Freeweight Training Anatomy: An Illustrated Guide to the Muscles Used while Exercising with Dumbbells, Barbells, and Kettlebells and more
By Ryan George
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About this ebook
Picturing hundreds of step-by-step exercises and clearly colored muscle illustrations, Freeweight Training Anatomy reveals precisely which muscle groups are being built, stretched and sculpted in every workout. This extensive anatomy and fitness guide is the ultimate resource for creating smart, balanced fitness routines that employ barbells, dumbbells, kettlebells, sandbags and even your own body weight.
• Isolate and exercise hard-to-sculpt muscles
• Revolutionize your routine with unconventional weights
• Add hardcore combination moves for a full-body workout
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Freeweight Training Anatomy - Ryan George
PART 1
OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION
The human body is a remarkably dynamic machine that’s capable of producing an incalculable variety of movements. These movements are an essential aspect of how we interact with the world around us. At its core, human movement consists of using our skeletal muscles to manipulate our bones. Maximizing the efficiency as well as the efficacy of movement is important for every single person.
Exercise is the method by which we develop and enhance movement. Obviously, enhancing movement isn’t the only reason we exercise; in fact, many people wouldn’t consider it the primary or secondary reason, either. We exercise to build muscle mass, lose weight, increase athletic performance, fight off disease, and many other reasons. The one common thread, no matter what the goal, is that exercise is going to involve movement.
There’s a reason why I place so much emphasis on movement in exercise. Understanding movements and the muscles that produce them can enhance or severely diminish the effectiveness of an exercise program. When performing even the simplest of movements, it’s not simply about an individual muscle or even a muscle group
working. More often than not, entire movement systems composed of groups of muscles are working synergistically to produce movements. This means that it’s important to have a working knowledge of not only what muscles are working when exercising, but also the various roles they play in producing movements. A subtle change in a movement can completely change which muscles and movement systems are involved, so any movements produced during an exercise session should be deliberate and well thought out. Not possessing a working knowledge of the muscles involved in specific movements can, at a minimum, slow development, and, at worst, lead to injury.
The purpose of this book is to give you a variety of exercises using a diverse set of modalities. The exercise descriptions are accompanied by beautiful illustrations to show the specific muscles being used as well as the roles that they play in movement. This knowledge will help you to better design, implement, and follow an exercise program.
In my 15 years in the fitness industry, I’ve identified guesswork as a very common theme. More often than not, people have very little structure in their exercise program. A combination of the overwhelming amounts of information (and misinformation), conflicting theories, and the new trend of the month often result in confusion. This leads to guesswork and, often, stunted exercise programs.
One of the goals of this book is to simplify exercise. It’s not about reinventing the wheel or promoting a brand-new gimmick or fad, but rather giving you the meat and potatoes in a way that’s easy to understand. This book consists of the concepts and ideas that I believe to be the most important and instrumental to a successful exercise program. The primary focus is on how to manipulate the muscles of the body in order to perform movements that will in turn help to develop and strengthen those muscles. This information is presented in a way that’s concise and easy to digest. In addition to the exercises and illustrations, this book also contains what I believe to be the most important and essential fitness concepts, as well as guidance on designing specific exercise programs for all levels and goals.
Your Body at Work
Skeletal muscles serve a variety of functions. They provide the structure and framework for our bodies. They’re used to move bone and allow us to interact with the world. Proper muscular function is important for normal everyday activities as well as athletic performance. Skeletal muscle is also important to many people because of its aesthetic component. We engage in weight training as a way to strengthen, build, and develop skeletal muscle. We can see examples throughout society of well-developed skeletal muscle representing an ideal aspect of the human form.
There are over 200 bones in the human body, and they come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and compositions. Bones serve several different functions but, for the purposes of this book, we’ll focus on movement. Together, bones form the skeleton and can be used as a series of levers used to facilitate movement. A joint is an area in which two or more bones meet, allowing for movement. Some joints, like the elbow, move in one direction, while other joints, like the hip, move in more than one direction or have free range to move. Most of the joints throughout the body are acted on by more than one muscle. Understanding the specific movements that a contracted muscle should produce is key to exercise as it allows you to target specific individual muscles and muscle groups.
There are well over 600 skeletal muscles in the human body. Each muscle is individually attached to bones throughout the body. When a muscle contracts, it works to help move a joint in a specific direction. Some muscles, like the hamstrings, act on multiple joints while others, like the soleus, act on only one joint. Groups of individual muscles tend to work together to produce movement. When we refer to muscles, like the quadriceps or the pectorals, we’re often referring to a group of muscles that work together. The exercise chapters in this book are separated based on muscle group, and each chapter will break down the individual muscles involved and their role in movement.
FITNESS ESSENTIALS
In order to eliminate the guesswork that’s common in fitness programming, it’s necessary to understand a few fitness concepts. This chapter contains what I consider to be the most important concepts that any fitness enthusiast should understand. While following an exercise program doesn’t require you to be an expert on fitness, it’s necessary to have a basic understanding of exercise science.
Resistance Training
Commonly referred to as strength training or weight training, resistance training refers to exercise in which a person uses some form of muscle contraction to act against an external resistance. The external resistance can vary from a free weight to a machine, or even one’s own bodyweight. Resistance training has many benefits. It’s commonly used as a way to develop muscular strength, endurance, and size. Resistance training has many other benefits, such as increased bone density, improved mobility, increased metabolic rate, and improved body composition. Almost all of the exercises in this book fall into this category. The exercises and programs in this book will also focus on the muscle-building aspect of resistance training as all of the other benefits will develop as ancillary results if the focus is on muscle building.
Hypertrophy
In the context of resistance training, hypertrophy refers to the enlargement of the muscle tissue. Hypertrophy is a common result of resistance training. To put it simply, when we engage in resistance training, we create microtears in the muscle tissue. The body then reacts to this by repairing tissue larger and stronger in order to better handle the resistance in the future. If you’re interested in increasing muscular size, resistance training is the most effective mode to achieve that goal.
Types of Movement
Muscle flexion: The bending of a joint so that the angle decreases. Beginning with a straight arm and bending at the elbow is an example of muscle flexion.
Muscle extension: The straightening of a joint so that the angle increases. Beginning with a bent elbow and straightening the arm is an example of muscle extension.
Hyperextension: Increasing the angle of a joint beyond its normal function.
Abduction: The movement of one segment of the body away from the midline of the body. Lifting the arm to