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Traps
I often see people, who train, lacking in the trap area. Like shoulders and calves, it just seems traps can also be a very genetic gift and can be difficult for some to develop. The reason this popped into my head was I was looking at some old pics and it is one area that Fuzo always was gifted in. What do you all think? Do you incorporate specifics for your traps in your training? I know the trap area is a super tight area for people in general, as it holds so much of our stress already and is a prime area to form knots/tps.
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Re: Traps
I trained traps religiously for years and then i stopped because i felt my shoulder and back workouts hit them enough. I still got decent development out of doing it that way but i just started doing DB shrugs again. I feel those work them better versus doing a straight bar or smith machine.
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Re: Traps
I've always done some trap work and incorporated shrugs in my training, but I noticed the biggest gains in my traps when I was mixing in some powerlifting years ago doing heavy deadlifts regularly. Traps have always been a shining point for me, but I've never seen gains and growth like I did when I was deadlifting heavy.
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Re: Traps
I treat traps like any other muscle group and I hit them with three exercises. I always do a variation of the standard shrug first. Sometimes I do it with a bar in front of the body and sometimes it will be behind the body. Other times I will do db shrugs or low pulley cable shrugs with a d handle. My second exercise is a "shrug down". I sit at a cable lat pulldown station and I grasp either a lat bar or a v handle. Then as the title suggests I shrug it down using scapular retraction and addiction. The target here is where the traps connect at the spine down towards the lower lay area. Last move is s "shrug back". For this I sit at a cable seated row and again use either a let bar or a v handle and shrug the weight backwards again with scapular retraction but now it's straight backwards. This hits the traps all along the spine.
I make sure to keep my arms locked throughout so I do not use my biceps for assistance. Because these moves are related the beginning of two back exercises I usually incorporate traps after back instead of shoulders. I have been doing them this way for over a decade and I always get compliments on my traps. One other thing I will add is the first handful of years that I started out lifting I did do traps with shoulders but I started that day with shrugs(at the time I only knew of regular shrugs). Making traps a priority back then may have also contributed to them becoming stand out body parts too.
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Re: Traps
Traps respond very well when trained very heavy. Heavy rack pulls followed by drop sets will set the traps on fire.
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Re: Traps
Heavy deadlifts is what works for my traps
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Re: Traps
Heavy trap bar deads with a shrug at the top. By heavy I mean sets of 20x405 or sets of 12x500. Never fails me!