Muscle Guide
Understand the anatomy, function, and best exercises for every major muscle group. Click a muscle to explore exercises, volume guidelines, and training tips.
Click any muscle to explore
Horizontal pressing and shoulder flexion. Trained with bench press, flies, and push variations.
Pulling arms toward body and spinal extension. Rows, pull-ups, and lat pulldowns.
Front, side, and rear deltoids. Overhead presses, lateral raises, and face pulls.
Elbow flexion and supination. Curl variations — barbell, dumbbell, hammer, cable.
Elbow extension. Pushdowns, overhead extensions, skull crushers, and close-grip press.
Knee extension and hip flexion. Squats, leg press, hack squat, and leg extensions.
Knee flexion and hip extension. Romanian deadlifts, leg curls, and nordic curls.
Hip extension and abduction. Hip thrusts, glute bridges, and split squats.
Spinal flexion and core stability. Planks, crunches, leg raises, and cable crunches.
Plantar flexion. Standing and seated calf raises in full range of motion.
Back width and vertical pulling. Pull-ups, pulldowns and straight-arm work.
Back thickness, posture and shoulder-blade control. Rows, face pulls and shrugs.
Shoulder width. Lateral raises on dumbbells, cables and machines.
The back of the shoulder. Rear delt flyes, reverse pec deck and face pulls.
Grip and forearm size. Wrist curls, carries and plate pinches.
Trunk rotation and anti-rotation. Pallof presses and woodchops.
How to use the muscle guide
Each muscle page explains what the muscle does, lists the best exercises by equipment, gives a sensible weekly volume range, and shows which workout splits train it and how often. Start with the muscle you want to improve, pick two or three exercises you can perform well, then add them to a training day in the workout planner.
The same muscle groups power the rest of SplitsWorkout: every exercise in the exercise library lists its primary and secondary muscles, and the planner's coverage chart adds those up across your week so you can spot muscles you are under- or over-training.
Not sure how to spread muscles across the week? Compare the workout splits or let the Split Finder suggest one.