stronger traps by bill starr

8/8/2019 Stronger Traps by Bill Starr

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Starting Strength

Strong rapsTe Key o Shoulder Girdle Stability

by

Bill Starr

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Tere was a time, in the not-so-distant past, when every athlete who trained with weights

sported an impressive set o traps. Bodybuilders had them, shot putters had them, and, o course, sodid Olympic liters. Tats because they all did lots o heavy pulling movements in their programs.Currently, the emphasis has generally shited to a routine built around exercises or the ront o theupper body, because what the athlete really wants is a set o Herculean arms and an imposing chest.Tese programs neglect the upper back and are one o the main reasons why there are so many shoulderinjuries occurring in those who use this unbalanced sort o approach to weight training.

o many, traps arent that important unless they plan on liting heavy weights rom the oorto their shoulders or overhead. Since they arent interested in doing any such movements, why botherwith the traps? Te answer: they secure the shoulder girdle, and this has many implications that shouldbe obvious to anyone who is aware o how his body unctions. Without a stable shoulder girdle, a longlist o problems can rear their ugly heads, and when they do the consequences can be severe.

Te trapezius, which is made up o our overlapping layers in the shape o a trapezoid is locatedon the upper part o the back and lying immediately under the skin. Te origin is on the base o theskull in the neck and a row o spinous processes o the vertebrae rom the rst cervical to the lastthoracic, which is right about in the middle o the back. From the neck, the muscle ans out to theshoulders and inserts in the rear portion o the clavicle (collarbone), the top o the acromion o thescapula and the upper borders o the spine o the scapula (shoulder blade). Ten it swings downwardin the shape o a V to the middle back.

raps are the keystones o strength or the shoulder girdle just as the lumbar erectors are or thelower body. When serious trap work is neglected, the athlete displays rounded shoulders and in somecases this rounding can be very severe. Its basically a matter o disproportionate strength, a disparity

between the strength in the higher portion o the ront o the body as opposed to the strength in theupper back. Tis is usually a result o an athletes love aair with the bench press, or or an almostobsessive desire to possess a massive chest and arms like Arnold (not the current Arnold, the youngerversion as seen in Conan).

Tese slightly demented individuals pound away on bench presses, inclines, declines, yes, dips,and a wild assortment o arm movements, sometimes at every workout and all the while completelyignoring their upper backs. I they do anything at all or their traps, its typically dumbbell shrugs orsome high reps with a light barbell.

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When those groups in the ront o the upper body primarily the rontal deltoids and pecs become considerably stronger than those in the rear o the shoulders traps and rear deltoids the shoulders can no longer stay in correct alignment and begin to move orward. Since this is veryunnatural, the shoulder joints and surrounding muscles, tendons, and ligaments start to complain. Atrst its no more than a nagging pain, but i something is not done to correct the imbalance it escalates

to a severe, stabbing sensation and can become so intense that the athlete cannot do any exercises thatinvolve his shoulder girdle. And that is, as we all know, a shitload o exercises.Te epidemic o rotator cu injuries can be directly linked to this inatuation with the bench

press and the neglect o the upper back. I the relative weakness between the groups that comprise theshoulder girdle has only recently revealed itsel, it can be easily corrected i youre willing to put in thenecessary work. Te alternative is to stop doing many o the exercises you enjoy, or even worse, surgery.You really dont want to resort to the knie. Ater any type o shoulder surgery, the majority o subjectsnever regain the same range o motion or the strength they ormerly had in their shoulder girdle. Sothat should be the last resort.

Te bad news is that the exercises that are the very best or strengthening the upper back

require hard work. Te good news, however, is that the traps respond very quickly to specic exercise.I could never gure out why someone didnt like to do trap work. Ive always ound the exercises orthat bodypart to be more un than work. And or the majority o strength athletes, more weight canbe handled when doing trap work than or any other exercise in the routine.

While heavy shrugs are the very best exercise to build strength and size in the upper back, Ido not start my athletes o with this movement. I want them to have a substantial base beore reallyoverloading the upper back, and they also need to learn the proper line o pull in order or shrugs tobe benecial.

I start them on power cleans, add in power snatches, move on to high pulls, and then theyreready or shrugs. Even i youre already doing power cleans, a reresher course cant hurt. When correctorm is utilized on this exercise, learning how to high pull and shrug comes much easier.

All liting movements start with the eet. o nd the strongest starting position or your eet,step up to the bar, shut your eyes, and imagine that youre about to do a standing broad jump. Youllbe able to eel when youve got it right. Te grip is located on a standard Olympic bar by extendingyour thumbs so that theyre barely touching the smooth center. Tats the ideal grip or most, but thereare exceptions to the rule. Tose with very wide shoulders will need to take a slightly wider grip andthose with narrow shoulders might need to grip the bar a bit closer. A bit o trial and error will solvethe problem rather quickly. Should you not have an Olympic bar available, grip the bar just outsideyour legs at shoulder width.

Now, atten your back. Tis can best be done by pulling your shoulder blades together andkeeping them there throughout the exercise. Make sure your rontal deltoids are out in ront o the

bar. Not much, but some. With your arms straight, ease the bar o the oor keeping it snug to yourshins. Many jerk the bar upward in hopes o getting a ast start, but this doesnt work well. It causesthe bar to run orward, out o the correct line, and it usually results in bent arms. Both are orm aults.

Once the bar passes your knees, drive your hips orward aggressively, and contract your trapsorceully. Only ater these two things are done will you bend your arms. And when you do bendthem, your elbows must turn out and up, not back; i your elbows rotate backward, you no longer havethe ability to apply upward thrust to the bar. Youre totally dependent on momentum. You can get by

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with this with the light weights, but when they get heavy, this technique mistake will cost you. Withthe elbows rotated out and up the bar will be tucked close to your body, so much so that it brushesyour chest at the top. Tis produces the correct line o pull.

At the same instant that youre bringing your arms into play, climb high on your toes. Tatcombined action o traps, arms, and calves will cause the bar to leap upward and thats when you move

under it and rack it across your shoulders.

Racking a power clean requires a certain amount o exibility in your shoulders, and i you ndthat you have tight shoulders you must take the time to stretch them out. Te best way to achieve thisis to x a bar at the same height you rack a clean, either inside a power rack or loaded up with enoughweight that you cannot budge it rom a squat rack. First step, grip the bar with one hand and elevateyour elbow just as high as you can while keeping your torso very erect. When your elbow is as high asyou can get it, hold it in that position or an 8-10 second count. Now do the other arm. Ater a ewsets o these, grip the bar with both hands using the same grip you use in the power clean and elevateboth elbows. It helps to have some assistance with these, so ask a training mate to help you. Whileyou hold a solid body posture, he will lit your elbows upward until you signal that you cant go any

higher. Hold that top-most position or an 8-10 count once more. Do as many o these as necessaryto allow you to rack the bar correctly across your rontal deltoids. You dont want the bar across yourcollarbones, because this is not only painul, but i done repeatedly it can cause damage to the bones.

Should racking a power clean be stressul to your wrists oten the case in youngsters, emales,and those who have not yet gained the necessary exibility in their shoulders tape your wrists.rainers tape works well, and with a bit o practice you will learn how to lay it on so that its snugenough, yet not so tight that it cuts o circulation. And Ive had a number o athletes who couldntgure out how to elevate their rontal deltoids high enough to cushion the bar. Simply contract your


traps and your entire shoulder girdle will litup several inches. End o problem.

Bend your knees a bit when rackingthe bar to help cushion the impact. Oncethe bar is resting across your shoulders, yourelbows need to be up so that your triceps areparallel to the oor. One o the most commonmistakes beginners make during the rackis they lean back. Tis is a denite no-no,because it can be quite harmul to your lowerback. Make sure your upper body is perectlyerect when the bar is racked. Leaning a tadorward is okay, leaning back is not.

Ater the bar is secure on yourshoulders, lower it to the oor. Terestechnique required in that move as well.Dont allow the bar to crash to the oor, eveni youre using bumper plates. Rather, lowerit rst to your waist, then down to the oorin a deliberate manner. Tis will prevent you


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rom rounding your back. Keep in mind that you can injure your back when lowering the weight justas you can when liting it and rounding the back is a orm mistake.

Reset and make sure your eet are in the proper position, the bar is tucked in against yourshins, and your rontal deltoids are out ahead o the bar, then do the next rep. Power cleans are highskill so keep the reps rather low, 3s and 5s, While learning how to do the movement correctly, stick

with 5 sets o 5.

Te power snatch is another excellent exercise to strengthen the traps and a good alternative orsomeone who cannot rack a power clean, as is the case with many older athletes or someone who hassustained a serious injury to a shoulder or has had some sort o surgery to the shoulder joint. Te twoprimary dierences between power cleans and power snatches are that the latter exercise requires thatyou assume a wider grip and the bar is pulled rom the oor all the way above your head. Otherwise,the starting oot positioning and line o pull are the same. For most, this method o nding the bestgrip works well: take a wide grip on the bar and adjust it so that the bar lies on your belly betweenyour pubis and your hip pointers when you are standing up with straight elbows and chest up. Again,because o your size, you may have to do some experimenting to nd the grip that suits you best.

Assume your grip, pull the bar against your legs with your deltoids leading slightly, look straightahead and set your hips. Te higher you can set your hips the better, as long as you can hold that higherposition as the bar climbs upward. I you cant and the hips move up at a aster pace than the bar, youwill need to lower them somewhat at the start. Tat higher starting position will give you an advantagein leverage, but it may take some time beore your back and hips are strong enough to keep it romelevating too ast. Te main point to remember or all these exercises that are pulled o the foor is that thehips must travel upward at exactly the same rate as the bar. No exceptions.

Using the same sequence as the power clean; hips driven orward as the bar moves past yourthighs, traps, then arms, lit the bar o the oor and pull it over your head and lock it out with straightarms. Its even more important to drive your elbows up and out in the power snatch than it is in the

power clean because the bar is pulled a great deal higher. It is also more critical in the longer pull tokeep the bar extremely close to your body throughout the movement. I it moves even an inch outo the proper groove, youre going to have trouble locking it out. When the bar passes your head, dipunder it by bending your knees and keeping your upper body very upright. And dont just think aboutcatching the bar overhead; as you lock out your arms, exert pressure up into the bar. Tis aords youmuch more control than merely catching it. Stand up and continue to push up against the bar. akingthe oense against the bar builds a dierent kind o strength in not only your shoulders and back, butalso in your hips, glutes, and legs. (Tose who like to talk about building a stronger core would dowell to try power snatches and hold the lockout or an 8-10 count on the nal rep because this willstrengthen the entire structure rom top to bottom.)

Same idea or lowering the bar back to the oor: rst down to your waist, then under control

to the oor. Te motion o the power snatch should resemble that o a whip. Slow o the oor,picking up speed through the middle, and be no more than a blur at the nish. Tere is a great deal ocoordination, timing, quickness, and balance involved in this exercise so it will take some practice toperect it. And once youve done that youve also enhanced those attributes or other athletic endeavors.

Te set and rep ormula that I use or power snatches is two warm-up sets o ve ollowed bythree to ve sets o three. Te triples serve two purposes. Tey allow you to concentrate more on thetechnique, and since more weight can be handled than with ve reps, the muscles and attachmentsutilized in the exercise get stronger.



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Tese two power exercises are perect lead-ins to clean and snatch-grip high-pulls. Te high-pulls overload the various pulling muscles since much more weight can be handled than in the powermoves. How much more? As a rule o thumb, I have my athletes use 75 lbs. more in the clean high-pullthan they can power clean and 50 more in the snatch, or wide-grip, high-pull than they can powersnatch. More is even better, but in these proportions.

Te technique or the high-pulls is the same as or the power clean and snatch except yourenot going to be racking or locking out the bar at the top. But what you will be doing is trying to pullthe bar just as high as you possibly can on every rep. Your objective is height and you can never putthe bar too high. Tat means, on the rst set, the bar may travel up over your head on both the cleanand snatch high-pull. Tats good. What you want to do is establish the pattern o the highest possiblepull rom the very beginning, and then as the weights get heavier you will still be trying to pull the barjust as high as you can.

Use straps. You may not need them or the lighter poundages, but you will once the weights getreally heavy. And with the straps, you can ocus completely on the line and height o pull. Te higheryou pull the bar on both the snatch and clean grip high-pull, the harder the muscles and attachmentshave to work. Whenever a bar is pulled high, youre not only hitting the traps and rear deltoids, but all

those other groups in the back that help make you stronger: lats, rhomboids, teres major, inraspinatusand the rest o the rotator cu muscles, the serratus posterior and anterior, splenius capitis, and othersmaller groups.

High-pulls are really deadlits ollowed by a shrug. Nothing complicated about that, yetlearning how to ow through the transition rom one to the other is very difcult. Tere can be nohesitation in the middle, but rather a strong continuous move through that phase with the bar pickingup speed at the same time. Tis comes with practice and its best to stay with weights that you canhandle correctly instead o overloading the bar and having it hitch through the middle.

One o the mistakes that most make while learning high-pulls is to allow their upper bodiesto come down to meet the rising bar. Tis deeats the purpose o the exercise. At the conclusion othe pull, you should be up on your toes with your body erect. Te sequence o contracting your trapsbeore bending your arms is even more critical on high pulls than it is or power cleans and snatchessimply because a great deal more weight is being used in the high pulls. So drill on the movement untilits smooth as silk, and then start adding plates.

Do both orms o the high-pulls. Tey hit the muscles in the upper back in a slightly dierentmanner. For example, the snatch-grip version works the wide part o the traps and the lats as well asthe rear deltoids more than the clean grip. I put these into the program right behind the power cleansor snatches. While learning the technique, just do three sets o three, but once you have the ormdown and are able to recover rom the workload, add more sets. For someone who is unable to doeither power cleans or snatches, the high-pulls will serve as the primary upper back movement in thebeginning. Once you get the eel o high-pulls, youre ready or the Big Dog barbell shrugs. Teyre

absolutely the best exercise o all to overload the upper back and make the traps incredibly strong.

It helps to have a power rack in which to do shrugs, although its not mandatory. Ive donethem o blocks or taken the bar o the bottom rung o a staircase squat rack. However, the rack makeslearning the movement much easier. Set the pins inside the rack at mid-thigh. Straps are denitelyrequired or shrugs because youre going to be piling on the plates and dont want to have to bethinking about your grip. Most racks arent wide enough to do snatch grip shrugs inside it, so start



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with clean grip shrugs. All the mechanics and sequence you learned rom the previous recommendedexercises comes into play during shrugs. Make sure the bar is snug against your thighs, your torso iserect, rontal deltoids out in ront o the bar, and every muscle in your body is tight. Really tight.

Dont jerk the bar o the pins. Tis will make you break orm. Ease it upward, then pull just ashigh as you can. Te majority o athletes are able to hit crosspins set above the head inside the power

rack on the rst set and some can even do that on their second set with 225. As in all o these upperback movements, your goal is height. Catch the bar at the hang position against your thighs and lowerit under control back to the pins.

Ive ound that nearly every athlete could be coaxed into pulling his high-pulls and shrugs abit higher when he had a target to shoot or. So I hold a stick at the height I want him to reach andwhen he taps it, he knows he succeeded. Ten I raise the stick even higher. Ive had a large number oathletes who truly believed that they were pulling with everything they had in them. Yet when I madethem hit the stick, they ended up pulling the bar another six inches higher.

When I coached at Te University o Hawaii or the rst two years we didnt have a powerrack, and in order to shrug the athletes took the bar o o two pins on the back o a squat rack thatwas designed to hold plates. Ten they stepped back, did their set, and staggered orward to replace

the bar on the pins. So these became Hawaiian-style shrugs. I use them in all my strength programsbecause they require much more control than those done inside the rack. I an athlete pulls way outo line, the bar crashes to the oor. Teyre especially useul or Olympic liters because they require avery precise line o pull and a lot o balance.

I your power rack isnt wide enough to allow you to do snatch grip shrugs inside it, then dothem outside the rack Hawaiian-style. O course, how much weight you use on the shrugs depends onyour current level o strength, but regardless o where you are, you must overload the pulling muscles.Te goal I set or my athletes at Hopkins was to be able to shrug with a clean grip, the bar plus six45-lb., plates on each side, 585 lbs. Nearly every one o them achieved that goal. And what they reallyliked about being able to handle that much weight was when they went home and trained at the local

gym. Naturally, no one there was even coming close to shrugging that much, so their stock went sky-high among their riends and ellow liters.I put shrugs in the weekly program on Fridays so that the athlete has two ull days to recover.

I youre not sore on Saturday morning ater a shrug session, you didnt handle enough weight. Reallylean into these and your traps will soon look like twin peaks next to your neck.



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Strong traps have a direct bearing on nearly every exercise in strength training. Obviously, theyhelp all pulling movements, but they play a major role in squatting as well. Without a strong upperbody, the athlete is not able to hold the proper positioning during a heavy squat. And while ew thinkin terms o upper back strength in connection with pressing movements, a strong upper back benetsbench presses, inclines, and particularly overhead presses. Te top pressers in the country always made

sure they involved their traps in the lit.One more rather important reason why everyone especially athletes who engage in contact

sports should do plenty o work on their upper backs is that you can prevent a serious injury to thecervical spine by having extremely strong traps. Even those who have long since stopped participatingin any orm o athletics still need strong upper backs.

Make upper back work a priority in your strength routine until youre able to handle somesignicant numbers. Teyll help you get stronger across the board, and once your traps start to growtheyll let everyone know that you are indeed a strong and powerul athlete.


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stronger traps by bill starr

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