Balanced Muscle Groups?
 

Recently I read somewhere that my knee pain could be caused by an imbalance in my muscles. It was suggested that I exercise my hamstrings more and lay off the quads for a bit. Well it worked like a charm. Does anyone know if there is a way to determine balance for other parts of the body? For instance if I am able to bench say 220 max then I should be able to do X amount of weight or percentage of weight on a shoulder exercise or a back exercise. This making any sense? :help:

It does make sense. For the bench press, the opposite might be seated rows, or anything that requires a pulling motion. Hamstring curls might be the opposite of squats but that's a guess.

Most weightlifters work the mirror muscles too much.

+1000

I hate when people find out that I'm an avid weightlifter because the first thing they ask is "what do you bench?" They simply cannot believe that I don't bench OR do bicep curls. I lift weights to make my life better, not to flex for the girls that I'm too old to impress anyway.

Bench pressing? Sheesh. I'll start benching when someone explains to me why a man needs large, round, full breasts.

You class those people as weightlifters? :lol:

I know what you mean when you talk about people asking how much you bench. People have such a warped view of weightlifting / bodybuilding. They usually stop asking questions when i talk about how my deadlifts are comming along. :D

I'm guilty of it too. In my younger days I was a competitive powerlifter. We told ourselves the mirrors were for maintaining good form in the lifts. I could bench 300+ but barely row my own body weight. Probably because you can't see your own back. ;-)

If I could only do 1 exercise, that would be it. Nothing else strengthens your entire body as well.

The deadlift is the king of all pulling movements for sure, but if that was the only one you could do, you would be seriously deficient in your pushing capacity.

The power-clean and press 'combo' would the best single exercise to do. Some would argue that this is actually two exercises.....

This is my opinion.

Yeah, I would argue that it's two exercises done at the same time. Actually, I rarely deadlift at all since I started kettlebelling. Clean& press + swings/snatch 3x a week.

try this site. that's the one that showed me that if you can bench 220 you should be able to deadlift or squat about 330.