Cardio With a Trap Bonus

by- Josh Bryant

Somebody asked me why I call rucking cardio with a trap bonus.

Picture a wiry infantry guy nursing a Tsingtao at an expat bar in Chengdu. Nobody’s mistaking him for Mr. August on a 1986 Marina del Rey Chippendales calendar. But his traps fill out his collar. And he’s spent a lot more time under a ruck than he has doing shrugs.

Does that prove rucking built his traps? Hell no. But it raises a good question: What are your traps doing for all those miles when you haven’t shrugged the thing once?

Forty Feet vs. Four Miles

A heavy yoke for 40 feet asks you to brace hard for a handful of steps. A lighter pack for four miles asks you to manage a load for thousands of them. The yoke asks more of you on each step. The ruck keeps asking for a lot longer.

Show me an elite strongman with a lousy set of traps. I’ll wait. Most of the strongmen I’ve been around get plenty of trap work from event training without doing endless sets of shrugs. Watch one walk a heavy yoke or haul a pair of farmer’s handles. Then look at the size of his traps.

Your Legs Walk. Your Traps Hold.

A ruck and a heavy yoke are two different animals, but both load your upper back while you walk. A farmer’s walk gives your traps a similar job. The weight hangs from your hands and pulls down through your arms, and your traps help keep your shoulders steady as you carry it.

That’s the isometric part: your traps help hold your shoulders steady while your legs do the moving. Research shows that isometric training builds muscle. Hold a hard bodybuilding pose and you’ll feel how much work a muscle can do without moving. Your traps do some of that holding work under a ruck. It’s a different job from a full rep, and you’re getting it in while you do your cardio. That’s the bonus.

Grab Advanced Rucking and make those miles count.

Same 43 Pounds. Different Job.

Researchers Bobet and Norman had 11 people walk with the same 43 pounds positioned higher or lower in a pack. The higher position produced more trap activity. So the number on the scale only tells you part of the story. How the load rides changes how much work your traps do.

You can argue about time under tension on a lifting forum until the shop closes. Or you can walk into your local mechanic’s shop and look at the guy who’s been breaking loose rusted bolts for 20 years. He’s got forearms like billy clubs, veins like spiderwebs, and couldn’t tell you his wrist curl max if you paid him.

That’s no lab study. But if you want to know why his forearms look like that, I’d start with what he does all day.

The Trap Bonus

• Make your cardio pull double duty. If you’re doing cardio anyway and want some extra trap work, grab the ruck instead of the damn exercise bike.
• Pay attention to how the pack rides. Where the weight sits changes the job your traps do. The number on the scale only tells you so much.
• Think miles, not max weight. A heavy yoke makes your traps work hard for 40 feet. A lighter ruck gives them a job for miles.
• Take the bonus and go home. Like Lee Haney said, stimulate, don’t annihilate. Get your conditioning in and let the traps put in a little overtime.

Ready to ruck? Grab your copy of Rucking Gains.