What muscles serve as stabilizers?
muscles that show an early onset of activation in response to perturbation via either a feed-forward or feedback control mechanism and contribute to joint stiffness through co-contraction.
Okay, muscles that stabilize are stabilizer muscles. What muscle groups are those? That is a more difficult query. Numerous studies have been conducted on terms like "lumbar [lower back] stabilizers," "trunk [core] stabilizers," and "knee stabilizers."However, it turns out that these are not particular muscles that only stabilize joints. For instance, the quadriceps and hamstring muscle groups—the large muscle groups on the front and back of the thigh, respectively—are named in this study on knee stabilizers. Are those stabilizers, or are they just legs-moving muscles?
The major movers in one exercise may be the stabilizers in another.
I don't worry too much about machines ignoring "stabilizing" muscles because of this. You may almost certainly target the quad and hamstring muscles that serve as knee stabilizers when you're running and jumping if you perform a range of quad and hamstring workouts.
Or to use a different illustration: Because those muscles work to keep your leg steady when you put weight on it, single-leg exercises like step-ups and lunges are great for working your abductors (muscles in the hip) and adductors (muscles in the inner thigh). However, the adductor and abductor machines, which target those muscles as main movers, can still be used by people who have never done single-leg exercises.
Being stable is about coordination, not just strength
If we revisit studies on knee stabilizers, researchers propose that running and jumping benefit from strengthening those stabilizer muscles. It's not just about how strong those muscles are; it's also about being able to use them when you need to.
Therefore, in addition to doing exercises with free weights, which are great, running, jumping, pivoting, and cutting are all good ways to keep your knees stable. Imagine soccer players bouncing around rope ladders and cones.)
In other words, practice is just as important as strength for joint stability. You will need to train your brain to drive those muscles at the appropriate times and in the appropriate order if you want to be steady and stable while performing certain movements.
Strength and stability are sometimes at odds
So, in the gym, what should you do? You might notice that strong people typically perform multiple exercises at once. They might bench and squat with a barbell, but they might also finish their workouts with leg extensions or a dumbbell bench press. Working out is like a continuum, with strength on one end and stability on the other. Each exercise is on a different end of that continuum.
Take the bench press as an illustration. When performing a barbell bench press, you must stabilize your torso with your legs, create a stable platform for your arms, and move the weight with your arms. Even though you're training your triceps and pecs to be the primary movers, you're also using a lot of stabilizer muscles in your shoulder, core, back, and legs.
If we perform a dumbbell bench press with our backs on a yoga ball, our stabilizer muscles will be more engaged. We wouldn't be able to use nearly as much weight because we would have to work harder to keep everything steady. Stabilizers would receive more training, while main movers would receive less.
A chest press machine would result in the opposite. You only need to do whatever it takes to sit in the chair without falling out there, so you don't have to do much stabilizing. We can "lift" even more weight because our stabilizers are no longer constrained in their capacity to support the triceps and pecs. Naturally, this comes with the caveat that machine labels cannot be compared to barbell or dumbbell weights; There are distinct mechanisms.)
Is it necessary to "train" your stabilizers then?
Here's my take: No matter how you train, you will end up training all of your stabilizer muscles if you train every part of your body. Yes, even if your routine is entirely machine-based. The only requirement is that it be varied.
If you've been doing "functional" exercises that require a lot of stabilization, you probably don't even realize how much you're doing for your stabilizers. In exchange, you might not be putting as much work into each exercise's main movers.
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