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MuscleWiki: Find exercises that work specific muscles

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Re: MuscleWiki: Find exercises that work specific muscles

#61

As 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…

I’m formally trained in this subject and I find parts of replies to you as correct, while most are just outrageous. First, you should define your goal. Do you want to be generally fit, or do you just want larger biceps? Can’t force you to be well-rounded and ask you to change your perception of beauty, so if you just wanted bigger biceps then go ahead and just do curls. Be warned though: other fit people are going to…

There can be certain beneficial imbalances for particular sports. Rock climbers tend to need disproportionately strong fingers, and legs focused for jumping rather than pure strength. Boulderers need more focus on legs than route climbers, mountaineers need more overall balance and endurance, etc. Too much imbalance can lead to injury (all lats no pecs would be likely to cause back pain, as would the reverse) but some can be useful for particular goals.

Re: MuscleWiki: Find exercises that work specific muscles

#63
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 for gmb.io - it's the only program(s) that i ever paid for - they are that clever. (i am athletic, walk my dog daily, have access to crossfit gyms etc). gmb.io "fills the gaps" of daily movement deficits and is for everyone.

How do you track your reps and weight per exercise? My trainer wants me to use paper. There are too many apps for this, and most of them are adware or junk. A glorified spreadsheet is what I’m looking for (mobile).

I use Stacked. But only because I enjoyed books & content written by the creator. It's not as easy to adjust as other apps, but it's totally free and I think it's visually pleasing.

Re: MuscleWiki: Find exercises that work specific muscles

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m formally trained in this subject and I find parts of replies to you as correct, while most are just outrageous. First, you should define your goal. Do you want to be generally fit, or do you just want larger biceps? Can’t force you to be well-rounded and ask you to change your perception of beauty, so if you just wanted bigger biceps then go ahead and just do curls. Be warned though: other fit people are going to…

There can be certain beneficial imbalances for particular sports. Rock climbers tend to need disproportionately strong fingers, and legs focused for jumping rather than pure strength. Boulderers need more focus on legs than route climbers, mountaineers need more overall balance and endurance, etc. Too much imbalance can lead to injury (all lats no pecs would be likely to cause back pain, as would the reverse) but som…

I disagree with the notion of “beneficial imbalance” here. It’s likely that we may be thinking of the same thing when I’m talking about “optimizing or specializing for a sport”, but I will never use my notion as an argument against training the essentials. You‘re not going to be a more successful (and more importantly, _safe_) rock climber, boulderer, or mountaineer without a baseline strength in the essential muscle groups because those will keep your whole body stable and your posture as it should be while you’re wiggling your body about vertical surfaces. Well-rounded baseline strength could very well spell the difference between life and death especially for the activities that you mentioned.

There’s also the fact that should rock climbers, boulderers, and mountaineers have lives and real jobs outside what they do for recreation, then the reality is that they have a variety of bodily movements that just need to be generally done with, again, good posture, which you simply can’t have with an imbalance in the essentials.

Re: MuscleWiki: Find exercises that work specific muscles

#65
post #28
post #20

I was hoping this would be a lot more targeted. What if I want to focus on my rear delts? Subscapularis? Serratus anterior? Yes, I have bad posture.

An "advanced" bodymap is coming soon. We are just figuring out the best way to do it on mobile.

Been lifting for 5 years now, going to use this site it's great nice work!

Re: MuscleWiki: Find exercises that work specific muscles

#66
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could do bench press instead of overhead press. They have a fair amount of overlap. Some beginning strength programs alternate between them.

Please don't spread out incorrect fitness advice, as it can lead to injury. Disclaimer: I'm not a fitness expert either, just train regularly. So, verify anything I (or anyone else) tells you. They work different muscles. OHP/MP mainly works the delt, while the BP targets vrious parts of the pecs (depending on incline). Also grip width can change the balance between triceps/pec activation during BP

Recreational power-lifter here.

OHP gains certainly do carry over to bench press though. You can treat bench press as a "heavy" day lift and then use overhead press as a lighter pressing variation (but still go heavy) because there's enough overlap that it'll help your bench but different enough to where going heavy on overhead doesn't impact your bench press recovery.

Example:

Monday: 5 sets 5 reps of bench press.

Wednesday: 3 sets 5 reps of overhead press.

Friday: 1 set 5 reps bench press (trying to get as many reps as you can with good form, and increase the weight for next week depending on how many reps you went past 5)

Another way I've seen it done is something like this A B style workout:

Week A:

Monday - bench Wednesday - OHP Friday - bench

Week B:

Monday - OHP Wednesday - bench Friday - OHP

One really good source of info for powerlfiting / strength programming on youtube is Alex Bromely

Re: MuscleWiki: Find exercises that work specific muscles

#67
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's hard to separate actual progress from placebo so hence hard to give a good time estimate, but I'd say 3 months in I was at my peak (I've fallen off since then and ultimately "failed" PT in terms of it helping to address my specific issues).
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