How to properly focus on a specific muscle group?

Author: Timko Ilya - master of the whole project and fitness trainer.
2015-01-24

People often ask me: "Can you suggest a workout focusing on glutes / shoulders / arms, etc.?" Many individuals want to pay special attention to 1-2 body parts. I would even say—almost always. However, few understand how to properly prioritize such focuses in their training.

In this article, I will explain how to do this correctly so that you can adjust different workouts to your needs. As I usually do in my articles, I'll break down all the nuances by points.

Essential

1. It’s pointless to focus on muscles if you're losing weight

The thing is, when losing weight, muscles do not increase in size. At best, they maintain their size. The only goal of focusing on a muscle is to increase its volume.

In other words, if you are losing weight and you focus on your glutes, your glute muscles will not grow. The same applies to your abs and all other body parts. Only if you are working for definition or gaining mass does it make sense to highlight certain muscle groups.

2. Maximize focus on 3 muscle groups

Sometimes I receive requests like: "Create workouts focusing on my abs, glutes, thighs, shoulders, back, and chest." Personally, I don’t take such requests seriously. The more muscles you "squeeze" under your special focus, the less effective those focuses will be. Therefore, I believe that ideally, you should focus on 1-2 muscle groups. A maximum of 3.

3. Reduce the load on other muscles

If you wish to increase the load somewhere, you need to reduce it elsewhere. This is the law of conservation of energy. However, people generally only want to add more and do not want to decrease. Sooner or later, this approach leads to overtraining and renders any focus meaningless.

So, which muscles should you reduce the load on? I recommend decreasing the load on the body part that is the furthest from the focused area. For example, if your focus is on your glutes, then reduce the load on your arms. If you focus on your shoulders, then lower the load on your thighs.

Why is this? It’s simple. If you reduce the load on a distant muscle area, the "focused" area will also be affected. For example, when focusing on your arms, you don’t need to reduce the load on your shoulders as all parts of our body are interconnected. Insufficient training of certain muscles affects their "neighbors."

4. Duration of focus – no more than three months

This refers to focusing on the same muscles. The thing is, during such focus, there is very intensive exposure to the selected muscle group. With this exposure, muscles may either become overtrained or grow in volume. However, over time, the effect from such a focus will diminish. Then you will need to give these muscles a break and turn your attention to other muscles.

Keep in mind that during these focuses, the joints and ligaments of these muscles wear out quickly. They recover much slower than the muscles themselves. Also, note that 3 months is an average timeframe and may vary significantly among different individuals.

Desirable

5. Train focused muscles twice a week

At this, one workout should be heavy and the other light. For example, if focusing on the shoulders, on Monday, do two compound exercises and one isolation exercise with heavy weights. Then on Friday, perform one compound and one isolation exercise with light or medium weights.

In principle, training muscles twice a week isn’t strictly necessary. You could still focus without it. But I believe this approach is generally more productive.

6. Train focused muscles at the beginning of your workout

It is clear that at the beginning of your workout, you have more energy. Therefore, focus on the highlighted muscles at the start of your sessions, and address others afterward. This principle is essential for larger muscle groups but not mandatory for smaller ones. For example, calves, forearms, or biceps don’t necessarily need to be trained at the beginning of the workout.

7. Dedicate a separate workout for focused muscles

You can afford this if you train at least three times a week. If you only train twice, you won’t be able to allocate a whole session just for one muscle group. Additionally, it depends significantly on the muscle groups. For instance, dedicating an entire workout to back muscles is a relatively common option. But try dedicating an entire session to just your calves or forearms.

Thus, whether to dedicate an entire workout to one muscle group or not depends not only on the number of workouts but also on the size of the muscle group. In any case, this is not mandatory, but it can be highly desirable at times.

That’s it. There will be no conclusions, as I am not sure what to write in them :) Good luck!