Varying angles of training is a method I have become fond of in recent years. Different angles of similar styled movements can pinpoint specific muscle groups. Therefore having different angles and ranges of motion is essential to optimise training!
Different Angles?
When I say different angles some may question what I mean. Lets take a day in the gym as an example. Say we are doing a ‘Pull Day’ which emphasise movements targeting the back and biceps. All of the movements require a pulling motion as opposed to a ‘Push Day’ which target the triceps, chest and shoulders. During this pull day, to target different areas of the back, we need to pull with different angles of the elbow.
Some Examples
If we firstly choose a ‘Vertical Pull’ – this incorporates driving the elbows down vertically to the ground while completing the exercise. An example of this may be a pull up or a lat pull down. This will mainly target our lat muscles to give us width to the back. After that, if we were to move onto a ‘Horizontal Row’ which incorporates pulling our elbows back perpendicular to our body, we can target more of the upper back, including rhomboids and lower-middle traps which gives us more thickness to the back. Examples of this type of row would be a chest supported row machine, bent over row, dumbbell prone row etc.
The same can be said for our ‘push day’ mentioned above. If we incorporate a vertical press in the form of an overhead press, we target the shoulders, specifically our delts. In contrast, if we incorporate a horizontal press in the form of a bench press, we can then target the chest more.
To Conclude
Vary your exercises in terms of angles, exercise selection, sets and reps. This will in turn target specific muscle groups and keep the body adapting. Areas of concentration should also be put into the start of the programme. For example, if you feel you need to concentrate on your chest more than your shoulders as they are further developed, have a horizontal chest exercise i.e. a bench press first in your push day while you are neurologically the freshest and can give it the most effort. Don’t have It last in the programme!
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