you see the difference between the real athletes and those who only train the show muscles to look good at the bar or on the beach. The back muscles – and the trapezius – are often not at the same level as the chest, and the hamstrings are flat.
Training the Trapezius
A muscle that is often forgotten, but which does – literally – form the center of your back, is the trapezius (or trapezius muscle in Dutch).
The trapezius is the diamond-shaped muscle that starts at the bottom of the neck, extends halfway down the back, and spreads out towards the arms. A well-developed trapezius is an ornament. A poorly developed trapezius detracts from the entire effect of your back!
Now, the trapezius does get trained when you do back or
shoulder exercises, but there is a little problem with the trapezius that complicates good development. With a ‘normal’ muscle, all the muscle fibers point in the same direction: from one tendon to the other. The movement also goes in only one direction.
With the trapezius, it’s a bit different. Because of its shape, it has multiple starting points. The muscle fibers all point from the center to the different tendons, which means that not one but several movements are needed to develop the muscle properly.
The average fitness enthusiast or bodybuilder usually does only one
trapezius exercise: the shrug. Now, that’s a good exercise, but it only partially trains the trapezius.
To get good development, more is needed!
In this article, I will discuss various exercises that, when combined, train the trapezius from all angles. If you incorporate several of these exercises into your workouts, you will be surprised by the development of your trapezius!
The top of the trapezius
Dumbbell Shrugs (upwards)
As mentioned, the standard exercise for the trapezius that everyone does is the shrug or shoulder shrug. A client of mine called this exercise ‘I don’t know’, because it’s the same movement you make when you don’t know something…
The normal shrug is usually done standing with two dumbbells in hand. You let your shoulders hang completely and then raise the shoulders SLOWLY towards the ears. I see many people doing this exercise very quickly, but that is mainly a result of using too much weight. If you can’t lift your shoulders up in a slow tempo, you should use less weight!
When your shoulders are up, the top of the trapezius should be fully contracted. A trick to achieve this is to lean your upper body slightly forward with your face down. This gives you more space to contract your trapezius muscle. Hold this position for two seconds and then slowly lower the shoulders again.
Of course, there are many variations on this standard dumbbell shrug:
Barbell Shrugs
The movement remains the same, but here you don’t hold two dumbbells but a barbell. You can do this as follows:
Place an Olympic barbell (the thick one) on the lowest bar holders of a flat bench. Stand in front of the barbell with your face towards it, and your legs around the bench, and grab it. Step back a little and do the same movement as you did with the dumbbells.
The advantage of barbell shrugs is that you can use more weight to work your trapezius. The disadvantage is that you have less range of motion during the exercise.
Behind The Back Barbell Shrugs
This is the same movement as the normal barbell shrug, only you stand with your back to the bar. The contraction of the trapezius is much more intense with this movement.
Oh yes, it is advisable to use straps so that you don’t have to stop because your hands can’t hold the bar anymore!
Cable Shrugs
This is the same as barbell shrugs, only you use a bar attached to a cable at the bottom of a pulley rack. You can also perform the cable shrug ‘behind the back’.
Machine Shrugs
Special machines have been invented for doing shrugs, and I can recommend trying everything. Each exercise is slightly different, and you ‘surprise’ your muscles again with a slightly different movement.
Upright Rows
Upright Rows are also sometimes performed. Basically, this is a kind of extended shrug.
You grab a barbell with your hands in the middle with a gap of about ten centimeters. Move your elbows sideways and upwards until your hands reach your chin and your trapezius is fully contracted. Now slowly lower the barbell again.
Always make sure that your elbows remain above your hands with upright rows!
Many people use a regular straight bar to do upright rows, but I prefer a slightly curved EZ bar. This puts less pressure on your wrists, and the exercise is more comfortable to perform.
You can also perform upright rows with two dumbbells or a cable. As mentioned, just try everything out!
Alright, now you’ve trained the top of your trapezius… Still left are the middle part and the bottom.
The middle of the trapezius
The middle of the trapezius is slightly less easy to train directly. However, this part is still trained when you do rowing exercises for your back, but you can also train it directly. I will give two exercises:
Horizontal Row Shrugs
Most fitness centers and gyms have such a machine. You can sit on it, grab two handles, and make a rowing motion (yes, you will have to use free weights sometime!). However, you can also perform a backward shrug very well with such a machine!
Sit on the machine and grab the handles. Now, however, you don’t pull the handles towards you with your hands, but you straighten your arms completely.
Now tense your trapezius by squeezing your shoulder blades together! Very painful, but terribly effective.
If you don’t have such a machine in your center, you can use the seated cable row for this.
T-Bar Rows to your chest
A second effective exercise for the middle of your trapezius is the T-Bar Row. However, you don’t do this towards your stomach as usual, but you pull the bar towards your chest. Squeeze your shoulder blades together well, and your trapezius will burn like never before!
And finally:
The bottom of the trapezius
You train the bottom of your trapezius by pulling your shoulder blades down and squeezing them together. Three exercises are very suitable for this:
Vertical Shrug
Yes, another shrug, but this time downwards! The execution seems very simple, but it may take a while before you get the hang of the movement and the feeling.
The vertical shrug is performed on a lat pulley machine. Grab the bar like you would for a normal lat pulldown, only keep your arms straight and keep them straight! Lean forward slightly so your arms are behind your back.
Now pull the weight slightly down with your shoulder blades and squeeze your shoulder blades together. Then slowly lower the weight again.
Pulldown Behind The Neck
I get a lot of hassle with this one because this movement is not seen as safe… It is indeed true that this exercise does not provide the most responsible movement, but it is fantastic for your trapezius! It is up to you to decide whether you want to do this exercise or not.
The exercise starts the same as the Vertical Shrug, only this time you bring your arms down until the bar touches your neck.
Make sure your elbows stick backwards and that your shoulder blades are pressed together.
Perform the pulldown slowly, and don’t use too much weight too quickly!
Finally, another ‘irresponsible’ exercise:
Pull Up Behind The Neck
As you will understand, this is just pulling up where you pull the bar not to your chest but to your neck (or actually you pull your neck to the bar). This also works very well for the trapezius.
These were the exercises for the trapezius. An extra tip: do you really want mass in your trapezius? Then there is one exercise that helps you very quickly: deadlifts!!! The force exerted on your trapezius when you do heavy deadlifts is unimaginable!
Good luck and let your muscles burn!
