How to Reign in Dominant Muscles

I've talked before about how I am ridiculously quad dominant when it comes to lifting. Like seriously, I could do a back exercise and my quads would want to take over. Obviously that is an exaggeration but if I am doing anything lower body that is not supposed to be quad-focused I have to actively concentrate on not using my quads. 

First off, when I say I'm a quad-dominant lifter it means just that-- my quads are the dominate muscle used most often. If I let my body naturally do its thing and don't try to interfere, my quads will do all the work. They are my muscles that grow the fastest, get the strongest, and take the most to tire out. Now, this is based on my genetics and will not hold true for everyone. We all have our own dominant muscles, it just depends. For me, I'm fairly certain at this point that my quads are secretly hatching a plan for world domination. 

The problem with being a quad dominate lifter is that I have to be very conscious about my lifts and that I don't allow my body to take the path of least resistance. Let's talk about squats for a minute so that I can explain what that means in a real example. During a squat you are supposed to keep the weight in your heels, but if you are quad dominant like me then this can pose a particular challenge. At the bottom of the squat, you are supposed to use your hamstrings to keep the weight in your heels but often what can happen as you come up you feel yourself sliding the weight onto the middle and front part of your feet. That is shifting the weight from your hamstrings to your quads, which is an example of taking the path of least resistance. Basically, it's your body's version of a shortcut to make the lift easier. Your hamstrings can't hold the weight so your quads go "don't worry, boys, I got this" and take the weight. It causes you to drift forward because your quads are now shortening more as the muscles contract to take the weight.  

Now before you start thinking "well, aren't squats supposed to be for quads?" the answer is yes BUT a squat is also a compound lift i.e. takes more than one muscle. Hamstrings are a synergistic muscle during squats which means they assist your quads during the lift which is the prime mover muscle a.k.a. doing most of the work. MOST being the key word, not ALL. The reason that squats hold the title of the king of all exercises is because no other lift works your entire body like a squat does. Your legs won't just reap the benefits but your whole body will.

Okay, I'll stop myself now before I start obsessing over squats because the point of this post is to tell you how to reign in dominant muscles.

For starters, you want to strengthen any weak muscles to prevent any other muscles over-activating to take on unnecessary weight. This will prevent injuries such as muscle strains. If you are quad-dominant like me then work on your posterior chain (ex: hamstrings, gluteus maximus, lower back, etc.). I can't even tell you the amount of time I have invested in specifically targeting my hams and glutes to strengthen them. In particular, my hamstrings as I didn't have much of a weak booty to start with haha! If my quads didn't take over first then my glutes definitely would, but gluteal muscles is a group that also includes not just your butt muscles (the gluteus maximus is typically thought of) but your gluteus medius and gluteus minimus, which often get left out. Most people just focus on building up their gluteus maximus (the booty) without considering the medius and minimus, which are near your hip. However, all three are important muscles and can affect your form if they are weak.

Some great exercises to target hamstrings include: Romanian deadlifts, lying leg curls, good mornings, high stance leg press, and single leg deadlifts are some of my favorites. For glutes: walking lunges, Bulgarian split squats (farther stance, slight lean to target the glutes), deficit curtsey lunges, hip thrusts, and dumbbell sumo squats are all good to give the booty a burn.

My second piece of advice is the mind-muscle connection. It's not just a myth or willy-nilly idea that is totally useless, but can really enable you to override any dominant muscles. Your brain controls your muscles so if you are actively concentrating on a muscle and using it then that is much more effective than just doing an exercise with the best hope that it's targeting the muscle you want. As I'm doing an exercise with a less dominant muscle, I focus all my concentration on using that muscle. I make sure I feel the movement in that particular muscle, and focus on not using my more dominant muscles. Another example is with traps and delts. Your traps are much stronger than your shoulder muscles so a lot of the time you will have to focus on hitting your delts rather than allowing your traps to make any compensations. For instance, a common thing I see with lateral raises is people using more of their traps (the muscles near your neck) to move the weight rather than their delts.

My third piece of advice is drop weight. If you have weak muscles and they can't handle the weight then the muscle that is stronger, and the one you don't want taking over the weight, will take over. That is why I started basically at square one weight-wise with squats because I knew my hamstrings weren't as strong as they should be and I wanted to make sure I nailed my form this time around. Last time I got injured because my hamstrings weren't strong enough, I would slide forward too much on my quads which would cause me to bend forward too much, and strain my lower back. Eventually injuring my lower back is what turned me off from squats for awhile until I learned the errors of my way. Now that I have built up my hamstring strength I have no problems with breaking parallel, keeping the weight in my heels, and not straining my lower back. Sometimes you have to suck up your pride and go with a lighter weight. No one in the gym will care and it's much better to have proper form.

Let's bring in another example: the leg press. I use this not just for quads but will utilize many different foot placements to target different areas of my leg. I use it for hamstrings all the time by placing my feet very high so that the edge of the machine hits the middle of my foot and keep my feet about shoulder distance apart. If you have them too wide or too narrow then the outer and inner thigh muscles will be worked. I only use about 1/3 of the weight compared to when I leg press to hit quads because a) my hamstrings aren't as strong and b) I want to make sure that I am really isolating my hamstrings and not letting other parts of my legs compensate. The foot placement helps in addition to the lower weight because it targets my hamstrings and not my quads as much. Now, let's not underestimate my quads because they definitely COULD take over the weight haha if I let them! But I don't since I strategically plan my foot placement and weight so that my hamstrings do the work.

So to sum up this post here are my general suggestions:

1) Build up weak spots

2) Utilize the mind-muscle connection

3) Lower the weight

Hope that helps! If you guys enjoy more of these informative-type posts please let me know! I appreciate any and all feedback :) I can certainly work on more of these in the future and I'm more than happy to share on here!

Hope you're all having a good start to the weekend!