One of the things that you can do if you find a body part lagging behind the rest is to practice a principle called specialization. This old bodybuilding principle is really an extension of one of life’s principles: If you need to improve on something, focus your efforts on it and you will see success.

Let’s use an example. Let’s say that your upper arms have fallen behind the rest of your upper body. You look like a T-Rex: All torso and legs. No arms. Kinda like Tom Platz before he figured out how to get his arms in line with his massive thighs and calves.

There are various ways you can approach the problem, of course, but they all rely on specialization. Certainly, you could let the rest of your body go, shrinking in size until your arms were of equal proportion,

BUT THAT’S JUST PLAIN SILLY!

What you really want to do is re-double your arm efforts. Here’s how.

SPECIALIZATION

You could either take the approach I suggest in Arms Race, focusing one single workout on your arms (it’s a day-long workout, by the way, and it is to be repeated once every several weeks, if not months)

OR

You could incorporate specialization into your normal workouts. Let’s say you currently have a split where you work your arms and shoulders together, normally working the delts first, the arms last. Instead, focus on your weakness first. Surely, your shoulder work will suffer. However, by placing your arm work at the beginning of your workout, you can blast your biceps and triceps with your heaviest weights and volumes.

The ideal situation would be to combine the two ideas above into one hybrid (near-perfect) solution: Here is my suggestion to you.

Perform your arm exercises in a single workout day. Let’s say you currently are on a 4 day split (2 days on, one day off, 2 days on, 2 days off). On your non-concurrent off-days, do only arm work. On the first arm day of the month, take on the Arms Race workout.

For a short period of time (no longer than 6 weeks), you can train with heavier weights, higher reps and sets, and greater intensity on a lagging body part with great success.

During your specialization phase, however, make absolutely sure that you’re getting the nutrition and rest that you need. You are putting a greater stress on your body overall by performing this extra work, so up your calories, your supplements, and get more sleep!

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