By Sean Hyson, C.S.C.S.
Ask a dozen different trainers a simple fitness question and you’re liable to get a dozen different answers, ranging from “You gotta take [insert name of supplement here], bro,” to a detailed lecture on the finer points of exercise science. Of all the advice, which path is really going to help you achieve your goal?
The aim of this article is to give you the simplest, most specific advice to a variety of questions people who lift weights ask all the time. Cutting to the heart of complex training quandaries has been my business for the past decade as a fitness journalist, and it’s the theme of my new book, The Truth About Strength Training.
So here are some of the most frequently asked training questions, and what I believe are the best answers to them, as provided by some of the best experts in the business (and me).
Question 1: How can I bring up a weak body part?
Answer: Schedule one workout per week to perform heavy, compound lifts for the muscle group you want to target. So if you want your quads to grow, you can do heavy squats on, say Monday. Then aim to work the quads with more joint-friendly isolation work the rest of the week. On Wednesday you could do some single-leg squats, and on Friday work on lunge variations. You only need to do two or three sets of higher reps for these exercises and can easily squeeze them into upper-body workouts or any other training you do on these days.
If you want your chest to grow, do one day of benching and then work on pushups and flyes the rest of the week. Most importantly, train conservatively and give your body time to adjust. Only focus on bringing up one body part at a time. For example, trying to give both your chest and arms a boost at once will be too much to recover from (on top of your normal training).
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