How can one strengthen stabilizer muscles? Here are some great tips, methods and a sample workout that emphasize the importance and benefit of these muscles. Everyone can benefit from this training. Find out more.
If you have been involved in bodybuilding for a while, you've probably heard fellow lifters discussing stabilizer muscles. There are many things out there that might sound complicated, but you're lucky, this isn't one of them.

Much like how a foundation stabilizes a house, your stabilizer muscles help to keep you balanced and upright when moving. Your stabilizer muscles are not directly involved in the lifting of the weight, but help keep your body steady, through isometric muscle contractions.

Now if you think about it, these muscles sound pretty important. If you didn't have stabilizer muscles your knees would buckle during squats and your elbows during the bench press. The good thing is that if you've been doing many full-range-of-motion, free-weight movements you've already been training them.

Free-weight movements, which includes any exercise done with a barbell, dumbbell or cable (I consider cables redirected dumbbells, as you are not lifting the weight in a guided path) require you to balance the weights yourself, as you are not lifting the weight in a pre-set path, as with machines.

The Methods:


1. Free Weights:


When doing free weight movements, your stabilizer muscles contract in order to keep your body steady. Since stabilizer muscles are important to free-weight movements, it makes sense to train those using free weights.


Exercises that recruit a great number of muscles are better for strengthening your stabilizer muscles. For example, during the squat your body needs to stabilize itself more than if you were performing curls. Some of the best exercises include: Bench Press, Squat, Deadlift, Pull-ups, Rows, and Shoulder Press.

2. Unilateral Exercises:


Adding in single arm/leg exercises to your program will not only help to increase the strength of your stabilizer muscles, but will help significantly correct any muscular imbalances in your physique. These exercises will be done using dumbbells or cables. E.g. the barbell bench press is a great exercise for strengthening/building your chest, shoulders, and triceps but, dumbbell benching is better for shoulder stability.


Some of the best exercises include: Dumbbell Bench Press/1-Arm Dumbbell Bench Press, Dumbbell Rows/1-Arm Dumbbell Row, Single-Leg Squats, Lunges, Step-Ups, Dumbbell Curls, and Dumbbell Triceps Extensions.