This topic is always an interesting to me because I know to most of my clients I come off as a "trainer" who does not believe in isolating muscles. Which in fact the allegations are absolutely true, but like any other training method, isolation does have its place. Especially if your ambition is to look better structurally. One of my clients is a distance runner. That is his sport so he is going to run no matter what, but he quickly realized that through all the pounding on the pavement and the excessive abuse to his knees, he never got the body he was looking for (side note: the logic behind 'jogging' always makes me wonder what people actually expect to happen aesthetically). Through the years of mis used information and conventional training theories, he decided to do flat bench press, incline bench press, dumbbell curls, pull ups, weighted abs crunches for high volume. Even after adjusting his training regimen to the weight room, he still was not seeing the results he was acquiring. What is he doing wrong?

A 'runner' spends a majority of there time in the sagittal plane of motion. When running there will be some sort of flexion. For example the rectus abdominis will grow short, pectoral minor will go strong, and even the biceps will grow strong because they stay in flexion while running. Of course he goes into the weight room and works the exact same muscles his nervous system is already comfortable with. The bench, pull up, crunches, and bicep curls are all still with in the sagittal plane. He is further pushing himself into a dysfunctional pattern while he is in the gym.

Coach Ryan's suggestions: 
One thing you have to understand is, AESTHETICS has a great part to do with the POSTURE of the individual. Having muscles is one thing, but having muscles in the right place and having your joints in the instantaneous axis of rotation, sitting properly will not only help you PERFORM better, it also looks more appealing. A nice tall upright posture, head held high, hips tucked under looks a lot better then shoulders rounded forward, hips pushed back, & round upper back. In the case of most runners hips really tucked under, almost as if you have no ass, where the back just turns into legs & head protruded forward. Before he heads to the gym, he needs to use corrective stretches, because the muscles in your shoulders, biceps, and abdominals are in what is called 'hypertonic'. That means your nervous system is really good at recruiting those muscle groups, and in my clients case, he goes to the gym and teaches the same muscle groups to all turn on again. He has to use corrective stretches prior to exercise in order to put the joints back where they belong by deadening your nervous response to those hypertonic muscles. We all have hypertonic muscles where either we are sitting to much or overload during certain activity which then creates hypertonicity and in result ends up in reciprocal inhibition. That simply means those muscles just don't work anymore. So if you try to work the muscles that don't work, the hypertonic ones will try to take over the movement.

I recommended that he works on the exact OPPOSITE of what he already exercises daily (running), in other words we will work on his posterior chain (back). He would need to do a sh** ton of rows. But wait! Like I said above a lot of his progress will be determined on how well his form is. The only way he can pull the shoulder blades back during exercise is if he stretches the abdominis first and in order to create full range of motion he'll need to lengthen his biceps. He will have to focus on mainly rowing movements to build up the muscles that force thoracic extension. The rhomboids will need to be worked as well, namely everything in the upper & lower back. His current program is making him worse! I will design a program to build the posterior chain, especially the upper back. I also know he will benefit from multi directional and lateral movements to create balance in the lower back. 

If you are performing a sport the puts your muscles in pattern overload, especially endurance sports like swimming, running, and biking, when you go to the gym you need too work on the exact opposite of that to rebalance your musculature. YOU WILL LOOK BETTER, PERFORM BETTER, AND YOU WON'T HAVE F'D UP POSTURE. 

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