Takeaway: Gliding relationships between muscles exist all over the body. Knowing where they are can help massage therapists explore their clients’ tissue mobility for healthy function.

The trapezius is a longtime favorite in bodywork. Our clients’ frequent requests for focus on the upper back and shoulders come from the daily hits their traps take—whether from their desk jobs and driving their cars or from lifting, throwing, and rowing motions in sports. If there were an awards ceremony for muscles, the trapezius would certainly be a nominee in the Most Frequently Massaged category. 

Reviewing the insertions, origins, and actions for this well-known muscle is helpful, but what if we refocus our lens to look at not only where the traps anchor, but also where they glide in relation to their neighboring anatomy? What more might you be able to know about how the trapezius relates to its surroundings, and what could that mean for how you touch?

Where They Anchor

The kite-shaped trapezius lies just beneath the skin and subcutis of the upper back with attachments over a broad area connecting the scapula and clavicle with the skull and all the thoracic and cervical vertebrae. These wide-ranging attachments give the trapezius the impressive capability of elevating, retracting, upwardly rotating, or depressing the scapula, depending on which part of the muscle is firing. But the trapezius anchors to more than just bones. While the attachments along the spine of the scapula are well recognized, the traps also have a fascial anchoring that we seldom read about in our anatomy books. The trapezius finds broad connection to the scapula through its insertion into the tough infraspinatus fascia.¹

Where They Glide

The trapezius overlies (partly or entirely) quite a few of the major movers and shakers of the back, neck, and shoulders, including the splenius capitis, semispinalis capitis, levator scapulae, posterior scalenes, supraspinatus, infraspinatus, rhomboids, and latissimus dorsi. 

Many of the interfaces between the traps and these neighboring muscles must allow for gliding between the two for them to do their jobs. We tend to focus our anatomy studies on insertions, origins, and actions, but areas of glide are functionally important. Our ability to have complexity in our movements requires our muscles to work both together and independently—through gliding. How can the trapezius, which shares so many attachments with other muscles, glide without disturbing the others? Fascia to the rescue! 

How Gliding Happens

Like its surrounding muscles, the trapezius is fully encased in a thin, fibrous covering of deep fascia. Completely adherent to the muscle itself, the fascial covering creates a smooth interface with adjacent muscles so when one muscle contracts it doesn’t drag its neighbors along for the ride. Between these gliding interfaces, we find loose connective tissue, a hyaluronan-rich, lubricating tissue that helps each muscle slide and glide across its neighbors by further reducing friction. Leaving the force generation to the muscles and force transmission to the deep fascia, loose connective tissue’s slippery, gel-like consistency provides the lubrication needed to make it all work together smoothly.

Why We Care

For massage therapists, the anatomy of a muscle’s gliding relationships can be as important as its insertions and origins. Knowing where the muscles should be free to move and where they should be stable provides us with a functionally informed road map for our touch. Tracing the “anatomy of glide” in your clients can leave them feeling freer in their bodies and give you a new way to assess and work with your clients’ favorite muscles.

Feel It for Yourself

There is no better way to learn the “anatomy of glide” than with your hands. Follow this exploration of the trapezius with a refocus on where the muscle anchors and where it glides. 

Upper Traps

Anchors: Starting at your sternum, trace your right collar bone until you can feel the tissue thicken where the upper trapezius anchors into the lateral clavicle. Leaning your head away, follow the fibers up the slope of your right shoulder, gently strumming the edge of the traps as they make their way to the occipital ridge and feel where they anchor.

Anatomy of Glide: Gently grab the “scruff of the neck” and observe how you can move the upper trapezius slightly to the left and right of the midline before it becomes more anchored and stable at C7. Nodding your head forward and back, feel for the lateral edges of the traps and trace them from the occipital ridge down toward C7. Pinch the edges as they wing to the side and try sneaking underneath them with your thumbs. Notice if you can move them relative to the deeper cervical muscles. 

Middle Traps 

Anchors: Reaching across to the opposite shoulder, feel where the trapezius middle fibers anchor at the spine from C7 to T4. Next, reach over to the spine of the scapula and sink your fingers into the superior edge as you walk your way along the bony ridge, laterally, to the outermost anchoring at the acromion.  

Anatomy of Glide: Grasp the trapezius just lateral to C7–T4 and pull the muscle superiorly and anteriorly, feeling if you can perceive the trapezius dragging over the deeper muscles.

Lower Traps     

Anchors: On a partner, trace the shared anchorings of the trapezius and latissimus dorsi along the spinous processes of T7–T12. Then palpate the medial and inferior edge of the spine of the scapula where the lower traps anchor into the infraspinatus fascia.  

Anatomy of Glide: Trace the lateral edges of the lower trapezius from the medial spine of the scapula down to where they come to a point at T12. Next, see if you can move just the traps over the deeper latissimus dorsi. Can you scoop the edge of the traps medially away from the lats and then flatten them out again? Have your partner raise and lower their arm. Can you feel the gliding relationships of the muscles as they move? 

Note

1. See Carla Stecco (2014) and David Moccia (2015) for more details on the fascinating infraspinatus fascia.

Resources

Benjamin, Mike. “The Fascia of the Limbs and Back—A Review.” Journal of Anatomy 214, no. 1 (2009): 1–18.

Johnson, G. et al. “Anatomy and Actions of the Trapezius Muscle.” Clinical Biomechanics 9, no. 1 (1994): 44–50. 

Moccia, David et al. “Fascial Bundles of the Infraspinatus Fascia: Anatomy, Function, and Clinical Considerations.” Journal of Anatomy 228, no. 1 (2015): 176–83. 

Stecco, Carla. Functional Atlas of the Human Fascial System. Elsevier Health Sciences, 2014.

Let’s Explore

Check out the authors’ additional resources at abmp.com/anatomy.