Improving Weak Points

Weak points - One thing I am always asked about is the improvement of weak points. Most of us have them! A stubborn body part that just won't grow like the rest. So how should we address these with our training? Well perhaps the most obvious thing to do is to train it more, more volume, more frequency...but the first thing you should look at is the quality of the training you already apply to it. By this I mean the mind muscle connection. Do you feel the muscle working and have that element of soreness the following day? If not then hitting it twice a week instead of once will just mean that you are training it ineffectively and basically wasting your time twice a week instead of once!

So the first thing to look at is the mind muscle connection. When a muscle contracts, it does so in response to signals sent from the CNS, the ability to control those signals is imperative to the quality of the contraction. You need to ensure that you can feel the target muscle working through every phase of the rep, throughout the whole contraction, the squeeze in the contracted state and feel it stretch through the negative portion of the rep. Without that mind muscle connection the muscle will not grow. The connection can be improved with practice in the gym and should be a something that anyone starting out focuses heavily on in their training. It can also be improved in or outside the gym simply by contracting and squeezing target muscles.

If you are feeling the muscle working and do have an element of muscle soreness after your workout, then the next thing to try is increasing volume AND frequency. If you are already training a muscle once a week, chances are you are already hitting it with quite high volume on that day. Taking chest for example, if you are already hitting 16 sets on your chest workout, throwing in another exercise or two and increasing your time in the gym is unlikely to have the desired effect. If you can't train the muscle to failure in 16-20 sets then look at the intensity of your training! Say you throw in another pressing movement midway through, increasing from 16 sets to 20 sets, are the sets of that new pressing movement going to be as effective as they would be at the start of the workout? What about the effectiveness of the following exercises too, considering they are now being performed after say 12 sets rather than 8? The alternative is to increase the volume by taking advantage of another variable at the same time - training frequency.

So, add a second chest workout later in the week, perhaps with a slightly different focus. You could then even decrease the volume of the first workout, say from 16 sets to 12 as applying another 12 sets later in the week now gives you a total volume for the week of 24 sets! Plus, as you are only hitting 12 sets in each workout you can do so with more intensity than you could for the original workout of 16 sets.

Another big advantage thrown in here is that you are now giving the muscle two chances to grow each week! Providing your nutrition and rest is on point, following a workout muscle protein synthesis can be elevated so it out-weighs protein degradation for around 48 hours. That still leaves 5 days during the week where the muscle is not growing! Adding a second workout can elevate that total growth time from around 48 hours to around 96 hours each week.