Bodybuilding Exercises
Hit Your Muscles From All Angles
Remember geometry class in high school? All those theorems about angles and rhomboids and trapezoids and all that other good stuff?
Even if geometry wasn’t your best subject, you can still take advantage of the tines and angles when it comes to developing and shaping muscle. All you need is a basic, Cliffs Notes style version of body geometry.
Basics
You have more than 430 skeletal muscles to move your 206 bones. Each muscle begins on one bone and ends on another. It’s also known as the point of origin and point of Insertion. The direction in which your muscle fibers run between these two points (called pennation) determines the direction of muscle contraction.
Sometimes the point of origin can differ greatly in size from the point of insertion. That’s why doing different exercises from various angles makes a profound effect in your muscular development.
Also, certain muscles cross over multiple joints, like your biceps and triceps, while other complex muscle groups, like your back, are actually made up of a large number of individual muscles whose fibers run in different directions.
Knowing and understanding POO, POI, pennation, fibers, and such would go a long way toward optimizing your development. However, learning all that would take years of schooling.
But you don’t need that,
You see, anatomy is exact science. Training Is not. The bottom line is you need to change your strength training routine by changing the exercises and using different angles to finely sculpt your body, like an artist.
We’ll use the chest, back, and arms as examples.
The Chest
Think of a triangle lying on either side of your chest. The line down the center lathe point of origin and the point of insertion is at the top of your humerus (the bone of your upper arm).
Draw some lines from the origin to the insertion and you’ll see how the fibers run. Moving your arms over and across your chest at different angles stimulates these fibers in a different fashion.
For best chest development, stick with these exercises: db flat bench press, db incline bench press, barbell flat bench press, bb incline bench press, bar dips.
The Back
This is where muscle fibers get a little bit complicated.
Your back is made up of all kinds of smaller muscles that originate and insert in different places. So in order to develop your back the way you want it, you must perform different exercises that vary in the angle of pull. Even these small variations can promote greater effects.
For example, by altering your grip on a 1st pulldown from wide to reverse, you work not only the lats, teres major, and rhomboids (don’t worry about remembering these) that are normally stressed with the standard pulldown, but also the middle trapezius (middle of your upper back).
Point is, the bigger and more complex the muscle group, the more angles you need in your strength training attack. The more angles you use, the better developed your muscle will be.
Exercises: chin ups, pull ups, seated rows, barbell bent over rows, db onearm rows, pulldowns (front – close, medium, and wide grip), reverse grip pulldown, close grip pulldown.
The Arms
Even though most of your muscles have larger points of ongin than insertion, the muscles in your biceps and triceps do not. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work them from different angles.
These particular muscles cross over more than one joint, so they too are affected by working them at different angles. Read more
Fitness Weight Training
Combat Core Strength
Planks
Planks are the most recognized static exercise for the torso. They should be held for time and can be overloaded with external resistance that is added to the lifter around their mid to upper back. The lifter should create a hard contraction in their abdominals, glutes and hamstrings to remain rigid.
Weighted Planks
These exercises demonstrate planks with external loading to increase the intensity as you get stronger.
Mountain Climber Planks
The lifter will perform an alternating mountain climber movement, while holding a plank. This is a great transitional exercise because it creates a static contraction in the abdominals while engaging movement of the lower body.
Planks on Trampoline
Planks done on a trampoline are an effective way to really activate the abdominals. As the lifter holds the plank position agitation from a partner can be added or the lifter can move into a one arm position. This is an excellent way to start progressing from a conventional plank to more advanced torso training movements. It also improves shoulder stability at the same time.
Side Planks
Side planks should be done with no sagging of the hips, torso or shoulders. The movement should be held for time. Distractions like having the lifter respond to verbal questions or bouncing a tennis ball will increase the difficulty because a coordination between breathing and bracing must be established.
Bench Side Bends
Dynamic side bends can be done on a bench and will target the obliques and quadratus lumborum through a range of motion (ROM). Stability is added to the bracing shoulder with the opposite hand across the chest if there are shoulder issues.
Reverse Crunches
Reverse crunches target the rectus abdominis and posterior fibers of the external obliques. This aids in returning our pelvic alignment back to neutral without the subsequent hip flexor shortening and reinforcement of poor posture (and rib cage depression) typically associated with conventional crunches.
Reverse Crunches with Med Ball
By adding a medicine ball to the movement, it allows us to add some more tension (we don’t need a lot) and engage the hip adductors more.
Side Crunches
Side crunches are done to target the internal and external obliques. I like this exercise because if you do it right, it incorporates the lats isometrically and begins the “reconnection” of the upper and lower musculature, working together.
Bicycle Crunches
Again, bicycle crunches engage the lower body with an abdominal movement. The movement is coordinated transversely (ie. Left shoulder to right knee and vice versa), which is anatomically how the (internal and external obliques) abdominals are orientated.
Sprinter Sit-ups
This movement is similar to the bicycle crunches but done with an arm swing. The head should remain neutral during the movement and the arm and leg swing should be done powerfully.
Medicine Ball Straight Leg Sit-ups
While holding a medicine ball overhead, the lifter will sit-up to a point where there is maximum tension (not all the way up). After reaching this point, slowly lower back down and repeat. The goal is to keep tension on the abdominals throughout the entire movement.
Standing Cable Crunches
The lifter will face away from a cable stack with the rope attachment connected. From their, they will brace and crunch downward. Slowly extend back to the starting position. The weight can be varied according to your strength levels.
Standing Band Crunches
Same movement as with the cable stack, but now an elastic band is used. The band is anchored above the lifter’s head (in the pictures below, the band is tied around a pull-up bar). I like this variation because the tension increases, as leverage improves. Read more
