This One Mistake In Your Exercise Routine Costs You -15% Muscle & Strength
This is the last thing that comes to your mind when you picture Arnold Schwarzenegger during his heyday: Weak body parts.
His greek-god like body left competitors in the dust.
A pumped chest, huge arms, and capped shoulders were his trademark body parts.
Unrecognizable to the people outside of the bodybuilding bubble, his body had weaknesses.
"I knew if I exposed only my better body parts—my arms, chest, or deltoids—all I'd get from my peers would be wonderful comments and I'd soon forget about my horrid lower legs"1
But Arnold was not the person to hide them from the public eye, nor did he accept weak parts to stay weak. He kept wearing cutaway pants to make it painfully clear where his body was lagging - in his calves.
His approach was the opposite of what you find in the average committed gym rat.
Favorite body parts trained frequently - with extra sets and exercises.
Weak body parts treated trained infrequently and with less intensity
This often leads to cartoon-like physiques: A v-shaped body on top of matchstick legs.
Not desirable.
It`s frustrating to put in the hours every week, seeing solid results in your favorable muscle groups, but weaker parts being left behind.
You enter the Gym pumped, jumping straight to bench presses.
Fired up by your training partner, you sweat your way through an upper body session.
45 minutes later you run out of gas.
Coming to the end of your session, you devote a few minutes of your time to your lower back, because "it needs to be done."
The problem is that your mind is already on its way to taking a shower, so you crank out 1 set of a few uninspired reps with anything but perfect form.
A busy person like you who signs up for an exercise routine wants to get the best results in the smartest way.
Working on muscles that get bigger and stronger feels great, but you also want a well-rounded physique and not end up as a hunched-over senior person.
Always starting with your "show muscles" will do that, opening the doors for imbalances.
Look, I have been making the exact "mistake" for many years: push and pull is my current routine.
On push days, I would always train my chest before my shoulders.
I would always move from big to small muscles.
My shoulders and triceps: are underdeveloped.
Yes, my triceps do get stimulation from any pressing movement, and so do my shoulders, but not enough.
Can you relate to that: Let`s say triceps and shoulders are your weak body parts.
You have already spent 45 minutes in the Gym and you feel like finishing the session when your buddy reminds you that "we haven`t hit shoulders yet".
Chances are that your efforts will be half-assed.
Pushing weak body parts toward the end is bad for a couple of reasons:
You will be tempted to skip those exercises because you don`t feel good doing them
Not giving them the time they deserve can cause muscular asymmetry - potential physical pain in the future
Your weaker body parts do not get the stimulation needed, when it matters: In the beginning of your workout, when you are fresh.
And that means less muscular development, strength, and testosterone for you.
But there is a way out.
Consider for example one study, where two groups were compared:
Training large muscle groups (e.g. Chest) first and then smaller (e.g. Triceps)
The reverse order, small muscle groups first and then larger
The exercises and order involved looked like this:
1) LG-SM Group (Large Muscle Group to Small Muscle Group):
Bench Press (BP)
Lat Pull-Down (LPD)
Triceps Extension (TE)
Biceps Curl (BC)
SM-LG Group (Small Muscle Group to Large Muscle Group):
Biceps Curl (BC)
Triceps Extension (TE)
Lat Pull-Down (LPD)
Bench Press (BP)
In another study, Schoenfeld, B. J., et al. (2018) studied the mind-muscle connection.
They found that Muscle activation increased by 18-20% when underdeveloped muscles were trained at the start of the workout.
This makes sense because we have better energy at the beginning of the workout, which leads to better focus, and technique and in turn also to muscle activation and strength.
Since I began switching the order of my workout, I noticed my triceps and shoulders adding size.
Not sure which body parts are lagging?
2 things can help:
Next time you start your exercise routine, become aware of which exercises you are tempted to push towards the end - a good sign that you should do THESE exercises first
Check your posture and level of pain or discomfort - muscle asymmetries are a good sign you should change priorities, including the order of exercises.
P.S.: A qualified assessment of your current functional movement capacity will rule out the guesswork.
Knowing what your physical weaknesses are and considering them when building a workout plan - a proven formula to build more muscle, gain strength, and boost your testosterone.
This is one part of the onboarding program for every client I help.
https://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/arnold-schwarzenegger-4-steps-to-turn-weaknesses-into-strengths.html#:~:text=As%20%22The%20Oak%22%20readily%20admits,bring%20up%20his%20lower%20body.