• Question: What is the hardest muscle in your body to work out?

    Asked by 478sprg52 to Andrew, Dan, Emilia, Helen, Katy, LauraAnne, Stephanie on 7 Nov 2016.
    • Photo: Dan Gordon

      Dan Gordon answered on 7 Nov 2016:

      Difficult question, probably the extraocular muscles, that is muscles of the eye, haha. Seriously though a muscle that is quite hard to train is the triceps just because the bicep tends to dominate almost all of these actions and most people do not think how to train this.

    • Photo: Emilia McAllister-Jepps

      Emilia McAllister-Jepps answered on 8 Nov 2016:

      Hi, thanks for your question!

      In kayaking we spend a lot of time focusing on core strength and stability. This refers to the muscles that we use to support ourselves in everyday movement. The key muscle group in this type of training are the abdominals. Whilst most people would think automatically of a six pack, it is actually the trans-abdominal muscles that we are more concerned about.

      Your trans-abs and pelvic floor are key to supporting your pelvis and lower spine, and significantly contribute to good posture whilst standing and seated. However, although you would think we use these muscles everyday, many people have very weak trans abs and pelvic floor.

      Because you have to consciously work on these, and they are not visible muscles it is hard to see that you are working and training them.

    • Photo: LauraAnne Furlong

      LauraAnne Furlong answered on 9 Nov 2016:

      hmm it’s probably the smaller muscles in your body, like the ones in your eyes, or the ones you don’t think about or have conscious control over (that your brain controls). Any muscle can be hard to work out if any point along the pathway between your brain and your muscle gets damaged, so it can be very difficult for some clinical patients to work out their arm or leg muscles for example.

    • Photo: Katy Griggs

      Katy Griggs answered on 10 Nov 2016:

      Difficult question. In addition to the answers below, it also depends on if you have control over all your muscles. For instance, individuals with a spinal cord injury are paralysed below their injury level so are unable to move their lower limbs as the neural pathways to these muscles are disrupted. This results in muscular atrophy ( muscle wastage) of the lower limbs. So for these individuals the muscles of the lower limbs would be the most difficult to train. Though this can be done by electrical stimulation training, but that’s another topic all together!

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