The problem with a balanced program, or a method that aims to help you build muscle over your entire body evenly, is that – no matter how effective it is – you are not starting with a “perfect starting point.”

That is, you have imbalances.

I do, we all do. Some of our muscles grow faster than others and others seem impossible to develop.

When I was reading through this book, which is called the One Thing, a spark came to me when the author asks a series of questions in the book along the lines of…

What’s the one thing you can do that will have the biggest impact on….

And in this case I said, “physique”.

Well, I have and always have had lagging body parts. So have every single one of my clients. If we don’t have one lagging body part, it can be two or 3.

So I began thinking about the answer to that question and I realized something simple, but profound…

... “The One Thing” for many of us and our physiques is that lagging – our the lagging – body part(s) that we can’t seem to develop as well as the others.

So I started doing a little research.

What I found was that this question opened up a series of other questions that made me question about the idea that we should even be training our entire body within a given week AT ALL!

Here’s what’s wrong with “conventional programs” when it comes to building the perfect muscle (and when I say “conventional”, what I’m really saying is basically every method out there)…

It was only after researching and testing multiple methods that I came across a method called “specialization”.

Fact is, when it comes to sculpting a well-rounded and proportionate physique, specialization training is the fastest solution.

If you want a big chest (or a bigger arms, increased bench, or a higher vertical), then you have to focus on that ONE goal if you want optimal results.

Don’t make the mistake of trying to maintain volume on all different muscles during this program. You want all your resources (training, nutrition, recovery) to go toward the ultimate goal of bringing up lagging muscle-groups.

It’s an odd approach to take since 99.9% of the programs you come across preach balance, but balance WON’T GET YOU PERFECTION.

Slingshot hypertrophy or super-compensation is a 3-step process.

The first step is the application of a training or loading stimulus and the body’s reaction it (i.e. fatigue, tiring, etc.). When we’re training a specific muscle-group 2-3 times per week, there is a decrease in performance due to this reaction.

Step 2 is the recovery phase. This can be a lighter training session, a recovery session, an active rest or, my personal preference, a back off/deload week. As a result of the recovery period, the energy stores and performance will return to the baseline.

Step 3 is the super-compensation phase. This is the adaptive slingshot above the baseline; it is described as a slingshot response because the body is essentially coming back from the low point of greatest fatigue.

In other words…

We hammer away at a specific muscle group for 4-6 weeks. At this point you’ll begin to notice a slight decrease in performance. This means we have successfully pushed the muscle into a state of overreaching.

This becomes the perfect opportunity for a back off week or recovery phase where we restore our energy, and adapt to the high training load of the previous (4-6) weeks.

The body then compensates to ensure it’s ready to handle another extreme training phase by building bigger and stronger (insert muscle you hammered for the last 4-6 weeks).

This was a revelation to me – and probably to yourself as well.

We’re told to train a certain way our entire lives, but with each workout that method we swear by can be bringing us further away from our perfect body.

When, however, you use a method like specialization to focus on developing each muscle individually, you now make perfection possible.

Training one muscle a month, however, won’t do it.

Just like focusing on “one thing” in business for an entire month won’t necessarily bring you the results you want either. There are still other things that need to be done, maintained, and even developed, just like your muscles.

So while one muscle group is the focus, we can also have a secondary lagging muscle that also gets attention, and rotates with the primary muscle.