Which Muscles Do We Forget To Train?

In this bodybuilding podcast, we discuss which muscles people simply forget to train.

• Christine discusses physiology & balance.
• Which Muscles to build for major gains & to carve world-class definition.

Muscle Talk - Bodybuilding podcast by International Protein

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Transcript

Introduction:

Our host, the world-renowned Christine Envall, an IFBB professional, three times world champion, a mentor, an icon and of course, a founding co-owner of the best supplements money can buy, International Protein.

Ash Horton:

In this episode, we discuss which muscles people simply forget to train. Christine discusses physiology. She discusses balance and which muscles to build for major gains to carve world-class definition.

Ash Horton:

Okay. Christine, which muscle groups do people forget to work out? And then which muscles give you those major defining parts of your body that you can really get really good gains from and you can do that quite quickly and easily? Or is that just a massive assumption from me?

Christine Envall:

No. It's not an assumption as much as it's probably because we have the people that we call the in the gym bodybuilders, or the people who work glamor muscles. So obviously, glamor muscles are things like your chest and your biceps. Because when you look at someone, the first thing you see is this big popping chest, or they wear a top. A V-cut top or a lot of the clothing that's designed for the guys these days who weight train, is designed to really show that chest, show the neck and the chest and that obviously, shows very, very quickly. And of course, your biceps. If you wear a tight T-shirt or if you hit a pose then what's the first people say, "Can you flex for me?" Nobody's spins around and does a back-lat spread when you say, "Can you flex for me?”

Christine Envall:

They normally hit a bicep pose and a chest is sitting out there. So of course, those are the ones that we joke about, I guess, where people go in the gym and they do bench press and they do bench press, bench press, bench press and that's all they do. Or they do barbell curls and they work the chest and the biceps, and that gives them the illusion of being more muscular than anyone else, because they've just got these massive couple of muscle groups. And they might have no legs or no back or anything like that. But that's what we call a glamor muscle. That's what might, in a movie, make someone look more buff.

Christine Envall:

And again, with a tight shirt, that's what makes somebody look more buffer than someone who has an actual developed bodybuilder's body. So, there are those muscles, which if you build those up, you can give yourself the illusion of being bigger than what you really are. And then of course, the delts as well. Having a massive set of delts gives you that illusion of being very wide. And it doesn't really matter what the rest of you looks like because it dominates and people just see that. And that "Oh, my God. He's huge," because they or "She's huge," because they saw that little bit of a muscle group.

Christine Envall:

Now, the reason why we call that glamor muscles or in the gym bodybuilders is because onstage, it has a completely opposite effect, where all you see is the glaring or lack of legs or the lack of back development or-

Ash Horton:

Imbalances.

Christine Envall:

Yeah. Absolutely. So, someone can have a massive set of delts, but in a set of clothing, it can actually accentuate the body and make you look really, really great. But onstage, everything's there to be seen and there's no way of getting around it. So, I think sometimes it's not a matter of people forget to train a certain body part. They may have a specific reason to want to only train certain body parts because they are trying to create a look.

Christine Envall:

But a lot of the time it's actually genetics and that they... Well, one, they might be training it hard, but they aren't training it effectively. So, they're not quite sure why they're not growing, and that's probably the actually number one, most common reason why a muscle group isn't growing. And a lot of that can be that they're actually not connecting properly with that muscle group and they're working a whole different muscle group.

Christine Envall:

So for example, someone might have a big set of traps but really no other muscle group in their back, because everything that they do, they tend to divert, the traps takeover. And then once a muscle group gets strong, it tends to be the first thing that picks up. So, even though when you try later on to go and-

Ash Horton:

You're over compensating with one muscle rather than the other.

Christine Envall:

Yeah. Well, it gets strong so it takes over. It's like in a crowd, if someone's got a louder voice or a more dominant personality, they tend to take over a group. Whereas, the same thing with your muscle group. If it's stronger than the other muscle groups, your body is inherently lazy, so it goes okay, we've got this and they take over and do all the lifting, and then the other muscle groups don't come into play. And some of that is through the technique that you're using, a little bit of cheating and how you actually execute the exercise, because you can be doing the right exercises and just doing them totally wrong.

Christine Envall:

And I know for myself, my teardrop, the vastus lateralis, the one on the inside of the knee is quite dominant. And after years and years and years of training, and the reason it's dominant is because my first real trainer who put me on a program, put me on a program which accentuated that muscle group. He himself had a very dominant teardrop and everything that we did really focused on the teardrop. So as a result, it's actually, that'll be the first muscle group that picks up no matter what leg exercise I do.

Christine Envall:

And I have to work really hard to concentrate on making sure that I am making sure that my outer quad gets hit or that I'm hitting my inner quad. But when I'm tired, or if I'm not focusing, the first thing that takes over here is that teardrop. Whereas other people struggle to build that muscle group because their strength or their genetics or how they've changed, is focused on a different particular muscle group.

Christine Envall:

So, your early training is very important because it sets the roadmap for how your body fires and how your mind thinks, and it is quite hard to go back and retrain technique once you've been training for quite a number of years. So, it's important when you're early to learn that correct technique and not cheat. And then obviously, the traps is another good one because a lot of people will do everything almost like when they're doing a back exercise, they pull from their arms and that involves the traps, rather than allowing the lats to do the motion. And rather than activating the scapula, moving the scapular, activating the actual lat muscle.

Christine Envall:

So, it's so training specific. Some machines make it harder to cheat. Obviously, free weights you'd have more of an opportunity to cheat. Where you swing, where you pull through a particular part of the movement and not actually do the contraction. You can use a lot of momentum or swing or different, even an arm. I see people doing dumbbell rows for their back. And I look at it and all I see is rear delt and bicep. That's what's working. There's no lat involved at all, but they're going heavier and heavier calling it a back exercise, and then wondering why their back's not growing.

Christine Envall:

T-bar rows is another one, and I'm picking on back because it is probably the most badly trained body part. So, people tend to think about moving the weight. So, it might be that they're doing a T-bar row, but they're actually using their biceps and their arms to pull that weight up, rather than using the contraction through their back and getting that connection and making the back do the work. And the reason that often is, is because people are focused on weight, and you can move a lot of weight when you cheat and don't use the actual back contraction. When you have to contract the back and do that properly, a lot of the time you have to drop the weight lower, so you can't do those big hero moves. And everyone loves to just slam a look, look at this, look what I'm doing. I'm doing my dead lifts with however many plates, or I'm doing my T-bar rows with so many plates. But reality if done properly, you'd be doing half that amount of weight.

Christine Envall:

So, there is a little bit of ego that comes into it. And we all like to push our weights up and go stronger and heavier. And for something like a squat, it might be where you're positioning your knees. Your knees might tend to come in because that's where you're stronger. But the reality is that's not doing a great job for actually working the leg properly. Or you might be leaning over as you go into the squat and then doing almost half a good morning and again, not actually causing the quads to work. So, a lot of the time it's just badly executed. And then of course, there's genetics.

Christine Envall:

Someone doesn't have the shape of muscle or doesn't have the actual muscle cells. If their insertion is long and the calf is a classic example of that, where everyone says, "How do I train my calves?" Well, I do. There is a specific way that I train them, and a lot of people do train them badly. It's not that they don't train them. People without calves, people assume they're not training them. A lot of the time it is one, they are again, incorrect execution but number two, they might have a very short calf, which means that the tendon that then attaches into the Achilles is very long and you can't build muscle cells in a tendon. So, it has to be within the muscle belly.

Christine Envall:

So, if you've got a short bicep or a short calf, or your quad starts high, all of those things are genetically determined and you can't put muscle cells where there isn't. You can build muscle cells where there are cells already, but you can't grow muscle cells in a tendon where there is no muscle cells. So, your own natural structure, what your parents gave you is going to dictate lot of how your body is going to look. But if you have the muscle there, then working it properly, you can still under develop a muscle by not working it correctly. And that's through executing the exercise in such a way that you're hitting a whole totally different set of muscle groups.

Ash Horton:

And people turn their muscle groups off, don't they? They can do that by accident. Like just through life, just through sitting, you forget to use your glutes, for example. I mean, obviously, when you're training, you're isolating muscles and that's the purpose of it, but you've got to be doing the exercises actually correctly.

Christine Envall:

Yeah. Well, it's interesting that you say that and it's probably a male versus female thing too, and I'm picking, particularly on our hip structure. Is because when we do a lot of the F45 movements, a lot of them, there is a lot of leg work which involves different type of squats. Squat pulses, goblet squats, prisoner squats, squat jumps, all of these things. And I do look around the room and I see the guys really struggle to get into those positions. They come in forward, their hips aren't going down. There's no flexibility in the hips whatsoever. The women seem to have no trouble with those kind of exercises. But if you haven't done something for a long time, you think the body naturally goes into those positions, but it does get stuck.

Christine Envall:

And there's a lack of flexibility, because part of weight training and correct execution is obviously being flexible in those muscle groups, at the tendon and also in the muscle. And that's what I think I talked about before. I don't necessarily stretch before a workout, even though it's something that I do encourage people to do, especially as they get older, or if you have a particular stiffness or you feel that tightness. But doing proper controlled motions and working through a full range of motion, is inadvertently stretching the muscles through full range of motion. But if you're not doing that full range of motion and you're doing a half range of motion and you're not stretching, then you are actually exacerbating that problem.

Christine Envall:

And again, I come back to the traps. I wish we had visuals here, but I'm essentially... If I'm doing a lat pull down and I'm pulling down with my arms through my upper back and not pulling through my scapular into my lat, which is a much more open movement and which will work on the actual lat, it's very easy to totally miss a whole body part and totally use another body part. And that's where the traps all come in. But to you or to a person looking at it, they might think that they look very developed because they'll have a big set of traps. And that's something which, a set of traps and a set of delts crowns off the body, you have a big chest, big delts, big traps.

Christine Envall:

That's like the upper body covered off and it will give you a really big physical presence. So people might-

Ash Horton:

It doesn't mean you're strong necessarily.

Christine Envall:

Doesn't mean you're strong and strength is a whole different thing, but it doesn't also mean you'll be a good bodybuilder. So, because bodybuilding really, to me, it is about building the balance. There are other theories on that. I've talked to other professional bodybuilders and they've said, "Look, sometimes having that one freaky muscle group is the biggest advantage." Because if the rest of you is well-developed, but you have a freaky peak on your biceps, or you have a freaky big chest or a freaky set of hamstrings or set of calves or something, then people focus on that muscle group.

Christine Envall:

And they're just blown away by it, and particularly, a set of biceps. Someone has a great set of arms and the rest of them is okay, they have that wow factor. And a lot of the time, if the judges aren't as experienced as they should be or particularly, the audience, will be wowed by that. And they'll, "That person should win," but they neglect to see that their hamstrings were really weak or their conditioning wasn't as good through their back or all those other fine details that we should be looking at when we're looking at bodybuilding. So, that's one way of approaching bodybuilding. Have that one part which makes you stand out, because someone who is too balanced can sometimes blend in because they are just too damn balanced and too pretty.

Christine Envall:

So, men's physique, for example, they wear board shorts so you don't see their legs, but they are so developed in their chest and their delts. Really great set of abs, backs may or may not be good. And that's what people associate with that, "Oh my God. Look, I got such a great body," but you can't see half of their body. Whereas bodybuilding, it's all out there to be seen and having that balance between the quad to the hamstring, forearms to arms, to back, just everything needs to be developed. And I think when you're progressing in bodybuilding, you really need to focus on that because you're not a power lifter, you're not in it just to be strong, so your strength is irrelevant. You need to train in a way to build your body, that you don't create those kind of imbalances, and you can really get quite specific on where you target.

Christine Envall:

So, it's not a matter of what do people forget to train as much as, they need to assess they own physique and look at where their strengths are and where their weaknesses are, and what they need to do to build that illusion. So, building a big set of delts, building a lot of rear delt isn't necessarily going to be an advantage as much as if you've built a lot of side delt, because then that does give you that shoulder-to-hip ratio and almost makes like a coconut, like that cap that frames the body.

Ash Horton:

Speaking of the shoulder-to-hip ratio, is there a ratio that you should be following?

Christine Envall:

No, I've never been able-

Ash Horton:

Or aiming for, or-

Christine Envall:

It's all visual. I've never been into that what are the perfect ratios of quad-to-calf, shoulder-to-hip. It's so different on every single person. Height comes into it. What else is developed? What do your abs look like? What's your ab structure like? Do you have a long torso? Do you have a short torso? Do your lats insert low? Do your lats insert high? Is your chest high? Is your chest long? Because all of those different factors also come into play.

Christine Envall:

So, if someone has a very short high chest, it can look very impressive and poppy, but when you look at them on stage and they have a very, very long torso, and it's very hard for them to get a V-taper because they'll end up having more of a T look. And then some people love the T look. So, most classic bodybuilding is around the X shape, which is wide shoulders with a V coming down to the waist, not like a broad T shape, which is like a straight up and down body with a wide shoulders. And then the legs coming back out again in an X.

Christine Envall:

A lot of guys won't have that quad sweep or a lot of women, so they end with a weird T shape or a Y shape, because they might have the V but they have no legs. So, everyone has a different shape and they should be working towards that X because that is considered the most balanced and proportionate. But there are some people who just absolutely love for themselves, the T look. And the T look is very much a look for figure. So, if anyone is doing figure competitions rather than bodybuilding or bikini for women or whatever for men, the T shape is definitely the look.

Christine Envall:

There are some girls with really great developed legs in figure, but even all the way that they pose is designed. They have a more of a straight legged legs together pose. It accentuates their broad shoulders, maybe a Y shape, but definitely more of that slender legs. Whereas a women's physique, for example, is a rewarding or putting a lot more emphasis on having a really well developed thighs, glutes, and having that X shape. Their upper bodies, maybe aren't as well developed. They don't necessarily want them to have a really huge back.

Christine Envall:

So, it's changed a lot from when it was just female bodybuilding, male bodybuilding in terms of what you're looking for. And also, within each, not within each division, with each Federation, they have a different look. And a lot of people get confused because, "Oh, but I was doing this in this Federation and I swapped to that and then I'm not doing so well." It's like, "Well, did you look into what they actually look for in their criteria?" Because if you want to fit into what they're doing, you need to build your body towards what suits for your particular division. If you're doing it because you love it, then you have to look at what you like.

Christine Envall:

And a lot of guys say they don't like big legs because it doesn't feel comfortable in jeans, or they think it looks funny or whatever reason, but for personal reasons, they don't want to have massive thighs. Whereas, a bodybuilder would cry if he didn't have big legs because he needed to have that overall balance. And then you can split up a thing with a big massive thigh, you get all those cuts through your center thigh, and then the teardrop cuts out, and then the inner thigh cuts out and the sartorius comes through. I'm painting a visual picture here of that leg, segmented up into all those different muscle groups, because it is a quad four, four main muscle groups in the thigh. And it looks absolutely amazing on stage and it makes you look a lot bigger than what you actually are.

Christine Envall:

So, when it comes to training, you can train to pick out certain body parts to give the illusion, and it depends what you're trying to achieve. It really depends if you're trying to just look good in clothes when you go out, it depends if you're trying to compete in a particular division and what you should be working on. But genetics is I think, the number one thing which basically underpins everything, and you have to work within what your genetics give you. Because if you're not meant to have a big back because your clavicles are narrower, then you can build a thick back and you can build a really great traps and this, the lower trap, which is what we call the center back. But you're not going to have a really wide ranging set of lats because it's like a kite. You need something to anchor the muscle onto. If your collarbones aren't very wide and where your shoulders is, that's essentially where your V is starting from because the lat starts from the shoulder.

Christine Envall:

So, from the upper part of the shoulder joint, it doesn't start on the outside of the shoulder. So, even if you build your shoulders wider where your lat inserts are still determined by your bone structure, and you can get a really narrow V. So, you're looking a little blank there, Ash, but-

Ash Horton:

I'm just trying to keep up that's all.

Christine Envall:

I think everyone should be assessing how they look. And again, you need that person who has a set of eyes who can independently look at you and critique you. That's often where a coach comes in and advises you on what you need to work on and what you need to develop, and build the perfect program around that.

Ash Horton:

Yeah, for sure. Fascinating stuff. Thank you very much, Christine.

Christine Envall:

Okay. Is there anyone who wants to join the Aussie Muscle Guru Facebook group, search that name, jump in and join. If you have extra questions that you want to ask that we're not covering off on here, please do jump on and we'll give you a quick answer at the time, and then we'll go into way more detail in the actual podcast. But I love answering questions, so please get on and ask.

Ash Horton:

Words of wisdom. If you like what you've heard, recognize that these tips are free. So, show your support by becoming a loyal International Protein customer by jumping online, hunt our product down and hit that buy now button. So once again, like, share and subscribe to our podcasts so we can continue to bring you these episodes from our one and only Aussie Muscle Guru, three times world champion, Christine Envall.