Developing The Delts
The deltoids are an important muscle group that work in conjunction with the back, shoulders, and pectorals. They are a small muscle group and therefore they grow more slowly. Training them is a long term goal that requires patience, strict form, and more patience. The trapezius muscles (traps) are also key in developing the delts and are also difficult to isolate and train individually. There are many excercises that help specifically build up the delts and traps, but they can also be trained during your normal lifting routine. The posterior delts are the least targeted during regular training so if you want to develop the delts, make sure you focus on this area.
Paused Reps In Your Training
Pauses in reps can be very useful for building muscle mass and practicing strict form, especially when doing higher reps or exercises where you tend to zone out or speed through. Pauses at the bottom of each rep helps keep you aware of your form as well as letting your muscles re-engage for the second part of the lift. Pause reps can be a great way to add more difficulty to your workouts, but it’s best to assess each lift to see if it will be beneficial.
How Fast Should You Lift?
It’s commonly believed that slower reps produce better results, though recent research strongly contradicts this old school wisdom. While high speed reps generally produce better results, there are still some caveats and nuances to understand. Understanding these nuances will help you understand when to apply purposefully fast reps, and when it may help to slow things down a bit.
Should You Train To Failure?
Training to failure is sometimes heralded as a secret technique for gaining mass and strength, and sometimes demonized as being uniquely likely to cause injury. Here’s what the science says, and how you can effectively implement training to failure in your own training.
How Do We Get Injured?
How do people get injured? What can you do to prevent injury? What can you do to work around injury once you’ve got one? This post covers the general topic of injuries and what to do about them.