Bigger biceps won’t help much if your body’s weakest links are letting you down. Experts reveal the neglected muscles that improve strength, boost power, enhance mobility and help prevent injuryand feeling great
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Small choices you make today become the life you live tomorrow. A good proverb, and one that relates well to our mobility, fitness, and overall health. It’s specifically useful when it comes to how we strength train. Hard work is of course essential, but so to is training your body optimally.
One person’s ego lifting is another’s overlooking of the smaller (or less visible) muscles that make a huge difference to general strength and mobility. With that in mind, we’ve asked a panel of fitness experts to tell us which muscle groups they believe people overlook, how to train them, and why they are much more important than you’d think.
Hip flexors
“If you have weak hip flexors, your adjacent muscles, like your hamstrings and lower back, will compensate, causing strain and backache,” says Barry’s UK trainer, Rhys Harding. Weaker hip flexors also lead to tight hips, which reduces mobility in all areas of life – including walking.
To train the hip flexors, Harding recommends using “lower weight unilateral quad extensions, focusing on the highest extension and slowest tempo. Holding at the top for a few seconds, as this causes the hip flexor to contract for longer.”
Another good exercise for the hip flexors is to start in either a high plank position or on your back, with a small circular resistance band around the toes of your trainers. From this position, alternate bringing your knees to your chest in a slow ‘mountain climber’ like motion. “This will engage your hip flexors as well as your core muscles,” Harding says.
Soleus muscles
Celebrity strength coach Michael Baah says: “This one is personal. I ruptured my patella tendon and, separately, my Achilles. Both times, rebuilding the limb from near zero taught me more about which muscles actually hold a body together than any qualification did.”
The soleus muscles are the deep calf muscles that most people never isolate, “and straight-leg calf raises barely touch them,” he says. Bent-Knee Wall Raises and Soleus Push-Ups are your friends here. Focus on slow controlled movements.
Ankle muscles
Yes, of course you need to train your ankles, they link your leg to the ground. Specifically, Jake Heath Founder and Director, Foot Suite London sees “the flexor hallucis longus and the small intrinsic muscles within the foot often overlooked, even in otherwise excellent physiotherapy programmes,” he says.
The flexor hallucis longus is especially important during high-intensity exercise. “An athlete may look strong and move well initially, but once these smaller muscles fatigue, the arch can lose control, the toes may become less effective at gripping the ground and propulsion becomes less efficient,” Heath says. This quickly leads to compensation from other parts of the body.
Towel scrunches alone are not enough. “Foot training should progress through resisted big-toe flexion, controlled single-leg heel raises with pressure maintained through the big toe, short-foot exercises, single-leg strength work, hopping and reactive multidirectional drills,” Heath says.
Rotator cuffs
“Training the rotator cuff will help prevent common shoulder injuries and pain that often comes with a lack of warm-up or flexibility in the shoulders during training,” Harding says. Before lifting heavy weights, doing shoulder external rotations with a cable machine is always a good idea. “This will ‘oil up’ the shoulders, preparing them for intense workout.” Harding adds that under-prepared rotator cuffs are one of the most common reasons he sees back and shoulder injuries with his clients.
Core
You either train your core as a key part of your regime, or you don’t really train your core at all. But we all ought to be.
For those who do sit-ups or crunches, potentially a plank, there’s more to it. “The core’s primary role is to stabilise the spine and transfer force throughout the body. Like any other muscle group, it benefits from progressive overload and varied training,” says Personal Trainer, Luis Tibbles.
He suggests including weighted cable crunches, Pallof presses and loaded carries into a routine, alongside compound lifts such as squats, deadlifts, and overhead presses, which already place significant demands on the core, “if performed with proper bracing technique” he stresses.
A stronger core not only improves performance in the gym but also enhances posture, balance and injury resilience in daily life. It’s one of those you may not physically see, but will be grateful for having improved strength within.
Which types of exercise should you prioritise?
How we train is arguably just as important as what we train. While isolated movements at high weight-loads are good for building visible gains, really, these are superficially overrated exercises to be doing when it comes to having a balanced, well-maintained body. Do both if you want, sure, but don’t overlook the following…
Unilateral training
You’ll have noticed many of the experts mention unilateral exercise movements. Unilateral training, generally, is overlooked. It might mean you are technically lifting less weight in one movement (and that looks less glamorous) but “they expose strength imbalances, improve balance and coordination, and better reflect how we move in everyday life and sport,” says Ian Northcott, specialist in exercise for adults over 50.
While all-body work is useful for building maximum loads and can be less fatiguing (as well as taking less time), it will be improved by making sure your strength is balanced.
“Single-leg and single-arm exercises deserve far more attention,” Northcott says. Incorporating split squats, step-ups, single-leg deadlifts, single-arm presses, you get the idea. Doing these will have a huge difference on how you move, train, and recover.
Functional movements, not isolated movements
“I would also encourage people to prioritise functional movements over simply isolating muscles,” says James Lewis, Training and Body Conditioning Specialist. Squatting, hinging, pushing, pulling, carrying and rotating all mirror the movements we perform in everyday life.
“Training these patterns doesn’t just improve gym performance, it makes your day-to-day activities easier and helps keep you mobile and independent as you age,” Lewis adds.
