Lost In the Triangle

Nobody likes to be ignored.

Not your German Shepherd tied up in the back yard, not your ultra-demanding Saturday night date, and certainly not your iron-hungry muscles.

In order to build a healthy, impressive physique, you must work all your muscles in coordination with each other, not just the ones that you so fruitfully desire. Building your body without working your shoulders, for example, is like building a house without a roof. The job is incomplete.

Yet, there are many muscle groups that, for whatever reason, trainers just refuse to work.

They just lounge there in their dormant state, weak, miserable, and craving a morsel of attention.

Here are perhaps the three of the body parts that men neglect the most and why we opt to neglect them:

ABDOMINALS: This tops the here; nothing can make or break your physical exterior the way your midsection does. Yet, a vast majority of gung-ho muscle blasters have a one-track mind:

BIG.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with thinking ‘big’, but when was the last time you pointed to a jacked-up specimen and said, “Wow, that guy’s abs are huge.”

Unfortunately, too many male trainers are overdosing on machismo. Their primary concerns are focused on bulging biceps, gargantuan shoulders, eye-popping lat muscles, and a breathtaking chest. Perhaps the fact that you so often see women firing away on their midsections – grinding through crunches, scissors, and leg raises – it is perceived as a less-than-manly routine.

Trust me, guys. Without a hardened layer of bricks set above your waistline, your foundation is far from complete.

LEGS: There are three reasons why most of us completely dread doing legs:

Pain, pain, and more pain.

Sitting in a leg press machine must feel a lot like sinking into an electric chair because both drain the life out of you. The proceeding leg extensions are often so excruciating, they can truly bring tears to your eyes.

Then when it’s all over, and you feel like your legs have just gone 12 with Tyson, you have the couple days of recovery to look forward to. That’s when your legs are so sore you need a cane just to get up and down a flight of stairs.

Like your household cleaning day, it’s easy to scratch leg days off your calendar. Nobody actually looks forward to them.

But let’s face it. If you’re built like a gorilla from the waist up, yet look like an ostrich from the waist down, you’re simply going to look as ridiculous as you feel.

FOREARMS: It’s not necessarily an intentional thing when you abandon your forearms. After all, you can get a nice pump in your forearms when you’re working your biceps and your back.

But working your forearms is a lot like flossing your gums. You never really think about them.

But remember, if you’re a serious competitor, your arms consist of more than just your biceps and your triceps. Completing this family of three are your forearms, and there are many exercises – wrist curls and reverse curls – to insure that your guns are locked and loaded within your arsenal of muscles.