Come train with the legend Arnold Schwarzenegger - trapeze training

It is not difficult to make your trapezius look like a mountain of muscle. You just need to know the right training tricks.

Despite popular belief, trapeze training is about more than just shrugging your shoulders. I've actually gotten quite a few questions throughout my career about training this muscle group. Should I train them with my back or my shoulders? How many sets and reps? How often should I train them? Let me answer all of these questions and add a little something extra.

Back or shoulders?

Actually, we have three different trapezius muscles: upper (which is what I'm focusing on here), middle and lower. I've always considered the upper trapezius to be the shoulder muscles because they are simply on top of the shoulders and are visible from all frontal views. They also help the deltoid muscles in many exercises, which is why I've always preferred to train the trapezius with the shoulders.

Frequency, sets, reps

Since I consider the trapezius to be a shoulder muscle, I train them as often as I train my shoulders. So if you train your shoulders twice a week, I recommend the same for the traps.

As far as sets go, I've always trained the traps as a small body part, just like, say, the forearms. For example, if I put 20 sets on the shoulders, I usually put 10-12 sets of isolation exercises on the trapezius immediately after. (I've always done the shoulders first because the trapezius assists them, so if you did the trapezius first, you'd be weaker on the shoulder exercises afterwards.)

As for reps, a lot of exercisers believe that traps should be done with a slightly higher number, but I always stuck to 8-12 reps.

Exercises for the trapezius

Most exercisers think that the only way to isolate the trapezius is to shrug the shoulders in different ways. This is partially true - most of your upper trapezius training should consist of shrugs, but many people only practice it in one or two variations. For proper trapezius, you need variety. Big-axis shoulder shrugs can be done in front of and behind the body; one-arm shrugs can be done standing, sitting, and face down on a positively inclined bench; you may even have pulley shrugs in your arsenal.

There are other creative ways to practice trapeze. One is to go through parallels while bracing and forearm raises, which will get the one-armed movements overhead at the top of the movement and engage the trapezius much more. When pulling the axle to the chin, a grip narrower than shoulder width will allow you to engage the trapezius more because the elbows will be higher at the top. Trust me, try it, and by the next day your trapezius will be stiff and sore - and you'll know right away that just one or two shrugs aren't enough to get a proper trapezius.

Trapezius training

This is a sample trapezius isolation workout. Do it immediately after the shoulder workout.

* Pull the axis (for the first exercise) or lift the one-armed arms (for the second) past the point where your arms are parallel to the floor; alternate exercises every other workout.

Source: www.flexonline.com
Author: Arnold Schwarzenegger
Translated by Jaromír Uhlíř (Cha Cha)
Original Article Title: Arnold Schwarzenegger: Trap Yourself