Specialization cycles

[Pikku]

or third option: move arms to lower days

[steven alex]

Would you always have to choose different exercises in your specialised muscle groups to prosper? I mean if I were to specialise on shoulders and did 5 x 5 of heavy shoulder presses as my main movement but instead of doing laterals for my secondary movement I instead just lowered the weight on the bar and did 3 x 10-12 at this lighter weight? I could choose another exercise to maybe do shoulders next session but again just alter the weight to a much lighter one for the secondary movement.

[lylemcd]

It's very workable to just drop the weight and get volume with the same exercise.

[steven alex]

Originally Posted by lylemcd

It's very workable to just drop the weight and get volume with the same exercise.

Cheers Lyle I think this is the way I will approach this for certain exercises

[Sugar]

I recently read a Thib's article which said that it's recommendable to avoid weigth differences of more than 10% in the same exercise because it requies different recruitment patterns.

I don't know if it's sustained in any research or simply her own experience.

[Trainer36]

Lyle,

Do you recommend going to positive failure in any given set on specialization routines, or is one usually better staying one or two reps shy of failure while trying to progress in reps/weight, for example? Normally sub-failure is better in the long run, but since this is specialization I was just curious.

[lylemcd]

It's rare for me to explicitly seek failure with someone, but it does happen of course.

One thing I'll do sometimes is have the person go ahead and rep out on the last set of a given exercise. More to give me an idea of where they are strength wise (e.g. if the goal is 8 reps are they good for 10 on that last set or 13; if the latter, it's too light).

I still tend to stop it before they hit that point of grinding isometric failure, though. Just when it gets grindy enough. If that makes sense.

[Trainer36]

Makes total sense - thanks.

[_Simon_]

Hi all, will soon be doing:
Dips 5x5
Chinups 5x5
Decline Skullcrushers 2x12 --> 3x8
DB Hammer Curls 2x12 --> 3x8
DB Flyes 1x10, 1x5 --> 2x6-8

i'm doing this to specialise on bis and tris. Is it a good idea to still have the DB Flyes in there as Dips might be hitting chest hard (even though it's a vertical, tricep focused dip)? Or just reduce volume?

And how the hell do you do 5 heavy sets without reaching failure? Muscles are trashed after 3 or so! pretty much just long rests between sets?? I'm not ramping up to the heavy weight, i'm doing all 5 sets with the same weight.

cheers

[lylemcd]

If you're finding that you can't make the volume, cut back the loading a bit so that you're not trashed by set 3.

Generally, with arm specialization, you're not going to get much out of a compound chest exercise, isolation is better in that case IMO>