A System of Synergy
Have you ever been told to split up your workouts into opposite muscle groupings on different days? This may seem to make sense to the beginning, intermediate, and even some advanced weightlifters, but if you’ve ever taken a really close look at the human muscular system then this may seem a little off. The human muscular system is a very complex system of functional tissue that is active on ALL movement. This system is a system of synergy- muscles working together. No other type of tissue in the body has the ability to move body parts, liquids (cardiac), and food (smooth). The reason muscular tissue gets so much attention, for most people, is the ability of adaptation. When you lift weights, you are overtaxing the muscular system and your body has to build more muscle so what you are doing is not as hard next time. Your body is not aware that having large muscles is fashionable; it is just worried about survival and preventing injury so it will produce more amino acid connections, muscular tissue, to adapt to what you are doing. This is why changing your routine is very important, but we’ll save that for another day. The point of this article is to show how everything is located on the body for a specific reason and no muscle is there just for looks.
As mentioned above, all muscles are positioned at specific spots and have specific functions for an exact reason (warning: if you are a creationist, then you may not like these next few sentences). The human species has been subjected to certain movements that were necessary for our survival so the body had to set up a system of muscles that fit to these movements. Some believe that this started from before humans were around; when we were lesser evolved form of tree climbers. This is a very prominent belief among anthropologists. They believe that our muscular system is a direct result of what was necessary to climb and swing through trees. This makes sense when you look at the shoulder complex. The shoulder has movement almost 180 degrees around and a very strong range of motion. When you compare the hips and their mobility, they are not near as mobile due to lack of necessity of tree dwellers. When these tree dwelling creatures decided to move out of the trees and start walking, the hips had to change angles and become a bit more mobile to allow for walking and running (believed to have adapted after the shoulder complex). This may lead some people to question, “If we evolved then, why aren’t we still evolving?” Well I say we are. Look at different ethnicities, they are all evolved to where they live. Eskimos, who live in very cold weather, have very thick hair. People who live near the equator usually have darker skin to prevent from getting skin poisoning and have less chance of getting skin cancer than someone who lives far north or south of the equator. So where does this all lead? Hopefully this shows you that everything in your body is the way it is for a reason and you shouldn’t try to do what your body was not made to do.
When you go to a gym you will probably see a lot of people separating “antagonist” or opposite muscles. This makes sense to the naked eye, but a closer look at the muscular system and their attachments show a different story. A textbook example of what is viewed as antagonist muscles is the pectoralis major (chest) and latissimus dorsi (back). Most people think they are opposite muscles due to location and some of their main functions. For example a main function of the chest is horizontal adduction (chest press or flye) and a main function of the lats is horizontal abduction (row). These functions may show a sign that these muscles are antagonists, but there are a few other functions that show different. The pecs and lats share a couple common functions: internal rotation and adduction (bring the arms back to the body from the side). This shows that they cannot be classified as true antagonists. Another example of synergy would be the shoulders. When you talk to some people at the gym, you will probably hear that they do shoulders all by themselves on separate days than chest or back. To me this doesn’t make too much sense and leads to over training. The anterior, or front, deltoids are positioned adjacent and lateral to the chest and all functions of the anterior deltoids are a function of the chest. Pretty convenient, huh? The posterior, or rear, have the same relationship with the lats except for the function of external rotation (due to the fact that the lats go around the inside of the humerous and attach and not the outside). Hopefully these examples go to show you that everything wants to work together and is made to work together.
This is a good argument to prevent isolated training due to the fact that if our body was meant to isolate certain muscles, then we would not have any two joint muscles. When you train for isolation, you are going against your body’s design and that is never a good thing. If you only train muscles to work alone then you are setting up your nervous system for singular innervations. This means that one neuron will only stimulate one muscle, compared to working out multiple muscles at once which will help develop multiple innervations. If you do isolation and set up singular innervations then when you need to use multiple muscles your body will have send out many more nervous system stimulus to activate all the muscles you need to work. This is bad due to the fact that almost everything in everyday life is not isolation, at all! Your body can only send so many stimuli at once and may not activate muscles completely and next thing you know- BOOM- POP- TEAR- your injured. So try to do multi-muscle movements for the majority of your workouts. Some isolation exercises are needed too hit stubborn muscles, but do not make them the main chunk of your workout program because you are sure to fail eventually. Some examples of two joint muscles that will screw up a training split in no time are the biceps (both heads), the long head of the triceps, all hamstring muscles, the rectus femoris, gastrocnemius, and many forearm muscles.
So how do you apply this to your workout? I hope this has given you a better understanding of how to organize your workouts, but if you still confused then here a few tips of what not to do. It is not a good idea to do a chest or back workout and then follow it up the next day with a shoulder or arm workout. This is due to the fact that your biceps are active on almost all your back workouts since the arm has to flex on horizontal and vertical pulls and active on chest exercises like dips and front raises. The same applies to your triceps. They are active on all presses because your elbow has to extend at the end of the movement and active on all pulls due to the long head of the triceps being a two joint muscle and being active on shoulder extension. The deltoids are also very complex and active on almost all upper body movements. As mentioned before the connection of arms and chest and back, and the deltoids and chest and back, that means that the arms and deltoids share many functions. So if you must do shoulders on their own day, do arms with them to take advantage of the shared functions and make sure you don’t do them around the same time you do chest and back. Since most people don’t have time to do a full upper body workout and hit every muscle in one workout, you can split it up, but make sure you have plenty of rest in between upper body sessions. If you must combine, then use these tips to prevent copying movements that are shared by different muscles. For example, don’t do a full chest workout and then do a full shoulder workout. I recommend not paying attention to hitting each muscle completely, but rather working out each movement equally and to the full extent and the muscles will develop to maintain proper function. My favorite split, for equal, functional muscle building would be upper body-lower body-off-full body-off (2)-repeat. This will build multi-muscle neurological connections and is great for strength building and fat burning.
The human body is very complex and definitely not random. Everything in the body has a very specific function and it is not a good idea to go against this function. If you are training and you feel that you are not developing equally or aren’t gaining any strength then it is probably because you are going against what your body is made to do. Make sure you are giving each muscle enough recovery and know what muscles are being overlapped on certain exercises. It is important to have a lot of multi-joint, multi-muscle exercises in your routine to build more neuromuscular connections which will drastically boost strength and function. Isolation exercises are good if you have a stubborn body part that will not grow with the rest, but be conscious not to isolate muscles that aren’t meant to isolated, like the legs. That is only good if you are trying to do something your body is not meant to do, like get abnormally large muscles or try to make certain muscles large and strong that are just mean for stability or slight function, like the vastus medius oblique or the rectus abdominus. This is a huge idea in body building, so if you are trying to become functional or stay injury free, it may not be for you. So for reference, stick with basic movements and you will not run into as many problems.
