How to Bring Up That One Stubborn Body Part You Can't Grow
In a Nutshell
To grow stubborn lagging muscles, prioritize **three changes in sequence**: (1) **increase volume** to 25-35+ hard working sets per muscle per week (far beyond typical 5-15 sets), autoregulating by adding sets until recovery falters then deloading; (2) **boost frequency** to 2-4 sessions/week (keeping sessions under 10 sets for quality); (3) **train them early** in workouts for peak energy, mind-muscle connection, and effort. Specialize on 2-3 muscles at a time for 2-3 mesocycles (4-6 weeks each with deloads), using maintenance volume (~6 sets/week) for others; vary exercises/reps, progress loads, and incorporate fun techniques like drop sets via the RP app. Lagging muscles recover faster and need more stimulus than strong ones—floor the gas on volume first before tweaking anything else.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
You're not going to grow your best in most cases, especially with lagging muscle groups, doing between five and 15 sets per week. There's probably a good chance that just more volume will fix it. And if you slam the accelerator and do 30ish sets per muscle per week, you're going to be doing some growing. You get real distinct differences in growth depending on where you put your lagging muscle groups. If your muscles can still recover, they will absolutely grow more.
Hey folks, Dr. Mike here for RP Strength. You're struggling to grow certain muscles, especially in certain muscle groups that you want to grow the most, like arms or delts or legs or whatever is holding your physique back. Globally, you can eat more protein, put that protein into four to five evenly spaced, nutritious meals throughout the day, select better exercises that fit your body better or are more stimulative of growth, enhance your technique, push each set harder, get more sleep. All of these help you grow.
But of all the changes in a program, there are three changes that are really a big unlock. If you make these three changes, you can almost certainly see progress in your lagging muscle groups (95% plus chance). They come in a sequence: first the most powerful (volume), second most powerful (frequency), third (priority).
Volume is the amount of training that you do. Analogy: amount of orange juice poured into a glass, just the amount. Technically, volume is weight per rep multiplied by reps per set multiplied by all sets for that muscle in every exercise, and ultra-technically work is force times distance. But as long as each set is within three or four reps shy of failure and load is between 5 rep max and 30 rep max, the easiest indicator is number of working sets per muscle per week.
Example: four sets leg presses + four sets hack squats = eight working sets for quads. From now on, volume means number of sets per week for that muscle, all exercises taken into account.
Muscles grow by detecting tension (confirmed by science) and maybe metabolites (hypothetical, proxy for tension). It's a dimmer switch: more tension message gives more growth. One hard set stimulates minimal growth, two more, three more, etc., up until you can't recover.
Analogy: game show with money in the air, grab dollars into your baggie (each dollar = hard set). When bag is full, that's your maximum recoverable volume (MRV). Up until then, more sets = more growth, as long as close to failure and 5-30 rep max range. Heavier vs lighter in that range doesn't matter; it's proximity to failure.
Most people do 5-15 working sets per muscle per week (e.g., 15 sets chest on Monday, or biceps 5 sets Mon/Wed/Fri). Fewer than 5 or more than 15 is unusual.
Science shows more volume causes more growth (diminishing returns: 1 to 2 sets nearly doubles growth, 3 to 6 maybe 1.5x). Upper limit: Dr. Mike first hypothesized MRV. Research on recreationally trained/well-trained shows benefits up to at least 30 weekly sets, often 40+ sets per muscle per week, if strength is maintained or increasing and no crazy systemic fatigue.
Key takeaway: You're not going to grow your best, especially lagging groups, on 5-15 sets. Need double that, like 30. Almost no one does 25-35 sets week-on-week for lagging muscles.
Analogy: Guy can't get Ford Mustang over 50 mph because only pressing gas halfway. Floor it first (like volume) before changing other things.
Strong muscles that grow well need less volume. Weak/lagging muscles (smaller, weaker, less stress imposition, poor mind-muscle connection, worse pumps, less metabolite summation, slower twitch fibers, not leveraged for tension at stretch) need more volume and can recover rapidly from it.
Examples: Hamstrings hard to recover from >12 sets/week with good technique. Side delts can handle 8 sets every other day. Lagging muscles require way more sets to stimulate but recover fast.
Warning: Don't copy genetically gifted people (e.g., huge chest guy doing 6 sets chest/week). Their minimum effective volume might be 3-4 sets; yours could be 8 sets for maintenance/growth.
Start with same workouts. If not sore/tired next session for lagging muscle, add a set (e.g., 4 to 5 sets dumbbell curls). Continue adding weekly/every other week until hard to recover (strength/reps dip). Then deload: take easy week. Note max sets reached.
Next program: For every exercise, take out two sets (e.g., ended at 10 sets each of 4 bicep exercises = 40 total, next do 8 sets each). Work back up. This autoregulates recovery while ramping stimulus.
Frequency unlocks more volume. After 5-7 sets per exercise, mind-muscle degrades. After 10-12 sets per session (even multiple exercises), hypertrophy stimulus falls (low glycogen, poor psychological drive, worse stimulus-to-fatigue ratio).
Example: 2 bicep sessions/week, go from 15 to 20 total sets (10 each) helps. For 25-30 sets, need 3 sessions (<10 sets/session for quality). For 40+, 4 sessions/week. Research confirms more growth from 40 vs 30 if recoverable.
For lagging groups: Train at least 2x/week evenly spread, ideally 3+ times/week.
Priority is order of exercises/muscle groups in session. Do lagging muscles sooner (first best, then second, etc.) for more growth.
Physiology: Most neural/systemic/local energy early (glycogen, creatine, nervous system ready). Prior work saps energy (e.g., pull-ups before curls sap bicep energy; bench raises systemic fatigue).
Psychology: Hard early training reduces ability to push later. After quads, harder to go hard on biceps. Early: better mind-muscle, target utilization, proximity to failure, fast-twitch activation.
You can do all the sets you need when not tired from past sets. After a bunch of back work, you might think three sets for biceps is good enough, but that's not going to cut it. More excitement early in the workout is also a thing. Show up, hit your lagging muscle groups first, you're psychologically in it, hit it hard, then do all your other muscles. That's how to bring up your actual lagging muscles: really prioritize them by moving them earlier.
It's a spectrum, so you don't have to do them first necessarily. If you want your biceps to be as big as possible and in every workout they're trained fifth out of five exercises, you're not trying. If trained second or third, good enough. If first, okay, cool. But it doesn't need to be first every single time.
Real-World Advice
Real world advice: don't save your lagging biceps for the end of each workout. You can train biceps first if you want, but second or third is totally fine. Overall for your weekly program, get the biceps in there before some other muscle groups and especially feel that you are tiring your biceps out substantially instead of by the time you get to them everything about you is already tired and you're not doing a good job.
A lot of people save fun muscles like chest and back for early, and train shoulders later even if shoulders are priority—third or fourth. They think they'll just add more sets, but not all sets are high quality. Sometimes when you make a priority of something, you have to train it early in your program. You might not even like the training. You will like the results because it's going to grow more.
To arrange a specialization plan, construct your regular workout plan in the RP hypertrophy app if you like—super simple to do in there. Take two to three muscles at a time. You can't specialize on everything by definition since some stuff's just going to push to later.
- Move them into 2 to 4 sessions per week (not one, often 3 to 4), as early in most workouts as possible.
- Escalate their volumes slowly over each session on which recovery happens on time.
- For other muscles not prioritizing, put them at maintenance volume: about 6 sets per week is totally fine. Don't increase their volume.
- For each session, choose a different exercise or two, slightly different rep range for variation to keep it stimulating, psychologically engaging, and easy on joints.
- Add a little bit of load or a repetition to every single set of every single exercise through multiple weeks of progression as you add sets.
- After about 4 to 6 weeks of going up and up and up, you get really tired. Then deload—the RP app will take care of all this.
- Repeat the process if you like.
How long can you specialize until you switch focus? Two to three mesocycles of 4 to 6 weeks each is totally cool, with deloads at the end of each. Start at a slightly higher volume to begin with—like 25% more sets than typical in the first one—then as they crest up, cut a few sets off, restart, cut a few sets off, restart.
After two to three such cycles, you might have some staleness. If you want to keep going, that's fine. But often go back to more whole body plan or maintenance plan, or switch to specialization for other muscles entirely. Maybe you prioritized rear delts and biceps for a few cycles; now it's chest, front delts, and triceps. Put rear delts or biceps on the back burner.
When not specializing in a muscle, do at least 6 hard working sets per week for that muscle and you almost certainly won't lose any size. You could do more and still progress, but even just 6 you're good to go. When ready to specialize again, run through the whole process.
Make sure your training stays fun and not stale. Stale can be necessary sometimes just pounding in the sets, but ideally keep the fun going by using favorite exercises and intensity techniques like my reps, drop sets, my rep match sets, supersets, etc. All found in the RP hypertrophy app.
If you like using the app, you'll get more jack probably.
All right, that's the code folks. See you next time with gigantic weird rear delts. Someone's like, "You doing 40 sets a week of that?" You're like, "Yeah, brother. You look like them. You like them. Yeah. Get them. Get away from me." Big rear delts. Now you got an ego. See you next time.
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