MuscleWiki: Find exercises that work specific muscles
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MuscleWiki: Find exercises that work specific muscles
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Re: MuscleWiki: Find exercises that work specific muscles
#2https://exrx.net/ is generally the go-to.
Re: MuscleWiki: Find exercises that work specific muscles
#3As someone who knows almost nothing about muscle building, why would I want to work specific muscles? How do I know which muscle I should want to work? Do I look at a particular muscle and feel it's too small and that's how I choose? Do I target specific muscles that feel sore after I do some other activity that is the real activity I value? I'm genuinely curious. If this website is giving the "how", I want to know the "why".
Re: MuscleWiki: Find exercises that work specific muscles
#4As someone who knows almost nothing about muscle building, why would I want to work specific muscles? How do I know which muscle I should want to work? Do I look at a particular muscle and feel it's too small and that's how I choose? Do I target specific muscles that feel sore after I do some other activity that is the real activity I value? I'm genuinely curious. If this website is giving the "how", I want to know t…
In my experience, I’ve received answers to these questions working with a physical therapist. I’ve sustained several injuries partly due to muscle imbalance (that led to poor walking mechanics due to glute imbalance). So we try to correct that imbalance with strengthening exercises that target the glutes.
Re: MuscleWiki: Find exercises that work specific muscles
#5As someone who knows almost nothing about muscle building, why would I want to work specific muscles? How do I know which muscle I should want to work? Do I look at a particular muscle and feel it's too small and that's how I choose? Do I target specific muscles that feel sore after I do some other activity that is the real activity I value? I'm genuinely curious. If this website is giving the "how", I want to know t…
If you're starting out with training, the general recommendation is to do big compound exercises (if you're powerlifting things like barbell squat, barbell deadlift, barbell bench press; if you're doing calisthenics things like push-ups, bodyweight squats, etc.). Once you're able to go through the motions of those, it's possible to identify which part of the exercise you're not doing so hot at, e.g. if you were doing bench press and you find that your shoulder gives out sooner than your chest, you would want to employ some shoulder exercises to help out.
Re: MuscleWiki: Find exercises that work specific muscles
#6I really like some of the accessibility and usability features here, like having a "copy" button right next to the exercise!
I'm confused why it's called a "wiki" though, I didn't see how to contribute? Was that just a funsies name? Wiki to me means something that's editable by the community.
I'm also not quite sure the audience here, because it seems to indicate "find exercise by muscle group" to be the way to use the site, but that's not really... useful... to people that don't know proper form for some of these basic exercises. If I view the site like this: https://musclewiki.com/directory then it makes sense, like, ok, I set up a training regime for myself, or I'm looking at the one set up for me by my trainer, and I forgot cues and good form for a given exercise, lemme just look it up real quick in this really light weight, functional website. Boom, GIF, cues as bullet points, done. That is a great use case.
What I'm worried about is a noob will come here, hit "biceps," then have a workout day of five kinds of curls. Which I guess to many is obvious why this is bad but just in case: broad strokes, if you're lifting, especially as a noob, it's better for your health, strength, and long term safety to be doing workouts that work your entire system, rather than "targeted" exercises only, such as curls. A good noob exercise plan is some combination of barbell squats, deadlifts, bench press, rows, and overhead press, or for bodyweight, pushups, dips, pullups, and squats.
Re: MuscleWiki: Find exercises that work specific muscles
#7As someone who knows almost nothing about muscle building, why would I want to work specific muscles? How do I know which muscle I should want to work? Do I look at a particular muscle and feel it's too small and that's how I choose? Do I target specific muscles that feel sore after I do some other activity that is the real activity I value? I'm genuinely curious. If this website is giving the "how", I want to know t…
Yup see this is exactly what I was worried about. Luckily I don't think the website is making claims anywhere for what its purpose is, I just wish it'd explicitly say somewhere "yo if you're a noob, this is not the place to come to learn how to build a workout plan. It's an index and reference for once you've already put exercises on a plan."
In regards to your "why," it's a pretty broad question to answer. Why should you do weight training? It's good for your health, usually, ask your doctor for if that's true for you specifically (usually the answer is yes). As in, studies show health benefits unrelated to the actual benefits of bigger muscles and greater strength:
1. Improves heart health 1, 2, 3, 4 (sorry too lazy to properly format cites)
2. Lowers risk of diabetes, good for managing blood sugar 5 6 7 8
3. Positive psychological effects (outside of just feeling better about your appearance, it literally affects your brain chemistry) 9 10 11 12
Consider also some of the more "common sense" or "obvious" side effects of simply being stronger: reduces your risk of injury, increases your bone strength, boosts your self esteem (even if your culture doesn't value macho muscly people, simply being stronger can be a self esteem boost), and, being stronger is just kinda fun and nice and convenient. Consider: one trip from car to the house with grocery bags, or, picking up your dog / kid / friends more easily. Even when I reach up for a big bag of flour and feel my muscles at work, I find some amount of satisfaction.
If you mean "why should I work a certain muscle group," the answers are all over the place, and really situational. Someone might be working a specific muscle group because of an injury and are doing restrengthening or creating greater strength in a way to prevent future injury, or, because they need a rebalancing for compound exercises (i.e. their abdominal strength is a blocker for greater deadlift weight), or, aesthetics (bicep curls, all day, every day, or, the more modern variation: waaaay too many squats).
If you're "someone who knows almost nothing about muscle building," and are also interested in it, I recommend a workout plan that involves compound exercises. Start with your why so you have a goal in mind to drive you, i.e., I wanna be able to carry my kid for longer, I want to increase my quality of life, I want to appear more aesthetic, I want to feel more confident when hiking with weight, whatever, pick something. Then, consider your equipment situation: do you have access to a gym and the time to go there? If so, barbell compound exercises are worth investigating. If not, bodyweight exercises (these are great to do with barbell exercises if you have the time, I really think everyone should be doing at least a little bit of bodyweight exercises every few days).
From there hit the forums:
https://thefitness.wiki/getting-started-with-fitness/
https://thefitness.wiki/muscle-building-101/
https://thefitness.wiki/routines/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/
If you're looking for something to do literally right now, and you haven't had a doctor advise against physical exercises for whatever reason, I guess get on the ground next to your chair and see how many pushups you can do? Here, the muscle wiki is useful for this: https://musclewiki.com/bodyweight/male/chest/push-up though it might help to watch a youtube video as well, I really love the "Hybrid Calisthenics" channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GsVJsS6474 if you can't do a "full plank pushup" they have a good pushup "ramp up" method.
1 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6563593/
2 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27680663/
3 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28769100/
4 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31023184/
5 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5446383/
6 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26562712/
7 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27926890/
8 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6339182/
9 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28819746/
10 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29800984/
Re: MuscleWiki: Find exercises that work specific muscles
#8As someone who knows almost nothing about muscle building, why would I want to work specific muscles? How do I know which muscle I should want to work? Do I look at a particular muscle and feel it's too small and that's how I choose? Do I target specific muscles that feel sore after I do some other activity that is the real activity I value? I'm genuinely curious. If this website is giving the "how", I want to know t…
In my experience, I’ve received answers to these questions working with a physical therapist. I’ve sustained several injuries partly due to muscle imbalance (that led to poor walking mechanics due to glute imbalance). So we try to correct that imbalance with strengthening exercises that target the glutes.
I've been dealing with similar issues. Can I ask how long it took for you to start seeing results from the strengthening exercises, both just in strength and your injuries going away? It's easy to see progress in weightlifting etc, but bands or body exercises for small muscles (adductors, in my case) just always feel hard.
Re: MuscleWiki: Find exercises that work specific muscles
#9As someone who knows almost nothing about muscle building, why would I want to work specific muscles? How do I know which muscle I should want to work? Do I look at a particular muscle and feel it's too small and that's how I choose? Do I target specific muscles that feel sore after I do some other activity that is the real activity I value? I'm genuinely curious. If this website is giving the "how", I want to know t…
>why would I want to work specific muscles
As a beginner, you would not. You want to work the whole system, and to do that, you only need a handful of compound movements: squat, deadlift, and overhead press.
Once you slow down in progress on these bigger compounds, that's when you would want to start doing more targeted or more specific assistance exercises, in addition to the compounds.
Starting Strength is a good enough book to learn this stuff. Read it and beware advice on the subject of fitness, for every nerd, bro, and their brother gets a kick out of speaking with authority on this stuff, even if they don't know what they're talking about - just go straight to a reliable source: Starting Strength. It's become a meme, but it's good enough.
Re: MuscleWiki: Find exercises that work specific muscles
#10Would be awesome if you included stretches as well, like yoga-esque postures