Anybody who has been a gym rat for years will tell you that lagging muscles are common and normal. However, there are ways to make sure that these body parts are getting the message.  

Yo, Congrats!!

You’ve been making the effort to workout 3-5x each week, cleaning up your diet, and fixing your sleep schedule for optimal recovery. You can see and feel changes in your mind and body. You are proud of the muscle mass that you have earned. Yet, you’ve also noticed while some parts are responding well to your training, others remain the same.

For whatever reason, there’s miscommunication between your efforts and expected growth. Listen, anybody who has been a gym rat for years will tell you that lagging muscles are common and normal. Due to physiological conditions, genetics, and a whole set of other factors, certain body parts do not react in the same manner as the rest of the body and may need special treatment to illicit the changes required for a strong, symmetrical physique.

In this article, I will provide 3 means to trigger growth in your lagging muscles.

1) Change Your Form

Unless you have been part of a sports team, I would bet that you taught yourself to exercise. Thanks to the internet, it became easier to watch videos that explicitly explain how to execute everything from a bench press to a muscle-up.

Often though there is a huge discrepancy between watching an exercise demo and executing said exercise, particularly for novice lifters. Even if you understand the bare basics of the move, not knowing other aspects of the exercise can you limit your potential at best or lead to injury at worst. Another problem (going back to the internet) is that there are numerous fitness coaches and “experts” that provide what seems to be contradictory advice. Check out this example for executing hanging leg raises:

So how can you make changes to your form that insures proper execution on each rep? Seek a flesh and blood coach/trainer.

A coach/trainer that you can completely interact with will be able to see the entirety of your exercise technique and provide the information for making the appropriate tweaks. The experienced teacher knows not only the physiology of the human body but what changes in movement lead to best results.

You can find coaches and trainers through online services and if you are working out at a public/private gym, the employees should be able to point you out coaches that they employ/contract. This is the most expensive of the three approaches, but it arguably provides the best returns.

If you cannot afford a coach, other options is to reach out to friends and workout buddies who have competed in sports and have experience working with a trainer/ physical therapist. You may still utilize online coaching through videos with the caveat that you focus on the commonalities in exercise execution among different personalities.

2) Pick Better Exercises

Even with improvements in your exercise form, you still are not noticing improvements. Another culprit may be the exercise itself. Let’s be clear about two things:

1) There is no perfect universal exercise.
2) People naturally respond differently to the same exercises.

In regards to the second point, consider the barbell bench press. While you can find individuals that developed their chest with this one exercise, you can also find those than see minimal growth in their pecs regardless of how much they bench. Speaking personally, I opt for the dumbbell bench press for adding size and definition to my chest (but still use the barbell bench for improving overall upper body strength).

For example, let’s say that you want to bring up your shoulders. Normally, dumbbell shoulder press has been your go-to exercise, despite limited growth. The next time you train, substitute it with the Scott Press and stick with this exercise for 4-6 weeks. Note how your body responded to the new exercise and if you notice some improvement, keep it. Even if you are following an exercise regimen that advocates for the shoulder press, use the Scott Press.

It is important that during this trial and error period that you do not make any changes to the rest of your workout and diet. Too many variables can complicate your final results.

3) Just Do More

Sometimes, more is better. Even with improved form and choosing better exercises, the lagging muscle won’t improve unless you train it for more frequently. That means you need to train the muscle with more reps and sets in your workout.

But before you blast your weaker muscles into oblivion, understand that there are several strategic ways to elicit growth via higher volume. Collectively, they are known as muscle specialization.

One type of specialization is to perform a mini-workout (8-15 minutes) following your main workout. It consists of 2-4 exercises that specifically target the lagging muscle. Stick with high reps (12-15) for 1-2 sets per exercise. The key is to focus on squeezing the muscle on every repetition.

For muscles that require minimal recovery time, like the calves, you can perform the mini-workout almost every day. For everything else, twice a week (on the day you normal train the target muscle and at least 72 hours afterwards) is sufficient.

Another specialization style is the century challenge in which you pick one exercise and a weight that you can easily crank out 15-20 reps. Perform 100 repetitions with good form and rest whenever you need to. However, strive to be done within 8-10 minutes. Since this specialization type is a bit more taxing, you should only employ it once per week and increase the weight when you can perform all one hundred reps in less than 8 minutes.

A third type involves completely shifting the structure of your program in which entire workout days are dedicated to the lagging muscle(s). This style however should be reserved for improving regions of the body instead of one muscle. So for example, let’s say that you want to radically improve your legs (i.e. quadriceps and hamstrings). To accomplish your goal, you will have two separate leg workouts per week (72 hour gap between each one) composed of different exercises that target the same muscles. At the same time, have 2-3 days dedicated to the other muscles. These workouts are to be performed for maintenance purposes; your energy and effort should be primarily dedicated to your leg training.

Taking it a step further, you can train the lagging regions for every workout, meaning that you would train legs and nothing but legs. This is by far the quickest way to produce recognizable growth but is also the easiest manner to be injured. Push, but pace yourself and keep an eye out for signs of chronic fatigue. Also, whereas you can stick with the first two specialization techniques for months at a time, I recommend that go no more than 4-6 weeks with this technique

Thank you for reading this article and visiting our website. If there are any other topics related to training, nutrition, and supplementation let us know in the comments.