I’m going to start a series of posts about the importance of knowing what you’re doing. I can’t stress enough how important it is to know what exercise you’re doing, how to do it, why you’re doing it, and what muscles you’re working.
That final point is what we’re going to focus on today; Knowing what muscles are being worked during an exercise. In most cases, this seems pretty straightforward, but there are exercises where they obvious answer is. . . Well, it’s not the right answer. Here’s an exercise that is often misunderstood:
I once overheard a guy telling his friend that this would make his calves “look jacked.” Here’s the problem: In a few different places on your body, you have a set of muscles that complete a movement– Some of those muscles are aesthetic and functional, while some are only functional. Let’s look at your lower leg for a second. There are three major muscles (and only four total) in your lower leg: The Tibialis Anterior (Over your shin), Soleus (Within your calves), and Gastrocnemius (Your calves). When people are looking for aesthetics with their calves, there’s only one muscle that plays into this: The Gastrocnemius. So, why won’t your calves get “jacked” by doing the seated calf raise? Because that exercise targets your Soleus only.
This isn’t the only situation where there’s a lot of misconceptions about what’s being worked. I watched a guy doing Hammer Curls, and somebody asked him what he was working. His response: “My outer biceps, bro.” Actually, the hammer curl is a grip exercise, targeting your brachioradialis, which is an important muscle and also happens to have the coolest sounding name.
One last example:
If you think this will make your biceps “jacked,” you would be wrong. If you think this targets your biceps, you would be wrong. The preacher curl is like the seated calf raise– It targets an important muscle that is all about function and not about aesthetics. It targets your Brachialis, the muscle underneath your biceps.
I’m not telling you to stop doing seated calf raises, hammer curls, or preacher curls– Every muscle in your body needs to be worked. . . But, before you start doing exercises, learn about them, and figure out if they actually fit in with your goals. While working at a sporting goods store, I had someone buy an expensive bench because it had a “Preacher Curl Pad.” All he wanted to train was biceps. I told him that he would save a lot of money, and would actually be training what he wanted to train if he went with an EZ bar and plates. Instead, he was sold on the idea of the preacher curl and spent too much money for a workout that is not nearly as effective for what he wanted.