It is important to develop greater strength in specific muscles for improved performance in your sport. However, by targeting specific muscles you often ignore other muscles that seem to be less important or that are not directly involved in execution of a particular skill.
We oftenlimit ourselves to compound or multi-joint exercises. Such exercises are excellent for inclusion in almost all strength training programs but they should not overtake the need for individual or isolated muscle development especially in nearly phases of physical preparation.
By only doing multi-joint exercises or making a practice of targeting only selected muscles in your workouts, you can create problems later on. For example, in order to maintain a harmoniously developed and balanced body that is not susceptible to injury it is important that you work the muscles on both sides of the joint.
For example, if one muscle is responsible for flexion in a joint the antagonist muscle on the opposite side of the joint muscle will be responsible for extension in the joint. Thus, to keep your muscle development balanced and your joints strong be sure that you do exercises to work the muscles on opposite sides of each joint.
In many cases, by making the muscles on the opposite side of the joint stronger your body is capable of creating even greater strength in the main muscles being targeted. This is especially important for athletes, in addition to helping to prevent injury.
One of the best ways to ensure that you work the muscles on all sides of the joint is to do many different exercises specific to all the major joints in the body.. This is most easily accomplished by using the 1 X 20 RM strength training program. In this program you do approximately 20 to 30 exercises in one training session.
Young and beginning athletes who are on this program develop greater strength, muscular endurance, coordination, have fewer if any, injuries and perform better on the field. At the same time they strengthen all the major muscles around each joint.
For more information on the muscles and exercises for the entire body see Biomechanics and Kinesiology of Exercise and The Revolutionary 1 X 20 RM Strength Training Program.