Get those muscles to stop lagging.

Some people think bodybuilding is a simple task. All you need to do is lift weights and you’ll get bigger. To those people, here’s a little message: Screw You! As simple as bodybuilding can be in terms of what exercises you need to accomplish specific goals. Dumbbell fly for the chest, dumbbell rows for the back, squats for the legs. As simple as one, two, three, right? Wrong! Sometimes your muscle just doesn’t seem to grow and when that happens you begin to feel like you want to give up hope.

Well suck it up because there’s a solution to your problems.

Say if you have a lagging muscle like the lats, there’s a great solution for growing the muscle and making it stronger all at once. Rather than just do endless reps on an exercise, you should instead consider performing the movement with perfect technique. “Thanks genius, already knew that.” Well stay quiet for a minute and maybe you’ll learn something. While performing the movement with the perfect technique is certainly something you’re going to want to always do, sometimes it’s still not good enough.

So what’s the solution? Isometric holds, that’s what. The next time you’re in the gym looking to build up your lats on the lat pulldown machine consider performing isometric holds at the bottom of the movement. Hold for three to five seconds on each rep and feel your muscles tense and burn. This movement may seem simple, and frankly it is, but that makes it all the more incredible. Isometric exercises can make your muscles much stronger and larger specifically due to the time under tension. This is essential to growing muscle and should be considered if you’re having trouble growing a specific muscle group. Take the video below as an example and see if you’re able to notice any significant growth over the next few weeks.

What do you think of isometric holds to build up stubborn muscles?

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