IMPROVING A WEAKER BODY PART

Do you have a weak body part that you’d like to bring up?

In MOST cases, hammering a muscle group with more volume or driving up the frequency at which you train it per week is NOT what you need to be doing to make improvements.

More is not always the answer, it’s actually rarely the answer.

It’s much more about quality of work done in the gym over quantity.

Before even considering adding more sets or training the muscle more often, you should first consider the following and if you can get them in place, I guarantee you that will see some huge strides forwards in progress with that lagging body part of yours!

ACCURACY / EXECUTION:

Be honest with yourself here, are you really being accurate with each rep you perform? Do you have your technique nailed down to a tee? Or are you just moving weight from A to B without much though or application of effort?

RANGE OF MOTION:

Are you using a full range of motion and training the muscle through it’s fully shortened and lengthened ranges? Or are you sacrificing depth for loading and leaving progress on the table? Stretch under load is massive for maximising hypertrophic stimulus.

ECCENTRIC CONTROL:

Are you focusing on using slow controlled eccentrics with a focus on mind muscle connection and contractions? Or are you just chucking weight around like an elastic band with no thought for exposing the target muscle to time under tension?

EXERCISE SELECTION:

Are you choosing movements that suit your biomechanics in your programming? Or are you just picking exercises you think you ‘should’ be doing despite not feeling them on the target muscle group? There are NO ‘must do’ exercises. What works for me might not be the best option for you and vice versa. Pick movements that you enjoy doing, have a solid connection with and can progress!

PROGRESSIVE OVERLOAD / TRAINING INTENSITY:

Provided you have all of the above boxes ticked off, this is what it all comes down to in the pursuit of more tissue. Are you getting stronger with your programmed movements over time by performing more reps or adding more load?

If not, you may need to address the level of effort / intensity you are putting into sets and simply get more aggressive in the pursuit of progress. Nothing ever grew in comfort zones, don’t be afraid to push yourself hard and train with real intent.

#TeamInfluence