BALANCE ISN’T EVERYTHING
One thing that has been a hangup for me over the years of my own training is finding the “perfect” program.
The one that expertly balances upper and lower body movements. That includes enough vertical and horizontal pulls and pushes to keep me in balance. That makes sure I don’t lose any of the muscle and strength that I’ve fought so hard for.
But sometimes, it’s okay for the program to not be so balanced.
Long term, you want things to even out of course, but for certain periods of time, you may need to move something to the forefront. This may or may not mean something else has to fade a little.
For instance, let’s say you’re like Ricky and have a ton of lower body strength, but your chest strength, for instance, is lagging significantly behind.
If this is the case, you very well may want to add in some additional chest work into your routine.
Now, if your schedule isn’t an issue, this can be by simply adding a few more sets, or about 20 minutes, to your sessions.
But if your time is tight, you may need to scrap a little of the leg work or some of the exercise you do for abs or biceps in order to devote more time to your chest.
Practically, this could mean that if on Monday, you typically do squats, deadlifts, bench press, bicep curls, and an ab exercise, then you add in some incline bench press, dumbbell bench press, chest dips, or chest flyes.
Now, you could tack that on and be at the gym for about 20 minutes longer, but, if time is short, you could drop one set of squats (since you’ll probably do them again next workout anyway), one set of bicep curls, and one set of ab work.
Now, you haven’t scrapped any muscle group you wanted to hit, but you’ve simply reduced a little of the volume to make room to strengthen and/or grow your chest more.
Or you may need to go heavier on your bench work, but that's a different post.
Balance is great, but sometimes, you’ve got to let things catch up.
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