Exercise Guides: How To's and Comparisons

You shouldn’t neglect direct rear delt training if your goal is to get stronger, bigger, and rounder delts. The rear delts, also known as the posterior delts, are often underdeveloped, whereas the front delts are often overdeveloped. This muscular imbalance leads to an asymmetrical physique, poor mobility, instability, and increased risk of injury.

If the front delts and chest are overpowering the rear delts, you’re going to end up with what’s known as “forward shoulder,” which puts your shoulder in a suboptimal performance position, especially on pressing movements.

The rear delts are involved in a lot of back movements. Most people would benefit from doing more direct rear delt exercises because bigger muscle groups, such as the lats and traps, take over the movement.

Most fitness enthusiasts fail to grow and strengthen their rear delts because they let their ego take control, use too much weight, and lack a good mind-muscle connection. To target the rear delts, you need to perform very specific exercises with proper form. 

In this article, we will be covering the top 8 exercises you can perform to grow your rear delts, reduce injury risk, and improve your posture!

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While most gym-goers focus on building the muscles they can see (e.g., chest, biceps, quads), they are missing out on several major muscle groups that play an important role in performance and aesthetics, such as the hamstrings. The hamstrings consist of 4 muscles located on the back of the upper legs. Along with the quads, the hamstrings add shape, size, strength, and stability to your legs.

Having underdeveloped and/or weak hamstrings negatively impacts your physique and performance and increases your risk of injury, especially to the knee. Since the hamstrings cross the knee and hip joint, it’s important to do a combination of exercises that involve knee flexion and hip hinging to fully develop the hamstrings.

Using cables is a good idea because you can do a wide variety of exercises with a few attachments. Cables place constant tension on the muscle, providing a new stimulus for muscle growth. In fact, cables are quite effective for all leg muscles.

Since there are countless hamstring exercises you can do with cables, we’ve decided to highlight the top ones so you don’t waste your time on ineffective exercises.

If you’re looking to build and strengthen your hamstrings, you’ve come to the right place! Keep reading to find out what cable hamstrings exercises are worth doing.

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The glutes are one of the largest and strongest muscles in the human body. They play a major role in maintaining an upright posture through hip extension. Whether you’re a guy or a girl, having bigger and stronger glutes is important for aesthetics and performance.

People tend to be quad-dominant, which means their quads and hip flexors are much stronger than their glutes and hamstrings. Being quad-dominant can increase the risk of injury, negatively affect performance, and lead to poor movement patterns.

One of the only ways you can address and prevent this issue is by consistently performing glute exercises. You can do several exercises to build and strengthen your glutes; however, some are better than others.

In this article, we will share with you some of the best glutes exercises that use cables as opposed to free weights or machines. Cables are very effective for hypertrophy because they are incredibly versatile, accessible, and place constant tension on the target muscle.

In fact, the cable machine made it onto our list of the best gym machines for glutes.

If your goal is to build, strengthen, and add more shape to your glutes, keep reading to see which exercises you should consider doing!

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Whenever you pick something up or grab onto something, you engage the forearm muscles. With the forearms being so involved in daily tasks, they get quite a bit of work already. However, in order to make your forearms bigger and stronger, they require progressive overload, like any other muscle.

Although direct forearm training isn’t the most popular topic in the fitness industry, there are several simple, yet effective, exercises you can do to see significant gains in your forearms. And in this article, we are going to cover the best cable exercises you can do for bigger and stronger forearms.

Cables are extremely versatile and place constant tension on the working muscles, making them ideal for hypertrophy training. With a few attachments, you can train all of the actions of the forearms to yield the best results. When most people train the forearms, they typically just do wrist curls, but there’s so much more you can be doing!

Keep reading to find out the best cable forearm exercises!

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The rear delts are a key muscle group that surrounds the shoulders. While most people emphasize training and developing the front and side delts, they often miss out on the rear delt.

Increasing the size and shape of your rear delts will help you achieve rounder and fuller shoulders. Developing the rear delts will give you the 3D appearance that’s often seen in top-level physique competitors.

Although the rear delts are involved in several back exercises, if rear delt growth is your goal, then specifically training the rear delts is necessary.

The problem with most rear delt isolation exercises is that if you use free weights, there are various points during the movement where there’s little to no tension placed on the rear delt. Also, if you go too heavy, the traps take over the movement.

The best way to get around those two issues is to use the cable machine instead of free weights, which is why we recommended it as one of the best gym machines for the back.

But which cable exercises are the most effective for developing your back muscles?

In this article, we are going to cover the top 6 cable rear delt exercises, so you don’t have to waste your time doing ineffective exercises.

Keep reading to find out which exercises made our list!

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The trapezius muscle is divided into three main regions, the upper traps, middle traps, and lower traps.  Since they are visible from the front, most people focus on building the upper traps, which leaves the lower traps undeveloped and overpowered by the lats and upper traps. 

However, the lower traps are an important muscle to target because they add size definition to the middle back. What’s more, the lower traps play an essential role in maintaining shoulder health and good posture.

Various back exercises involve the lower traps, but they can be further emphasized through direct lower trap training. The primary action of the lower trap is scapula depression. There are a few specific exercises that primarily include that action, and it’s not your typical shrug.

In this article, we’ll cover the best exercises you can perform to get stronger and bigger lower traps. Keep reading to learn more!

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When most people think about the best shoulder exercises, they often prioritize movements that work the front (anterior) and side (medial) deltoids. However, focused attention on the posterior (rear) delt is equally important for building strong, well-rounded shoulders.

Strengthening the rear delts will improve your ability to pull your shoulders back, and improve your strength and posture in and out of the gym. You can target your rear delts using cable machines, barbells, resistance bands, or even your own body weight.

In this article, we’ll focus on ways to target the posterior deltoid using only dumbbells for an accessible, convenient way to train this often neglected muscle.

Here is our list of the nine best dumbbell exercises to target your rear delt and help you build broad, strong, and stable shoulders.

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Love it or hate it, leg day is an essential part of any dedicated lifters’ training plan. Your legs have several different muscle groups, an important one being the quadriceps. The quads are located on your thigh’s anterior (front) and are composed of four different muscles, including the vastus lateralis, also known as the outer quadriceps.  

The outer quad is the largest of the quad muscles and also generates the most power out of the four quadricep heads. The outer quad helps extend your knee, absorb impact when running and jumping, and stabilize the thigh, hip, and kneecap. Building your outer quadriceps also creates more muscular, fuller-looking legs that can lift heavier weights in the gym. Here are the seven best exercises for targeting your outer quads.

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While often neglected in favor of the biceps, the triceps are the biggest muscle group in your arms. The tricep has three muscle ‘heads’, which explains their name (tri meaning three and ceps meaning heads). 

The long head tricep is the largest of the three tricep heads. Due to its size and potential for growth,  it is worth giving it some extra attention in the gym. Your long tricep head is located on the inner side of your upper arm, running across the elbow joint to the shoulder joint. Here, we’ll go over the eight best exercises to target your long tricep head and help you achieve stronger, more muscular upper arms.

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If you want to build powerful, strong arms that perform well in the gym, you can’t forget the triceps. The triceps brachii makes up about two-thirds of your upper arm. It is a muscle with three heads – the long head, the lateral head, and the medial head.

The medial head is the smallest and least visible of all the tricep heads but still warrants focused attention.

The medial tricep head plays a vital role in stabilizing the elbow and supporting elbow extension. It is located at the back of the arm just above the elbow.

You can’t isolate the medial head of the tricep entirely, but you can give it extra emphasis by choosing the right exercises.

We’ll go over the seven best exercises to target your medial tricep to build balanced, strong and muscular-looking upper arms.

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Are you looking for the most effective way to build your bicep peak? If so, then you should primarily be focused on increasing the size, density, and strength of the long head of the biceps. The bicep is composed of two heads, the long head, and the short head. The long head is a bigger muscle and forms the bicep peak.

There are numerous bicep exercises, but specific ones target the long head of the biceps more than others. With that said, you cannot isolate the long head or the short head of the biceps, you can only emphasize one more than the other, and it’s all about your exercise selection.

In this article, we’re going to cover the top 8 exercises that target the long head of the bicep. If you start performing the movements listed below, you’ll soon develop an impressive, stage-worthy bicep peak.

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