Leverages and Muscles

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This Week’s Healthy Discussion

1. Leverages and Muscles

2. Choose Intelligently

3. Catch the Video

Leverages and Muscles

When picking exercises for specific muscle groups, we are always looking for something that works a muscle where it has the best leverage.

But what does that mean?

Basically think about certain muscles groups being able to be used the best where an exercise is hardest at, alongside the correct joint angles.

For example: The Front Deltoid is best used when we are pressing above our head. We even simplify this by calling it a “Shoulder Press” because we know that pressing anything above our head will result in the deltoids being worked.

Knowing where muscles have the best leverages helps us choose exercises to load the resistance in a specific area.

Typically machines are already made perfectly to suit a muscle you’re targeting, therefore this is definitely overcomplicating it for any beginner.

However, as we get more advanced, it’s fun to be as productive as we can with our training and be very specific with our choices.

Choose Intelligently

Another example would be for your latissimus dorsi (that muscle on your back that people say makes you look wider).

If we look at this graph:

We see that the “Upper” divisions of the latissimus dorsi have the greatest leverage for shoulder extension, meaning it is the best during close grip chin ups and tucked elbow rows.

We also see that the “Mid” to “Lower” lats have the best leverage for shoulder adduction (bringing the arms in from the sides).

This would be wide grip pull-ups or lat pulldowns with a straight bar attachment.

You may wonder why it’s handy to know this, and the biggest reason is to just reduce redundancy and know what each exercise is actually doing for our body!

Catch the Video

If you missed out on the most recent video, be sure to check it out! We talk about Pull-ups and how great they are for getting you that wider look.