I’ve been focusing on lower body too much lately, to the point of stressing out my entire system. Looking to swap it out for another set of exercises at least one day a week.
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Thx, I do need to start adding more back exercises.
I only do two days a week, full-body. So Chest+Lowerbody+Arms+Cardio. But the lower-body / legs exercises twice a week probably isn’t necessary for me, the deadlifts and squats wear me out.
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Good idea! Deadlifts are very good for Full-Body days because there are a lot of different muscles working on Deadlift
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H A M M E R C U R L S
A favorite of mine(use very low weights, injuring your wrist is very bad) is wrist curls, you’ll notice pretty quickly how much it works your forearms
The posterior chain is not much of a secret anymore, but it’s still under-appreciated by most gym rats.
Hamstrings+glutes+lower back form a chain and are all linked together. Working on one will work on the others.
It’s also a part of the body that you can hardly overwork (except for the lumbar muscles) and that gets strong quickly.
Calves are also included in the posterior chain but tbh (YMMV), they haven’t really done anything for me so far. But I think I’ve always had strong calves so maybe I don’t notice it.
There’s another bonus. Most people today have an “amnesic” behind because we spend so much time sitting down. Glutes are underdeveloped and therefore you are unable to control them. I.e. flex them to get stability or even use them in your daily life. Working on your posterior chain will unlock your glutes as well over time.
Working my lower back has done wonders for my posture, but it’s become stronger much faster than my hamstrings and come to a point that when doing back overextensions (on the machine – much safer and comfortable), I tire my hamstrings before my back lol.
Gluteus medius, hamstrings.
This isn’t a muscle group but in general way too many “fit” people have terrible range of motion and flexibility.
Absolutely, I workout with friends that love Squats and stuff but they don’t isolate Glutes ever(I think Abductor machine isolates Glutes well) so when they squat really heavy weights their hips and butt is waving all over the place.
Maybe not underworked but shoulders are usually trained the wrong way. You’re not supposed to just keep adding weight to them. Shoulders should be trained with loads of reps and lightweights. 5 KG for shoulder exercises is a lot.
Whenever I see those clips of people lifting +30KG with their shoulders I cringe. If you injure them, you’re fucked, and then rehab is just doing lightweight exercises that you should’ve been doing in the first place.
Just the other day, one of the PTs in my gym invited me to join his shoulder workout, I started with 3KG but by the end I could barely do the exercises with only 1KG, and my shoulders were sore for the next 2 days. So you really don’t need ridiculous amounts of weight.
Thx, I’ll keep that in mind. I’m always tempted to add more weight, but won’t do that for shoulder stuff like side arm-raises.
With respect, I’m not sure this is really the right way of looking at things. Ultimately the amount of weight you lift is determined by how strong you are and what rep range you want to be working in.
You are correct that the priority should be the gradual development of strength with proper form, and it’s better to start light than too heavy (this is the same for all muscles, not just shoulders), but if someone is strong enough to lift heavy weights with their shoulders, and they are hitting the rep range they want to be hitting with good form, there’s really nothing wrong with that.
You also shouldn’t take being sore for two days as evidence of your session being more effective. Soreness is not an indicator of how effective your workout was. You can only determine the efficacy of your routine from the results you get from it over time - and those results will be determined only by the individual goals of the lifter.
From my experience, people tend to ignore calves and train their shoulders incorrectly. Calves take a lot of time to see change, but you shouldn’t ignore them. From your post, I’ll assume you got that covered. As shoulders go, don’t add a lot of weight, instead, try to perfect your form and focus on increasing the reps. For instance, I can do 12 reps of flat dumbbell bench press with 20kg (each), but for my shoulder work (lateral raises), I do 11 reps max with 6 kgs.
I like doing Push Jerks for Shoulders, really fun way to exercise.
