Work out smarter by using muscle groups

Regular strength training is an excellent way to build muscle effectively and improve your overall health.

To get the most out of your strength training, it is a good idea to train specific muscle groups at the same time.

This helps prevent overtraining muscles and ensures optimal results.

There are numerous exercises that you can do that focus on specific muscle groups. This is helpful because muscles need to exercise and relax to function well and increase strength.

To efficiently work out, you can rest one group of muscles while working on another group. This avoids the risk of overtraining and straining muscles and also gives your muscles time to recover.

In this article, we are going to take a look at what muscle groups you can work out together to optimise your training. So put on your gym shorts and warm up to the idea of training using muscle groups.

What are the benefits of working out using muscle groups?

Strength training is all about isolating a specific muscle and focusing your energy on training it. A good example would be when doing bench presses - in this case, one target muscle is the chest.

There are also other muscles being worked on, however, including triceps and shoulder muscles. It is often the case that when targeting one muscle you are really working on a group of muscles.

Working on specific muscle groups can help your body rest other muscle groups without having to stop exercising.

It can also give you more mental confidence because they will be focused on one muscle group per day, which is easier to manage than a general workout routine.

What muscle groups should you pair together?

We have hundreds of different muscles throughout our body, so when it comes to working out it can really help to know which ones to target. In some cases, muscle groups can work well as a pair when working out. These are usually muscles that work with each other to function.

For strength training, there are six muscle groups that are most often grouped together as the major muscle groups. These are:

• The chest
• The back
• The shoulders
• The abs
• The legs
• The arms

These groups of muscles consist of several individual muscles that can be further targeted. Some of the most common muscles to focus on include:

• Hamstrings
• Glute muscles
• Quadriceps
• Biceps
• Triceps
• Delts
• Lats
• Traps

As discussed, some muscle groups work in unison to perform specific movements and ambulations.

Some people may choose to group muscles by their function, or their ‘pull’ or ‘push’ movements. Other approaches involve using body locations to group muscles together, such as legs or arms.

The most common muscle groupings are:

Chest, shoulders and triceps

There are some of the ‘push’ muscles of the body and most exercises that involve them involve pushing resistance away from the body to work. Exercises for these muscle groups include pushups, bench presses and shoulder presses.

Back and biceps

These are the ‘pull’ muscles and they focus on using pull resistance for exercise. Dumbbell curls, pull-downs and pull-ups are exercises that train this muscle group.

Legs

Legs include your hamstrings, quadriceps, glutes and calves. Due to the mass of these muscles, it is a good idea to dedicate an entire day of working out to this group. A well-rounded workout is advised as this can train all areas of the leg effectively.

Abs

There are a few important exercises that you can employ that will provide strength training for your abs. You can try planking, leg raises and flutter kicks to activate your core and strengthen your abs effectively.