Two Muscles You Need To Exercise But Aren’t

You go to the gym every week, you’ve got days dedicated to each muscle group, so you’ve got everything covered…or do you?  There are muscles that we all know we’ve ignored because we either wouldn’t want them getting too big or don’t truly see the true benefit of them.  Odds are there are two muscle groups that you have neglected week in and week out, until now! 

Nobody Wants Love Handles

Well, probably the most neglected muscle group is the obliques. People who don’t understand the mechanics of this muscle group often ignore the obliques because they don’t want the muscles to get too big - giving the appearance of “love handles”.

If you look at a bodybuilder (or anyone who has less than 11% body fat), you’ll see that there is a muscle that sits just to the left and right of the six pack that creates the outer line of the six pack. These muscles are the obliques. Improving the appearance of the obliques will actually give your torso the appearance of having a six pack even if you only have a four pack (or just the top four abdominal muscles). So train your obliques by performing free weight movements like the squat and deadlift, or isolated movements like side crunches and ax-chops.

Let Popeye Be Your Model

Another muscle group that gets neglected would be the forearms. If you’re one of those gym goers that strictly exercises with machines, this muscle group is pretty much ignored. However, if you performed traditional exercises: chin ups, deadlifts, dips, barbell curls, etc. you’ll quickly see how important grip strength is.  There are a few movements you can do; you can go old school and grab one of those hand squeezers that your grandpa used, you can even do forearm curls which involve grabbing either a barbell or a set of dumbbells and with your palms facing up curl the weight towards you, or you can simply jump up to a pull up bar and hang there for as long as you can.

Training these two muscle groups will add weight to your more complex movements, give you a handshake that proves you’re not someone to mess with, and enhances your abdominal appearance! So, train your obliques and train your forearms!

Now that you’re pumped to go to the gym, check out our Workout Generator over for over 150 trillion free workout routines! Perhaps it’s time to workout all of those other muscle groups that you may have neglected!

Improving the appearance of the obliques will actually give your torso the appearance of having a six pack