How do I skip the most recent post in the loop?

I’m new to WordPress an need some help.

Bare bones I have an index page that displays posts in a list. In this index page above this list there is a call to section (new php page) called features.php

features.php contains content on the most recent post, while the list in index.php should contain the remaining content up to a max of 5 posts.

I’m trying to figure out out how to create the loop in the index.php page to exclude the most recent post since the most recent post will be displayed in features.php.

Currently this most recent post is being displayed twice (in list on index.php and in features.php). I hope this makes sense.

The other thought I had was to eliminate the features.php page and code this features content directly in the index.php and use if($post -> ID == $do_not_duplicate )continue; to resolve the duplication of posts.

Which would be the best method to use, and if it is the first how do I do this?

Thanks