9 ways to grow your weak muscle

Building strength is crucial for overall fitness, but targeting weak muscle can be especially tricky. Whether you’re an experienced athlete or just starting out, having a strategy for strengthening underdeveloped muscles is essential for improving your performance and achieving your fitness goals.

In this article, we’ll cover nine practical and effective ways to grow weak muscles, providing expert tips and advice to help you get the results you want.

1-Change the ineffective exercises

Not all exercises fit every bodybuilder. Yes, the majority of lifters should be able to perform most exercises.

However, if you’re noticing pain in your joints when performing a certain exercise or you don’t feel the muscle contraction, chances are you are either not performing the exercise with proper form or the exercise isn’t the best fit for you.

You have to know that Just because the exercise is great for some people doesn’t mean you must incorporate it into your training. Find the 4-5 exercises that work best for you and perfect those exercises to grow your weak muscle.

2-Control the weight

When you train, contract and control the weight through the muscle’s full range of motion.

This is the most important tip that I can give you. Because the faster you learn how to control the contractions of your muscle without breaking form and the stronger your mind-muscle connection, the faster your lagging muscle will grow and strengthen.

Don’t be the person who throws weight around to show off. Be in control of your mind, your muscle, and every inch of every rep.

3-Increase the Frequency

Now that you know you’re performing the right exercises using proper form, decide how often to do them. You have to give your weak body parts more attention than any other body part.

At first, train your weak muscle more frequently than you do the rest of your body, but with less volume per training session. Instead of training them once a week, train them 2-3 times a week. And I know someone you will think this is overtraining, but it’s not.

If your muscles are weak and not conditioned to training with volume, they won’t need much effort to get pumped and fatigued.

You may notice that after two exercises your weak muscle is completely exhausted. Instead of continuing to do more sets and exercises with bad form, switch over to exercises that work your stronger muscles, then train the weak muscle again in a couple of days. As you are able to add more volume in training, reduce the frequency of training and increase the volume.

4-Increase the volume

After you’ve consistently trained your weak muscle 2-3 times a week, you should notice a difference in your work output. That means you can start training this muscle with more volume, thereby reducing the frequency.

Adjust the days you train each body part to what fits you best. You can reduce the number of muscle groups you train, but don’t reduce the overall workload. Every week, increase the volume by adding more weight and/or more sets and reps.

5-Try pre-exhaust supersets

Supersets can be very effective at bringing up a weak muscle. They are simply done by doing two or more exercises back to back, with essentially no rest in between.

There are many ways to do supersets but the best one for growing a lagging body part is the pre-exhaust superset where you do an isolation exercise followed by a compound exercise.

An example of a pre-exhaust superset would be doing concentration curls (Isolation exercise) before barbell curls (compound exercise) without any rest in between.

The other types of superset are effective too. Regardless of the type of superset you choose to do, the goal is the same, to metabolically tax the working muscle. Likewise, because of the prolonged time under tension and blood occlusion, supersets will result in a really good, expansive pump.

So, the next time you train, try to incorporate one or two pre-exhaust supersets and see how it goes.

6-Do Negative reps

Hypertrophy in the muscle is caused by something called microtrauma, and one of the best ways to cause microtrauma is to implement heavy eccentric or negative reps.

The general method of implementing negative reps is to use a weight that’s near, or even slightly more than your 1RM (the weight that you can only do one rep with). Then lower the weight in a slow, controlled manner. Obviously, you’ll probably need assistance doing negatives.

Let’s use the bench press as an example…

Once you’ve got the bar off the rack, begin by lowering the weight while counting to five, as in one thousand one, one thousand two, and so on. Then have your spotter help you return the weight back to the starting position and repeat. When you can no longer control the weight on the way down, you’re done.

Because of the necessity of a good spotter, combined with the fact that you get essentially no pump doing negatives, they won’t be much fun at all. Like ‘me or not, negatives are a proven way to increase strength and ultimately increase the size.

7-Use a variety of rep Speeds

The number of reps isn’t the only important factor to grow your weak muscle; also the speed of each rep can stimulate the muscle in different ways.

Doing quicker reps is a great way to maximize power generation and recruit more motor units. Just use a little caution when training with a fast tempo, especially when going from the eccentric to the concentric portion of each rep.

On the other hand, a slow rep speed maximizes tension and subsequently motor unit recruitment by maximizing the number of connections between actin and myosin filaments. This results in less stress on the elastic component and more stress on the contractile component of the working muscle fibers.

The fact is, fast and slow reps are physiologically different, but neither is necessarily better. That’s why it’s important to vary your rep speed between them.

As a general rule of thumb, do the concentric or lifting portion of each rep in a more rapid manner, while doing the eccentric or lowering portion in a more slow and controlled manner.

This way, you will benefit from both the fast and slow reps at the same time.

Related:lifting heavy and still skinny? (here’s why)

8-Isolate the weak muscle

You always hear that compound exercise is much better in building size than isolation exercises, but if you’re trying to grow a weak muscle, then properly isolating that muscle serves an important function.

Let’s say your primary exercise for quads is squats, yet your quads are lagging behind. Try doing hack squats instead of barbell squats for a change. Or you could implement leg extensions to make sure your quads are receiving a more direct and targeted stimulus.

When it comes to picking the isolating exercise, select an exercise that really allows you to feel that muscle working.

9-Finish up with a dropset

If you have only ever trained in the 6-12 rep range and never tried dropsets, you are missing out on gains.

Dropset is basically an extended set of a move, usually performed as the last set of that exercise as a burnout.

Let’s say you are doing seated dumbbell shoulder press, you’d do three sets of 10-12 reps using a certain weight.

For your third set you’d begin with the same weight and do as many reps as you can, then “drop” or reduce the weight and go to failure, then drop the weight once more and rep out until you can’t lift the weight anymore.

This kind of technique can not only boost the intensity of a set but also bring up a lagging or weak muscle as it fatigue and stimulate a wide spectrum of muscle fibers.

This maximizes your potential for growth. As such, Implementing drop sets into a properly periodized training plan will increase your chances of reaching your muscular potential.

What you need to know…

Strengthening weak muscle involves a mix of targeted exercises, proper nutrition, and consistent effort. By incorporating these nine strategies into your fitness routine, you can address muscle imbalances and build the strength you need.

Remember, progress takes time and dedication, so stay patient and persistent. With commitment, you’ll see the improvements you’re working towards.