As the new year begins, you may have given more thought to a specific workout routine for the upcoming year. Figuring out how to build your workouts can be challenging at first. Don’t forget to include exercises targeting some of these key muscle groups.
Arms
You must devote time to your workout to strengthening your arms. You should try to target each of the smaller muscles in the arms including your biceps, triceps, wrists, and shoulders. Each of these groups deserves special attention.
As you plan workouts for your arms, be sure to do these movements slowly and carefully. Especially when it comes to your shoulders. Many gym-goers have made the mistake of lifting too much weight when doing lateral raises. A mistake like this could result in a torn rotator cuff—an injury that could keep you out of the gym for months and could even require surgery.
Legs
Working your legs is an important part of maintaining a well-rounded fitness. Your legs play an important role in your everyday life but are often the first muscle group neglected when it comes to workouts.
Additionally, besides the fact that working your legs helps you support other muscle groups and have a balanced-looking physique, doing leg workouts can have other benefits. Leg workouts can help prevent vein diseases later in life.
Back
When it comes to figuring out your workout regime, you must plan on doing exercises to work your back. Your back muscles play an important role in your everyday activities and can often be the recipients of injury.
To make sure that your back muscles are strong enough to hold up against everyday tasks, make sure that you do exercises that work both the larger and smaller back muscles. You also want to make sure that you perform these exercises carefully and with the right movements before you start adding more weight.
Core
One of the most important muscle groups to focus on is your core. These major muscle groups in your core play an important role in specifically supporting your back as well as other muscle groups like your neck and shoulders.
There are a variety of exercises you can do to strengthen your core. But while many people often focus their core workouts on exercises like sit-ups and planks, these exercises mainly work central abdominal muscles but neglect, to some extent, oblique muscles. As you think about a workout regime to work your core muscles, be sure to include exercises that will also specifically work these side abdominal muscles.
Some exercises that you might consider adding side planks, hip dips, or other exercises specifically intended to work your obliques.
Stabilizing Muscles
When it comes to working out, it’s easiest to focus on heavy lifting a lot of the time. And while these types of workouts in the gym with machines and barbells are essential for you to build and strengthen major muscle groups, it’s also important that you spend time developing and strengthening key smaller stabilizing muscles.
Stabilizing muscles are smaller muscles that are connected to bigger muscle groups and help them do their job. Typically, when you do an exercise like a squat or a chest press, these smaller stabilizing muscles aren’t worked very hard as they simply play a supporting role to the bigger muscle being exercised. But because these stabilizing muscles do so much to ensure that your other muscles function properly, they’re worth time spent dedicated to them specifically.
There are a variety of different exercises that you can do to strengthen those smaller muscles. One of the options you should consider is taking up pilates. Pilates is a type of workout that utilizes a specific apparatus to work smaller stabilizer muscles. The movements are slow and typically require holding positions for an extended time. Movements like these prevent injury and encourage strengthening.
Chest
One of the most important muscle groups to focus on when it comes to your routine workouts is your chest. Your chest muscles are big muscles that are connected to your shoulders, abs, and back muscles. These muscles play an important role and need to be strengthened.
When it comes to working these muscles, most gym-goers stick to the traditional chest press. While this exercise is incredibly beneficial, consider incorporating various variations of this exercise. You can try doing the chest press with your hands closer together, then farther apart, and then with different levels of weight to work the different chest muscles.
Figuring out the best workout routine for you can be hard. How do you figure out the proper balance of cardio to weightlifting? What type of weightlifting should you focus on? Start with these suggestions to begin crafting the most balanced workout routine for you.
