INSANE TRAP TRANSFORMATION | How To Build Big Traps

Alright guys, so back with a video. You guys really requested me to do a trap video, so that's what I'm gonna do. But first, I'm gonna give you a quick little update. So basically, I'm back from LA. I'm still kind of like unpacking and sorting out my life and everything, so that's why I haven't been vlogging as much. And then I've got to go to Bali on Sunday, so this week I'm really just preparing for that, but I'm still gonna try to get a few videos out. A few quick announcements: LF Gymwear is back on my site. Of course, I couldn't mail it out when I was in LA, so this week it's back online. I'll be doing orders as usual. Link in description. In the description box. Second announcement is I've written a book. So yeah, if you're a fan of the channel, you've probably heard me say over the past couple of months, I'm working on some projects, or, you know, I'm sitting in my office, I've got to go do some work now. I've been writing a book and I've been writing it for so, so long, months and months, nearly a year really, to be honest. And I never ever speak about something until it's done. I just hate when people are like, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that, and they're saying it forever and then it never actually happens. So if I do something, I do it and then I talk about it. I'm extremely proud of the program I've put together. There's a nutrition book and a training book, and it's all about how to design your own plan. In the product description, I've literally listed all the chapters so you know exactly what you're getting yourself into. I've nothing to hide, and I'm proud of the information that's in there, and I know you're gonna love it. That is gonna be the first link in the description box. I'll talk more about that, uh, in a few videos. But yeah, I announced on my Instagram @roblipsett, be sure to follow me there, and the feedback has been good. So those two things out of the way, let's get on to the title of this video, and it's how I built, or how you can build, bigger traps. The trap muscles are kind of like the calves of the upper body. We all think chest day, we think back day, arm day, shoulder day, but we often forget about the traps. And I think they're a muscle that can really completely your physique and really complement your upper back and everything. I think they look awesome. Them covert traps. So you probably know that I'm all about weak point training. I think it's great to take some time and be specific with your training and target an area that you want to bring up. So before I go into what exercises I do, what type of training I'm doing, I want to talk about frequency and doing something more often. People always say they want to improve their squat or their bench. They ask me how to do it, and I say, well, if you want to get good at something, do it more often. You've probably heard of the Romanian style training of squat every day, day. That helps lots of people bring up their squat. I'm a big believer that if you want to bring up a lagging body part, you should train it nearly every day, or at least 3 to 4 times a week. So that's what I did with traps. And I was looking back at videos from a year ago, and there's really not much going on here or in my upper back. So I really wanted to change that. And now let me get into things. Before I get into what I did for my traps, I want to get into 2 videos that I saw on Omar Esop's channel, which is one of my favorite channels. One is by Alberto Núñez, but it focuses mainly on shrugs, and the other is by Alex from Alpha Destiny, and it focuses on rack pulls. Now both approaches were completely different. Alberto's video was very focused on slow controlled movement, a contraction at the top, and high reps, whereas Alex's video took rack pulls, explosive training, really heavy, and typically in the lower rep range. I want to paraphrase this with a quote from Brad Schoenfeld, who I just think is the man, uh, he's definitely had a huge influence on my training. Optimal muscle development is achieved by varying your rep range over time. Sure, hypertrophy training is probably best achieved with moderate rep sets, but higher and lower intensities are nevertheless important for optimizing muscular development. So who do I think is right, Alberto or Alex? Both. I use a little bit of both of what they said to bring up my traps. So my bread and butter that I've added into my training for traps has been rack pulls. I really enjoy doing them. I run a legs push-pull program, so I put rack pulls first on my pull day, so I do them twice a week. I've been experiencing kind of like new gains on rack pulls because it's a movement that I've never done before. So I'm adding weight pretty much every week, and it's a lot of fun, and I've really seen a difference in my upper back and traps. One of the many benefits of rack pulls is they're kind of like the deadlift for the traps. Basically, you can lift a lot heavier on these than you can in deadlift, and you get to overload the traps because of this, because it's a range of motion and it's a part of the movement that really focuses on the traps. So I recommend going heavy on these, doing kind of a little bit of a shrug at the top and letting the weight drag you down. The reason why it's so important to go heavy on the traps is because they are such a strong muscle. You can lift a lot of weight on rack pulls. And we know that the old saying, if it doesn't challenge you, it doesn't change you. What I mean by that is you need to be supplying a strong muscle with enough tension to change. When you think about it, a real world example is gravity. Seeing as gravity is constantly pushing us down, if we were just walking around all day, we would build massive legs because we're constantly under tension from gravity pushing us down. But we all know that isn't the case. We need to provide a heavy enough stimulus to actually affect the legs and make them grow. And the same goes with traps. Again, very strong muscle. People can rack pull a lot of weight. I do also add in a drop set or a back off set after my main heavy working sets on the rack pulls. So like I said, I've been doing rack pulls twice a week and I've noticed huge benefits, and I also think they're a lot of fun. You've definitely seen me doing a lot of rack pulls in the past couple of months on this channel, but that doesn't mean that higher rep work doesn't have its place. Once my traps are really fatigued from doing some heavy rack pulls, I'll go on some lighter rep shrugs and I'll do some really high reps on these and just burn my traps out. Like I said, I do these on my pull day, so I also do things like weighted pull-ups, you know, rows and stuff, which do also hit the traps. Too. And of course, the fundamental of gaining muscle is progressive tension overload. You need to be adding more workload over time. And I think going back to rack pulls, this is perfect to do because you can micro-load, you can add plates onto either side, and you can really track your progress accurately on these and increase the weight over time. Like I said, I've been making like new gains on these. So going back to what I said about high frequency training and training a body part more times a week, If you do something like really heavy squats or really heavy deadlifts at the end or at the start of every session on every day, you're going to affect your recovery a lot. But doing something like bicep curls isn't going to affect your recovery. So I remember there was a time when I was trying to bring up my chest and my arms, just like I said, and I would do 3 sets of 10 on bicep curls at the end of every session, every upper body session. And then for chest, I would do like 3 sets of 10 with dumbbell press or even cable chest flys at the end of every session, and I wouldn't go to failure. So this was still stimulating muscle protein synthesis. It was increasing my workload and total weekly volume, but it wasn't completely burying me and zapping me and fatiguing me. So for traps, I've been doing kind of light shrugs at the end of pretty much every session, usually around 3 sets of 20, but I'm still including those 2 heavy rack pull days every week. So to rack things— so to rack things up— wrap things up, heavy rack pulls twice a week along with some shrugs, and you'll concentrate on your contraction, your form and everything, and then light shrugs every other day. Because that's not going to affect your recovery like heavy rack pulls might. Hope you enjoyed the video. See you in the next one. Thanks so much for watching. Give it a like if you enjoyed it. Keep it real. I'm out of here. Peace.