Post by Tim Wescott on Jun 4, 2004 16:00:39 GMT -5
Genetic Weaknesses:
By The Jackass
Get over it. Everyone - and I don't care what their level of genetics is - has one. The best thing that you can do is to make the best of a bad situation. For example, let's say that your biceps don't want to come up despite anything that you do. Other than synthol, which I believe is a substance that you inject directly into the muscle to give it temporary artificial size, you really do not have any alternative but to accept reality. Or maybe you don't have to just "deal with it." You are not reading this to hear that sort of message, are you? You could have read that just about anywhere. If there is a weakness, at least try to deal with it. There are reasons certain bodyparts just do not want to grow. There are also methods that might - just might - work for you.
Consider the muscle length. This determines the length of a muscle and that length determines the muscle's ultimate size. There are countless examples of that. Find someone with large muscles and then you'll notice how long the muscles are in addition to that size. When you see someone with large biceps, notice how their muscle flows from the shoulder to the crook of the elbow. Now I want you to find someone with ample size throughout their body who has arms that are not as spectacular. Have them flex their biceps. Examine the huge gap between where the biceps inserts and the elbow joint. Or simply look at people's calves during the summer. Small calves almost always have the highest insertions. Look at someone with mammoth calves. Usually they start at the back of the knee and go all the way down to the ankle. Sometimes, high insertions or long tendons can be spectacular (Shawn Ray's calves, Albert Beckles' biceps and so on and so on ...) but this is usually not the case. But even with high insertions, you can improve on a muscle's development.
Possible Solutions
Do not train it - Indirect Training
You might already be training all the muscles and yet some still refuse to grow. Stop training the nonresponders all together. The thought behind this goes like this: Some muscles seem to grow best when they are not ever directly trained. In addition to the calves, the forearms, neck, upper arms and abdominals also tend to respond well to indirect stimulation. One major reason that a muscle will not grow is because of overtraining.
Use the opposite of Indirect training
Indirect training is just that: Indirect. It is training that centers around muscle groups working in tandem as opposed to focusing on individual muscles. For a beginner and intermediate, indirect training will work just fine. As you reach an advanced stage, you might have muscles that will be almost underdeveloped in comparison to the rest of your body. Some people will say that compound exercises are all that you need. Others say that you need to hit muscles from every possible way. I would say the truth lies somewhere between those beliefs. Compound exercises might not stress the intended muscle enough. In that scenario, "isolation" exercises can be used. When you have built some muscle, then and only then, start dealing with the details. Begin the workouts with exercises for the weak muscle or muscle group and then finish off with your regular routine.
Minor Muscles
If there is a weak bodypart that stands out, there is another way to deal with it. When people come to me with complaints about weak bodyparts - namely arms - I tell them to emphasize the minor muscles. What does that mean in the real world? Increasing the size of your brachialis can increase your arm size up to one inch! And as we all know, adding size to the arms is one of the most frustrating things in all of resistance training. Also consider the gastrocnemius muscle in your calves makes up 60% of its size. Seated calf raises are best for hitting this muscle. Despite what you've been told about doing seated calf raises and what a waste of time that they are, I'd say anything targeting 60% of your calf muscle is a very, very important exercise. And consider working the pectoralis minor - it can add size to your chest. Even though these muscles can add some size to these respective bodyparts, your concern still should be developing your entire physique.
Train it correctly
This advice means just that. You don't have to look like those fake exercise demonstration pictures that you see in books and magazines. No one can be that strict and anal-retentive with the weights that they use in those pictures. You have to love seeing pictures of guys doing 400-lb bench presses with grins on their faces. At the same time, don't throw weight around like you're doing a wild judo throw either. If you do your reps rapidly, make sure that it is your muscles doing so - not momentum.
Something that you are not doing
The human body is weird. It seems to only grow proportionately. You cannot develop large arms unless the upper torso has been developed. That is how the body works. The entire upper body will be limited in its size potential unless you train your legs. The smaller a muscle is the more it is dependent on the further development of larger muscles. In other words: Small chest and shoulders = small triceps. Small back = small biceps. Small legs = undeveloped upper body. Train the larger muscle groups and then go from there. Not training the legs can hold back up to 15% of your upper body's growth.
Possible solutions to a problem
I keep mentioning that these solutions that I'm offering are for advanced bodybuilders. The reason for that is beginners usually are not developed enough to have the slightest clue to what is lagging. An intermediate trainer can possibly be excused for using specialization techniques. But, I recommend these techniques for the advanced crowd.
Pre-Exhaustion
Remember this method? If you don't know what it is, I'll give you a base description of what it is. Imagine the bench press. This exercise as we all know is used for the chest. Visualize the muscles involved and then ask yourself which one is the weak link. I'll just tell you. The triceps is the weak link for most in the bench press. Now what if I told you the triceps did not have to be the weak link but rather a strong point? That's what pre-exhaustion can do. It removes the weak link of the smaller muscles in compound exercises. In the real world, this is what would happen when using pre-exhaustion: You would warm-up with some light sets on the bench press as if you were about to perform a real work set. After thoroughly warming-up, you would go to an exercise such as dumbbell flyes, which targets the pectoral muscles intensely. You would do all-out set of dumbbell flyes to failure. Your chest is temporarily weakened and the smaller shoulder and triceps muscles now have a temporary strength advantage. As soon as you finish the set of dumbbell flyes, you'd go immediately back to the bench press. The weight would already be set and you would begin bench pressing. What is the advantage of this? When the pectoral muscles are temporarily weaker than the shoulders and triceps, the stress on them is now even greater as you are using an exercise that hits them hard. The shoulders and triceps are now the stronger muscles which aid in taking your chest to a higher level of intensity. Remember to lighten the weight on the actual work set of the second exercise when you first use this technique. Your strength levels will not be as great. Take as little rest between the two exercises as possible.
Other pre-exhaustion suggestions:
leg extensions / squat or leg presses
pullover / bent over rows or chins or pull-ups.
pushdowns / dips
curls / pulldowns
Work it more than the other muscles
Do just this. I'm not as dogmatic as "The Doctor" or Montana Axle when it comes to overtraining. I mentioned training a muscle more frequently in a previous paragraph. Don't do this forever. Do it at most six weeks and then check your progress. Do a certain bodypart at the end of every workout for a little while such as one or two exercises for the biceps.
All in all, if something is not responding favorably, rather than get wound up about it, access the situation and then deal with it.
The Jackass
By The Jackass
Get over it. Everyone - and I don't care what their level of genetics is - has one. The best thing that you can do is to make the best of a bad situation. For example, let's say that your biceps don't want to come up despite anything that you do. Other than synthol, which I believe is a substance that you inject directly into the muscle to give it temporary artificial size, you really do not have any alternative but to accept reality. Or maybe you don't have to just "deal with it." You are not reading this to hear that sort of message, are you? You could have read that just about anywhere. If there is a weakness, at least try to deal with it. There are reasons certain bodyparts just do not want to grow. There are also methods that might - just might - work for you.
Consider the muscle length. This determines the length of a muscle and that length determines the muscle's ultimate size. There are countless examples of that. Find someone with large muscles and then you'll notice how long the muscles are in addition to that size. When you see someone with large biceps, notice how their muscle flows from the shoulder to the crook of the elbow. Now I want you to find someone with ample size throughout their body who has arms that are not as spectacular. Have them flex their biceps. Examine the huge gap between where the biceps inserts and the elbow joint. Or simply look at people's calves during the summer. Small calves almost always have the highest insertions. Look at someone with mammoth calves. Usually they start at the back of the knee and go all the way down to the ankle. Sometimes, high insertions or long tendons can be spectacular (Shawn Ray's calves, Albert Beckles' biceps and so on and so on ...) but this is usually not the case. But even with high insertions, you can improve on a muscle's development.
Possible Solutions
Do not train it - Indirect Training
You might already be training all the muscles and yet some still refuse to grow. Stop training the nonresponders all together. The thought behind this goes like this: Some muscles seem to grow best when they are not ever directly trained. In addition to the calves, the forearms, neck, upper arms and abdominals also tend to respond well to indirect stimulation. One major reason that a muscle will not grow is because of overtraining.
Use the opposite of Indirect training
Indirect training is just that: Indirect. It is training that centers around muscle groups working in tandem as opposed to focusing on individual muscles. For a beginner and intermediate, indirect training will work just fine. As you reach an advanced stage, you might have muscles that will be almost underdeveloped in comparison to the rest of your body. Some people will say that compound exercises are all that you need. Others say that you need to hit muscles from every possible way. I would say the truth lies somewhere between those beliefs. Compound exercises might not stress the intended muscle enough. In that scenario, "isolation" exercises can be used. When you have built some muscle, then and only then, start dealing with the details. Begin the workouts with exercises for the weak muscle or muscle group and then finish off with your regular routine.
Minor Muscles
If there is a weak bodypart that stands out, there is another way to deal with it. When people come to me with complaints about weak bodyparts - namely arms - I tell them to emphasize the minor muscles. What does that mean in the real world? Increasing the size of your brachialis can increase your arm size up to one inch! And as we all know, adding size to the arms is one of the most frustrating things in all of resistance training. Also consider the gastrocnemius muscle in your calves makes up 60% of its size. Seated calf raises are best for hitting this muscle. Despite what you've been told about doing seated calf raises and what a waste of time that they are, I'd say anything targeting 60% of your calf muscle is a very, very important exercise. And consider working the pectoralis minor - it can add size to your chest. Even though these muscles can add some size to these respective bodyparts, your concern still should be developing your entire physique.
Train it correctly
This advice means just that. You don't have to look like those fake exercise demonstration pictures that you see in books and magazines. No one can be that strict and anal-retentive with the weights that they use in those pictures. You have to love seeing pictures of guys doing 400-lb bench presses with grins on their faces. At the same time, don't throw weight around like you're doing a wild judo throw either. If you do your reps rapidly, make sure that it is your muscles doing so - not momentum.
Something that you are not doing
The human body is weird. It seems to only grow proportionately. You cannot develop large arms unless the upper torso has been developed. That is how the body works. The entire upper body will be limited in its size potential unless you train your legs. The smaller a muscle is the more it is dependent on the further development of larger muscles. In other words: Small chest and shoulders = small triceps. Small back = small biceps. Small legs = undeveloped upper body. Train the larger muscle groups and then go from there. Not training the legs can hold back up to 15% of your upper body's growth.
Possible solutions to a problem
I keep mentioning that these solutions that I'm offering are for advanced bodybuilders. The reason for that is beginners usually are not developed enough to have the slightest clue to what is lagging. An intermediate trainer can possibly be excused for using specialization techniques. But, I recommend these techniques for the advanced crowd.
Pre-Exhaustion
Remember this method? If you don't know what it is, I'll give you a base description of what it is. Imagine the bench press. This exercise as we all know is used for the chest. Visualize the muscles involved and then ask yourself which one is the weak link. I'll just tell you. The triceps is the weak link for most in the bench press. Now what if I told you the triceps did not have to be the weak link but rather a strong point? That's what pre-exhaustion can do. It removes the weak link of the smaller muscles in compound exercises. In the real world, this is what would happen when using pre-exhaustion: You would warm-up with some light sets on the bench press as if you were about to perform a real work set. After thoroughly warming-up, you would go to an exercise such as dumbbell flyes, which targets the pectoral muscles intensely. You would do all-out set of dumbbell flyes to failure. Your chest is temporarily weakened and the smaller shoulder and triceps muscles now have a temporary strength advantage. As soon as you finish the set of dumbbell flyes, you'd go immediately back to the bench press. The weight would already be set and you would begin bench pressing. What is the advantage of this? When the pectoral muscles are temporarily weaker than the shoulders and triceps, the stress on them is now even greater as you are using an exercise that hits them hard. The shoulders and triceps are now the stronger muscles which aid in taking your chest to a higher level of intensity. Remember to lighten the weight on the actual work set of the second exercise when you first use this technique. Your strength levels will not be as great. Take as little rest between the two exercises as possible.
Other pre-exhaustion suggestions:
leg extensions / squat or leg presses
pullover / bent over rows or chins or pull-ups.
pushdowns / dips
curls / pulldowns
Work it more than the other muscles
Do just this. I'm not as dogmatic as "The Doctor" or Montana Axle when it comes to overtraining. I mentioned training a muscle more frequently in a previous paragraph. Don't do this forever. Do it at most six weeks and then check your progress. Do a certain bodypart at the end of every workout for a little while such as one or two exercises for the biceps.
All in all, if something is not responding favorably, rather than get wound up about it, access the situation and then deal with it.
The Jackass
but then biceps are not a major concern for us figure girls!