Like a lot of people working in tech, I've had persistent neck and posture issues for years. I'd love to see you expand to cover those, focusing on the many smaller muscles in the neck like SCM/Scalenes/Occipitals/etc.

Another great area to expand is 'click where you have pain' and it would recommend certain stretches, weights, trigger points, etc. There are common pain referral patterns that most people do not know about and I imagine that would be very helpful for people who don't have easy access to physical therapy or even feel they are candidates for it.

After casually mentioning my neck issues to people over the years, I've found so many people open up about persistent pain they have but that they're not addressing because it hasn't reached a bad enough point. I think that's an ideal audience to target with online resources like musclewiki.

For an issue like this, it doesn't work to simply do an exercise that supposedly works the muscle. Even if the muscle is the limiting link in the lift, if your body isn't using it, it won't get stronger. For example, my mid-upper-back was lax because of typical nerd posture. Even though it limited my squat, years of squatting didn't force those muscles to do anything. I just had a really weak squat that relied on other muscles compensating. Then one day I ran across a suggestion to do bat wings and hold at the top for 20-30 seconds, and I became close friends with some muscles in my back that I barely knew existed.

A web site showing you how to discover each muscle or muscle group in your body (bat wings for deep mid-back, glute bridge for glutes, etc.) would be AMAZING, and I bet people would get referred there all the time from places like r/Fitness where people go for advice.

For me personally, one of those postural imbalances turned into an injury (shoulder), and I found doing exercises that targeted a very specific muscle (infraspinatus) really helped in my recovery.

I think everyone could benefit from spending some time exploring their body by targeting muscles that may be easy to ignore in larger compound movements, if only for bringing awareness to them (which should benefit the main movements in the long run by making them more efficient).

Yoga definitely is great and I practice asana 5x per week. I will say that my injury came up during an asana class, though, and it wasn't until I really targeted my weak scapular muscle groups that it got better.

Something like that would seem useful to a lot of lower-mid weightlifters who don't have a real lifting coach.

I couldn't get back on the bike without knee pain for months. Now I am totally out of shape. I could go to PT, as I was given a referral, but it's expensive, and I prefer self-help resources.

There's a lot of benefit to finding someone that teaches you both what to do and how to do it, and is also better informed and more competent than most fitness trainers. The good ones will also walk you through a basic physiology course so you can understand the why of it all (why did I become injured, why does this prevent or reduce the risk of a future injury).

This is a big part of why I have avoided it thus far... I have a hard enough time getting a doctor that I feel like cares about my issues (rather than just getting me out the door as quick as possible) enough to listen and understand. I don't want to spend a bunch of time and money trialing different therapists. I wish there was a resource for this online.

I agree though, if I plan to continue the type of cycling I did last year, it's probably going to become a necessity.

It is super possible to have imbalances even with regular training. Muscles that are weak will not be engaged during compound lifts unless specifically made to engage, either through isolation exercises, or through awareness. A personal trainer or physical therapist can help with either path.

I did some things on-and-off for posture (mostly rear delts), but what I did consistently, and think helped the most, was heavy (for me) deadlifts.

I'm curious: how many pullups can you do? I ask because they take a lot of lat strength, and your lats do a lot of work holding up your back.

I didn't use a coach, but did study a lot of videos on deadlift form and also videoed myself to check I was doing it properly.

I've heard deadlifts are one of the best exercises, I can't wait to get back to PT and get a personal trainer so I can do those correctly. I doubt I've done enough with lats.

You're right, though, that deadlifts (performed correctly and safely!) are pretty amazing for your back in general.

If you've got something up high to tie a band to, that's something.

(Disclaimer I'm not an expert). I think a common bad posture in-front of the computer is the one that rotates your shoulders forward which overloads some muscles in the chest, which are antagonist of the middle traps, middle traps get weak, and your back falls forwards, face pull is great exercise to make them stronger. Another common one for those sitting long hours, is the tightness of the psoas, which can cause hip problems, and knee problems if you try to run without stretching, I think the antagonist is the buttocks, that gets weak from sitting and you would need to exercise to correct the hip problems.

Don't trust my comments, I just wanted to put two examples of mechanism that I learned, but I don't have enough knowledge to explain it properly or be 100% sure this is correct, always consult with a pro.

[1] https://www.physio-pedia.com/File:Trapezius_animation.gif

Inversion is the key to decompressing the spine/hips/neck and you only need to do it a few times a week for ~10min each time. I go to a local park and hang upside down from a sturdy pull-up bar for 2-4min three times.

You could also do it at home with a pull-up bar, or get even fancier and buy an inversion table for ~$200.

I know I'm sounding like an infomercial here, but it really works.

For me, physical therapy did nothing, and I suspect my issue was fundamental in that my musculoskeletal system was underdeveloped and working out was the only way to fix it.

That guidance wasn't needed, really. It's refreshingly free of trendy design, and straightforward to use. And other things, like the ads not being in the way of the content. I'm sure you've got a list you're working on, but what's there looks great.

One minor suggestion...there are some paths that lead you to a "muscle not found" page, like this: https://musclewiki.com/Barbell/Female/Calves/. Some way of preventing landing there in the first place would probably be more intuitive. Like a popped hint when you hover over a calf if Female/Barbell is pre-selected. Or some semi-transparent overlay to suggest Calves can't be selected, etc.

And not that all responses aren’t well intended, but they can sometimes come across a bit tough, especially if someone wasn’t looking for feedback.

Edit: on the parts that are not a muscle group (e.g. face, "love-handles", feer/hands, 'throat', etc.) maybe paint them grey so they are visibly distinguishable from the 'muscle groups'. I was veri curious to see if the 'love-handles' region has any use apart storing fat.

That criticism wasn't needed

One suggestion: A lot of folks don't go to gym, lack access to exercise equipment etc. It might be worthwhile to have a section on how to work out the specific muscles without any equipment and in minimal space using only bodyweight/calisthenics; eg. Yoga stretches, deep squats, pushups(both Normal and Hindu) etc.

You can see how there is still equipment required.

I'm recovering from a hand injury and doing grip exercises to strengthen the forearm muscles responsible for finger movement - when I clicked forearm it listed wrist exercises rather than grip strength. Maybe clicking the hands can lead to grip strength exercises?

Since the purpose seems for workouts rather than rehab work, I wanted to check if it had rotator cuff exercises similar to this:

https://fdlc.com.au/sites/default/files/imce/Strengthening%2...

But the shoulder blades aren't clickable.

> There is far more to the trapezius muscle than meets the eye. The traps are not just the muscle that sits on top of your shoulders.

> Il y a bien plus dans le muscle trapèze qu'il n'y paraît. Les pièges ne sont pas seulement le muscle qui repose sur vos épaules.

You could also use more medical terms all the time since Google autotrad seems to handle them better

Could the best be asking the community for translation proofing ?

One thing to note - the exercises shown for the forearms only target the flexors, and none of them cover the extensors, which must be worked out if you are to have healthy forearms and hands. A common problem if you only work the flexors is golfer's elbow, which I am just recovering from now. for the sake of lifters, climbers, golfers, pitchers, and plenty of others, please include these.

Perhaps I need to bring one of those to the first page.

PS: Do you know where I can download more RAM for my computer? It's been a bit laggy recently.

Just a quick bug report: At https://musclewiki.com/Exercises/Male/Traps_middle/ when you want to go next page it directs you https://musclewiki.com/Exercises/Male/Traps%20(mid-back)/2 which causes 404. It should direct to https://musclewiki.com/Exercises/Male/Traps_middle/2 . I assume root cause of this is that you are getting next page link from title.

Thanks atoll. Hope you are well <3

How do you envision this working, with the current UI/UX?

When I was daydreaming, I thought of demonstrating the exercises with human-like animated figures rather than videos of real people. I had the impression that the well-built, athlete-type people who often appear in exercise videos can discourage beginners and people with body-image issues. I may have been wrong, though. In any case, your videos look good to me now.

If you're looking to move away from videos entirely, it would be really cool to see the models in 3D, and then when you select a muscle, the 3D figure animates and shows you the exercises. Then the videos could be supplemental. That would be so neat lol.

Out of curiosity, are the people demonstrating friends of yours? It seems like compiling all of that footage would have taken quite some time.

https://www.instagram.com/wilfredofitness/

https://www.instagram.com/krickithodges/

You are right though, it is very time consuming process and sometimes we get it wrong and have to go back and re-film. I have a pretty big backlog to edit and upload. It's a slow going process. Seeing this on HN has motivated me to do some extra work this weekend.

Error 521 Ray ID: 614ef97bce51190c • 2021-01-21 06:28:20 UTC Web server is down

It'd be a useful read for beginners.

Edit: Your site is awesome, I'm going to start using it.

But my main comment is why not turn it in to an actual wiki? Maybe even put it on github and let people submit pull requests. With a submitter agreement you’d still be free to make an app and profit, but it might help remove you as the bottleneck

Humble suggestion: if you have "slots" where you know you have videos to upload, I wonder if you could say as much rather than show the 404 page. That way, you can simply click through to other "equipment levels" without breaking the sequence.

I've read a handful of workout plans, considered hiring personal trainers, and sifted through YouTube videos without ever being able to establish a good workout routine. This is EXACTLY what I needed.

Thanks for creating this.

One small request: a persistent dark mode toggle would be a nice addition.

Look how many different figures/calculations are banded around for questions like "how many calories do I burn running X distance or Y minutes" for instance.

Only category missing is yoga.

https://random.training/ (from @bcrypt!)

This was the first website I have used for a while that I didn't need to adjust my uMatrix to get full functionality.

Do you have a way of donating? I feel bad that ads are being blocked.

Seems to be a major driver for small-scale innovation in computing-related fields.

well done! back to benches

The only tools i see there is Calorie / Macro / One Rep Max calculators along with exercise guides. Did you click on an ad?

Also here is a quick fasting guide: "Eat less." You can word it however you want, you can spread those two words out on a 6 months program and fill-in with a bunch of newage-bullshit but it IS that simple.