Prime movers are the muscles responsible for specific joint movements. Joints with more articulation have more prime mover muscles. Athletes use compound exercises to target multiple muscle groups in complex joints.
A prime mover is the muscle or muscle group that is most responsible for a particular movement of a joint. For some joints, there is only one pair of prime movers, but others may have multiple prime movers, depending on the movement. In fitness, this is an important concept because when performing an exercise, it’s important to know the main muscle of that exercise, because it will be the one doing the most intense training.
Joints that involve rotation tend to have a greater number of prime mover muscles than those with fewer forms of articulation. For example, in the knee, which bends only in one direction, there are two main motors. The quadriceps is the prime mover of knee extension, and the hamstrings are responsible for knee flexion. Exercises whose movement depends primarily on knee flexion will then use one of these two muscle groups as their primary muscle group. Therefore, that muscle group will receive the most benefit from these exercises.
The shoulder joint is an example of a joint that has many more primary motor muscles than the knee, because the shoulder can rotate in many different directions. Depending on the shoulder movement, the prime mover could be the deltoids, latissimus dorsi, pectorals, or teres minor. Also, due to the relative complexity of the shoulder joint, different movements may have the same prime mover. The deltoids, for example, are the primary motor muscles for both shoulder abduction and shoulder flexion.
This has ramifications for weightlifting and fitness because it affects the number of ways an athlete can exercise a specific muscle. If an athlete wants to strengthen the muscles that move the knee, he must focus on only two muscle groups. However, if an athlete wants to improve their shoulder strength, they will need to perform a variety of exercises to individually target each relevant muscle group. For this reason, athletes often use compound exercises to work more complex joints, because these types of exercises can target multiple muscle groups at once.
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