Can We Target Individual Muscles?
Different exercises for the same muscle groups do work muscles differently, but not in the hyper specific way that people think it’ll tighten, lift, or radically create muscle growth. Variety in exercises to make sure the entire muscle group is strengthened can be incorporated into workout routines, but more variety doesn’t mean better/more gains. If you have a good program with a little bit of variety, it’s more important to focus on consistency and adding weight over time, rather than worry about tweaking exercises.
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.
Muscle Activation Is More Dependent On Load Than Form
It's commonly believed that small tweaks to your exercise form can sometimes have huge results in terms of muscle activation, and you can use this to preferentially target certain muscles. However, it's far more important to focus on good progression first.