As you continue to work out and your muscles begin to develop, one thing you’ll start to think about is how to make sure you’re experiencing consistent muscle growth in all parts of your body. This is important for building a good physique, because you don’t want certain muscles becoming disproportionately larger than others.
When trying to achieve a balanced physique, there are a few specific muscle groups that are overwhelmingly responsible for this. Even if you’re not super shredded or muscular, sufficiently developing these muscle groups can still make you appear very strong and attractive.
That being said, if these areas are lagging in comparison to the rest of your body, it can also be quite noticeable. To avoid this, it’s crucial that you devote special attention towards these muscle groups, or at the least ensure you’re training them as much as you do other muscle groups.
Chest
Your chest is very important if you want to look big and muscular. Especially if you’re a naturally thin and lanky person, broadening your chest can really help add thickness and width to your upper body.
Additionally, the effects of building out your chest are visible even when you have clothing on. Your shirt might hide the size of your arms, but it can’t hide a bigger frame and a chest that puffs out more. Therefore, since you’re probably not spending most of your time walking around shirtless, having a well-developed chest is an easy way to give off a robust and powerful appearance, even when people can’t directly see your body.
Shoulders
When it comes to adding width to your frame, the shoulders are another essential muscle group. In my opinion, it’s an area that many people don’t address as much as they should.
Having rounded shoulders is a crucial part of a sturdy, athletic build. Even if someone has thick arms and a broad chest, if their shoulders are sloped and don’t have any shape, it can really take away from that person’s overall physique.
In particular, many people often have underdeveloped side and rear delts. Side delts are important for adding width, and rear delts are necessary to fully sculpt and round out the shoulder. The front delt isn’t typically as much of an issue, since it’s activated in many other pushing exercises, but in general, it’s important that you have dedicated exercises for training all parts of the shoulder in order to maximize their growth.
Forearms
The forearms are definitely an area that is often forgotten about. In reality, these are muscles that need to be trained just like the biceps and triceps. If you’re training those other arm muscles, but ignoring your forearms, there’ll eventually be a noticeable size imbalance if your forearms don’t develop, but your biceps and triceps continue to get bigger.
On top of just aesthetics, working out your forearms also provides practical benefits. If your forearms have ever gotten sore during a bicep exercise or any exercise that involves hanging, you’ll know that they serve a very functional purpose. Forearm strength can actually be the limiting factor in some cases, making you give out on an exercise before you can fully exert the muscles you’re supposed to be targeting. Therefore, training your forearms is necessary so they can better support you during other exercises.
Legs
Lastly, people tend to focus a lot on developing their upper body, but you should be placing just as much attention on your lower body as well. This includes all the major muscle groups in the leg, like the quads, hamstrings, calves, and even glutes.
As tiring and painful as leg day can be, it’s a crucial part of your routine if you want your physique to be consistent from head to toe and avoid having “chicken legs”. If your upper body is much larger than your legs, you’ll end up looking very top-heavy and unbalanced.
Leg muscles may also require more effort to develop than other muscles, which means you have to be especially diligent about working them out so they can at least keep up with the growth of your upper body.
A Friendly Reminder
In this post, I’ve emphasized certain muscle groups to target because while all muscles are important, these are the ones that are going to have more of an impact on your overall physique, especially if you’re new to working out. This might sound a bit crazy, but the muscles you should be focusing on the most are actually not your biceps.
It’s also a reminder to not neglect these muscles, because the sad reality is that many of them are often overlooked. For example, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve spoken to people who say they don’t specifically target shoulders in their training. It frustrates me because they have well-developed muscles elsewhere, but their physiques could be so much more enhanced if they put in the same effort to build up their shoulders.
Hopefully, some of you who are reading this already train these muscle groups and have begun to see noticeable improvements in your physique. For everyone else looking to achieve the same results, it may be time to finally give these muscles the attention they deserve. If you’re wondering what you need to do to develop these muscle groups and when you’ll start to see results, head over to my post How Long Does it Take to Build Muscle Mass?.
