Train These 3 Muscle Groups to Improve Weak Spots
When it comes to effective weightlifting, you want to focus on major muscle groups to get big and burly. However, if you injure yourself and can’t hit the gym, that’s impossible. Having muscular imbalances — or weak spots — can lead to this. So, training weak points in your physique allows you to accomplish your goals without fighting through an injury or exacerbating weak spots. MUTANT is here to give you the ultimate muscle group workout that targets the three main muscle groups requiring specialization training since they’re likely to contain strength imbalances.
By bringing up your weak points, there will be NOTHING weak about your strength and body!
Major Muscle Groups to Train to Fix Weak Spots
Muscle Groups in Arms — Shoulders & Triceps
The bane of many people’s existence, deltoids are the muscle group in the back that gets tweaked during the random bench press rep or loading too much onto a military press. Luckily, there are many ways to prevent shoulder injuries by ensuring the shoulder and upper back muscles are engaged. Externally rotating the rotator cuff with a dumbbell is one way to practice shoulder flexibility. Meanwhile, doing super-slow reps to warm up any shoulder-centric movement, complete with core, back, and shoulder engagement, leads to better stability.
Pounding your shoulders with hundreds of reps will only break them down. Focusing on the quality of each rep is more critical than slinging the weight around. Specific exercises will help with this, as seen in the weak spot workout below.
Due to genetics or undertraining, the triceps can be one of the weakest points in the body, but they’re vital to a solid bench press or shoulder lift. Despite this, the triceps can improve rather quickly. Opposite to the shoulders, volume IS what you want if you need to develop your triceps. They’re built to be worked a ton, so that’s precisely what you’ll do in the weak spot specialization workout below. But before that, there’s a lower body muscle group that you’ll want to zone in on as well.
Muscle Groups for Deadlifts — Glutes
Most weightlifters – bodybuilders, strength athletes, or others – are anterior-dominant. That means the front-facing muscles – chest, quads, biceps – are usually strong, while the posterior remains undertrained.
Squats and leg extensions (heck, even leg curls) are usually the stars of any leg workout. But what about the butt? By far one of the most essential muscle groups, glutes are pivotal for body stability, hamstring health, and overall athleticism. Thankfully, this is the muscle group for deadlifts to cure. They engage the glutes at the top of the lift, creating that core contraction. Having your body work as a single unit is the only way you avoid weak spots and injuries, so getting complex exercises into your training is the key.
The Weak Spot Muscle Groups Workout
The first two exercises focus on glute engagement. Each rep should have a one-second pause at the top, squeezing the glute muscles with all of your might. Exercises three and four are for your shoulders. Place a foam roller under your armpit for the side-lying external rotations. Use a light dumbbell (5-10 pounds/2.27-4.54 kilograms) and lift your arm from parallel to the floor to perpendicular. These reps need to be slow and controlled. You aren’t gaining pure strength here but instead stability. With reverse flies, you can increase the weight consistently, but don’t go too heavy; you’re here to create stable, engaged deltoids so they can offer the support they’re supposed to give.
The last two exercises are triceps-centric. The reps get up there, completely fatiguing the triceps muscles and allowing them to build back better. For dips, you can add weight via a weight belt, but bodyweight dips can do the trick (seeing as you’re going to fail on the set anyway). Armed with this weak spot specialization routine, you’ll have ZERO weak spots in no time!
Article by Terry Ramos
