Build A Bigger Upper Body: Back, Shoulders And Traps Workout
The beach muscles: chest, biceps and abs. A typical gym rat works these bodyparts hard, while undertraining the rest of the torso.
Only a token amount of work is put in for back, shoulders and traps. The typical bro torso attack looks like this:
- Back - Lat pull downs and maybe (MAYBE) a few Hammer strength rows or seated cable rows for good measure.
- Shoulders - Token Smith machine overhead presses followed by various (wimpy) lateral raises.
- Traps - Light weight shrugs that aren't potent enough to pack mass on a rat.
This type of training won't cut it. If you want a truly impressive upper body - one that fills out t-shirts and screams "I hit the gym", then you want to train your back and shoulders as much as your chest.
And let's face it...a great upper body isn't a great upper body unless you have monster traps. Traps are the new abs. Repeat after me...traps are the new abs.
The following workout is performed on the same day, once per week. I recommend using it within a training split that looks similar to this:
Back, Shoulders and Traps Workout
Workout Notes
Shrugs. Don't baby your barbell shrugs. Slap on as much weight as possible and power shrug those bad boys up. Power shrugs are not strict. Don't fear the explosiveness of this lift; it's not cheating, it's life changing. You will build mountain peak traps.
Seated Dumbbell Press. If you can, perform these on a bench or chair with a back.
Pull Ups. If you can't perform pull ups, use lat pull downs instead.
Seated Cable Rows. If you do not have a cable row machine, use barbell rows or machine rows.
| Upper Body Workout | ||
|---|---|---|
| Back, Shoulders and Traps | ||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps |
| Deadlifts | 3 | 8 |
| Seated Dumbbell Press | 3 | 10 |
| Pull Ups | 5 | Max |
| Clean and Press | 5 | 5 |
| Seated Cable Rows | 5 | 10 |
| Barbell Upright Row | 3 | 10 |
| Power Barbell Shrugs | 5 | 10 |