A little up close and personal today because we're going to get into our traps. I'm going

to show you how to start getting these muscles to start standing up a little bit more by

first understanding how they sit in your body in the first place.

You see, when you look at your traps they're a muscle – they're a really big muscle – and

they're actually attached all the way here at the back of my head and they go down into

my spine. It attaches to my spine, but they come around the back here.

You can see as they come around here as I stretch, all the way down here. This is this

muscle, all the way to the front here at the acromion, the outer third of the clavicle.

So this bone here in our body, they're wrapping around.

They're a big, meaty area here that you have to consider. But what do we do when we train

our traps? We do this. We go straight up and down, right? That's not necessarily the angle

that the muscle sits at.

If you really want to truly get at the angle the muscle sits at, what you want to do is

step your low cable here at an angle so my body is starting in this position here.

Now we're taking advantage of the fact that my head – the origin up here – and then

down here, the outer third of the clavicle, are separated as far as I can get. Now what

I would do is shrug from here. Of course, we know that they can retract the scapula

as well.

So what I'll do is, as I come around I would just rotate. So I would shrug, then rotate,

then pull. Shrug here, and then rotate and pull back. So in one motion it just looks

like that. I get a little bit of a half-turn, quarter turn of my body. Okay, so you can

see it from here.

It's like this, roll, and turn. Next thing you want to understand is, you want to make

sure that you're working the lower traps and the mid traps as well because they will help

to stabilize the scapula on your rib cage and then also help to prevent shoulder issues.

You could do that by raising a 25lb plate up and over your body. All the way up to the

top and then down, and then all the way up. Now, people do this in this fashion. They

take it all the way down and all the way up.

The thing is, your traps are really kicking in from this point up, okay? From here up,

you're working mostly front delt. We know that the front delts are really going to kick

in and work on that first part. You don’t have to do that.

You can take an inclined bench like this and then take your 25lb plate here up on top,

and then just use that as the low point and basically raise from there. So up top, down

eccentrically, and up. Then down.

Try to get as many reps as you can until failure, but go for high rep ranges here. These muscles

are built for endurance and when we train them strictly for strength we lose out on

the opportunity to expose them to the tension that they're used to getting.

You want to try to hold your shoulder blades down and back as you do this to, again, reinforce

the actions of the traps.

If you want to start getting these muscles to start popping up a little bit more, then

you have to get an understanding a little bit more about how they lay in your body to

appreciate how you really need to start training them.

Guys, we're putting the science back in strength here as we always do. If you've found this

video helpful make sure you leave your comments and thumbs up below.

In the meantime, whatever you want to see, you let me know that too. If you're looking

for a training program that cuts through the crap, shows you how to train and get the most

out of every single workout you do then head to AthleanX.com right now and join my team;

team Athlean.

I'd love to be able to train you for the next 90 days to show you what's truly possible.

I'll see you guys over there. Bye.