Upper Trap Technique

Hey Tidbiters,

You know that muscle at the base of your neck, top of your shoulders that you just want to either squeeze or constantly stretch? Neither of those things are bringing any relief to this absolute workhorse of a muscle, your upper trapezius, yet it’s still got this relenting ache.

Whether you sit at a desk or not, many of us can boil this tension down to a few simple reasons:

• It’s postural.

  • When your shoulders are rolled forward, the muscles in your chest are shortened while the muscles antagonistic of your chest in your upper back and upper shoulders, are lengthened. If your upper trap is over-stretched, it feels achy and doesn’t need to be stretched to get relief. As you can imagine, pulling it back to neutral (either with chest stretches or lower trapezius strengthening) is going to give you a longterm solution and take away your pain in a meaningful way. To be able to access your fullest potential in either of these solutions, your upper trap needs to be relaxed, so keep scrolling.

• It’s stress.

  • This is a scenario where the shoulders aren’t rolled forward as much as they are hiked up toward your ears, presumably because you are holding them there as your “thinking muscles.” ;) When a set of tissues stay in a position for a prolonged amount of time, your nervous system begins to see this position as normal. When it’s your shoulders that are hike up by your ears, your upper trap is the main muscle that is holding that contraction. Fortunately, you don’t always have to release your stress to relax your muscles. With foam rolling, it’s the other way around.

• It’s habit.

  • This speaks to the nervous system bit above. If you’re not particularly stressed and your work doesn’t require rolling forward into a screen but your upper traps are still tight, causing perhaps headaches in the side of your head, then for whatever reason, your body has gotten into the habit of holding tension in these muscles. My rolling the tension out, we are communication to the brain that it’s time to let go.