Forgotten body parts: work your ignored muscles—and avoid the asymmetrical look—without disrupting your current workout - Body Shop

Men's Fitness, Dec, 2002 by Roy M. Wallack

Maybe you don't have a pencil neck, chicken legs or toothpick forearms ... yet. But just be patient. Because if you're like a lot of guys, you probably don't train these overlooked muscle groups much, if at all. Maybe you forget about them. Maybe you just don't care about them. Maybe you assume that hitting other muscles in the neighborhood is enough. But muscles aren't, you might say, built by association.

"Muscle is muscle," says Michael Bemben, Ph.D., director of the Neuromuscular Research Lab in the University of Oklahoma's department of health and sports sciences. "If not stressed beyond its normal workload, muscle will degenerate no matter where it is on the body."

Moreover, neglecting to train these particular muscles is doubly bad, says Bemben. "The more distal, or distant from your core body, a muscle is, the faster its rate of decline." Core and near-core muscles--chest, back, shoulders, glutes, thighs--get worked far more doing routine activities than do your distal muscles.

Take forearms, for example. "You know why old people need help opening jars?" Bemben asks. "Because their finger flexors--what we call the forearm-muscle group--have wasted away. Unless you're a construction worker, a butcher, a mechanic or even a musician--people who make a living by grabbing things with their hands and fingers--you get big &dines in forearm size and strength without specific resistance training."

Next, take the plantar flexors--the lower-leg muscles. "Unless you run, the average person's tibialis anterior [shin muscle] will waste away," says Bemben. "And so will your soleus and gastrocnemius muscles, the principal muscles of the calf, unless you bike, do ballet, or weight-train." Since the calves shrink faster than the thighs, and are smaller to start with, they can degenerate into sticks pretty fast.

Another pain in the neck is, well, the neck. Although not distal in the purest sense, the neck attaches to the core and lugs around a 10-to 15-pound "dumbbell"--your noggin--all day. The result? "It's weak, injury-prone, and often looks puny [hence the pejorative term 'pencil neck'] compared with the shoulders surrounding it," says Bemben.

THE SOLUTION

For exercises to help you build up your forearms, lower legs, and neck, we enlisted the help of Dan Wirth, president of the Tucson, Ariz.-based Sierra Fitness Health Clubs of America and former director of strength and conditioning at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Wirth says there's no need to do all of the following exercises at one time (since many work the same muscles) or to rearrange your whole schedule around them. Choose two or three for each body part and work them in between sets or after training your larger muscle groups. But be sure to work the forearms, lower legs, and neck when they're not being used as assistors for larger muscle groups.

* If you decide to train your forearms, do so on days when you're not doing back. Your grip strength is used during back exercises, so working forearms concurrently will weaken your efforts.

* Work lower legs during an upper-body day. While squats and leg presses don't directly target the calves, they do rely on them for stability during heavier lifts.

* Train your neck between sets on leg day. The neck requires very little resistance for results.

THE EXERCISES

FORGOTTEN BODY PART: FOREARMS

Strengthening your forearms aids handgrip strength and can help guard against tennis elbow and carpal tunnel syndrome. Anything involving a grip--stress balls, pull-ups, rows, lat pulls and biceps curls--will build forearm strength naturally, but only wrist-curl exercises hit forearms specifically. Still, size increases don't come easily, for forearms are used often in normal life and are accustomed to regular movement.

1. SEATED BARBELL FOREARM FLEXION (forearm flexors) Sit down on a flat bench with your feet flat on the floor and a barbell in hand. Position your hands four to six inches apart on the barbell with a palms-up grip. Place your elbows on the bench or on the tops of your thighs (la), depending on what feels best. Slowly curl your hands upward (lb), return to the starting position and repeat.

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2. SEATED BARBELL FOREARM EXTENSION (forearm extensors) Sit down on a flat bench with your feet flat on the floor and a barbell in hand. Position your hands four to six inches apart on the barbell with a palms-down grip. Place your elbows on the bench or on the tops of your thighs (2a), depending on what feels best. Slowly curl your hands upward (2b), return to the starting position and repeat.

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3. SEATED DUMBBELL FOREARM FLEXION (forearm flexors) Grasp a dumbbell in each hand. Sit on the edge of a bench with your feet flat on the floor and slightly wider than shoulder width. Lean forward and place your forearms flat against your thighs, palms up. Your hands and wrists should hang off the fronts of your knees (3a). Slowly curl your hands upward (3b). Return to the starting position and repeat.