Specialisation for Lagging Body Parts: Grow Your Weakest Muscles

Editor’s Note: This post is written by strength and body shape specialist JC. JC is a writer, fitness enthusiast, former athlete, strength training and diet consultant. He has over 10+ years experience in the field of fitness and athletics and he began strength training at the age of 14.

Have you experienced a setback or injury that caused your training to take a back seat for a while? Ever had to lay off of pressing or another particular movement and noticed a significant reduction in muscle size? Perhaps you have been training for a while and notice that certain muscle groups have developed or are developing faster than others.

Everyone is different and genetics play a huge role in how we all develop in terms muscle growth. For instance, my quads and glutes will grow if I just dream about squatting, however my shoulders and calves are a different story. I have to give them some extra attention and effort when planning my training to ensure a proper stimulus.

In today’s article I will cover body part specialization and how you can use it to your advantage when building a well rounded physique. I have been a student of Lyle McDonald‘s work for about 2 years now and what I am presenting today is an assemblage of information I have gathered from his forums about training and in this case, specifically for hypertrophy.

Intermediates and advanced level trainees. This method is not suitable or even necessary for the beginner. Newbies should be doing a simple, full body strength training program to build a solid foundation first. Once they get stronger and have the fundamentals in place, then they can up the volume and switch to an upper/lower split more so focused on hypertrophy. Once they have progressed even further, they can opt to do a specialization cycle when necessary.

Pick two body parts only: When setting up this type of programming you should only pick two body parts to specialize at any given time, no more. Your focus, intensity and volume must go towards the areas you want to improve. All you have to do for the rest of your body is low volume maintenance work. Each cycle will last about 6 weeks in length, then it’s time to back off the volume and work on bringing up another set of muscle groups.

Work the lagging body part first: and your goal is to provide the best growth stimulus possible for the following 6 weeks. You do this by aiming to add more weight to the bar each workout. The goal is to progress as much as humanly possible during this time frame (whilst maintaining great form of course).