Traps Workout

The trapezius muscle is the large diamond shaped muscle which is located at the top of the neck and spreads to your shoulder along the clavicle bone, and all the way down till the middle of the back, tying in your shoulders and laterals. Many people prefer to work out on their traps with the deltoid muscles, but it depends upon individual choice. When these muscles are well-developed, the look really great. Many bodybuilders, pro wrestlers and football players have a "no neck" appearance, due to well build upper traps. If you are looking to build a strong upper body and neck, then the trapezius workouts can greatly help. Well build traps not just make you look great, but also have other benefits. Especially if you are into sports, then well-developed traps help to protect the brachial plexus nerve which is fairly vulnerable for contact sport athletes. This will protect a person from nerve injuries, as well-developed upper traps help to reduce the risk of sustaining a neck injury, which makes the traps workout for athletes essential.

Shoulder shrugs are the best trapezius workout, you can do them using barbell or dumbbells or the machine. For middle and upper trapezius, follow dumbbell row with one arm and bent over position. For lower traps, follow hyper extensions on the floor or on the bench. These are some of the examples of back exercises, given below is a simple workout using shoulder shrugs and upright rows workouts.

Barbell Shrugs
First perform barbel shrugs traps workout without weights, for warm up and then exercise using weights completing 2-3 very heavy sets, maintaining the right form. To perform barbell shrugs, hold a barbell loaded with weight in both hands and about shoulder width apart. Then simply lean in a little bit, so that the bar doesn't touch your legs, and try to touch your shoulders to your ears. This is not possible, but trying to do so will help you to get into proper form of the exercise. If you are looking for a trapezius workout, dumbbells are the preferred exercise equipment to use. Using dumbbells has an advantage, that it allows you a hammer grip which is more natural and holding them to the side of your body you can move the shoulders up and in a better way, providing more overall stimulation. These are performed in the same way as mentioned above, except that you need to maintain your arms to the side more and your hands in a hammer grip.

Upright Rows
For upright rows exercise, use 3 moderately heavy sets of 8-10 repetitions. This workout is not as stimulating as the shrugs, but they do help to give a clean separation between the deltoids and trapezium muscles. You can grab a barbell at shoulder width apart or just outside it, and then simply pull the barbell up to eye height. Makes sure you always keep your elbows higher than your hands. The motion should be in an arch, in the sense that you start with the barbell against your body but movie it away from the body as you go up, so that there are few inches between your eyes and the barbell when you get to that point. You can move your grip to isolate the outer traps, or out to hit more of the deltoids and the inner trapezius.

These were the two different trapezius exercises. So, follow the above steps, and maintain a good form while performing these exercises, to get best out of the workout, and prevent any injury.