Corrective exercises and hypertrophy

[LZD]

This is potentially a silly question, but here goes: When it comes to corrective exercises (exercises to improve posture, pre-hab or re-hab injury and/or address strength imbalances) is hypertrophy necessary?

If so, does this mean the effectiveness of such methods will be decreased if one is shedding bodyweight?

Intuitively it would seem to be context dependent. You can improve the way that your glutes activate without necessarily needing to make them bigger. I am speaking specifically, for my case, of needing to improve my VMO strength/size to assist in patellar tracking.

Upper back work (e.g. facepulls, rotations) for shoulder health seems like something that would benefit from hypertrophy, also.

 

[Tosa]

Not necessary, but potentially very beneficial.

Also, keep in mind that corrective exercises are addressing something you're deficient in, so assuming exercise choice, technique and effort are all appropriate, you could expect better than usual results from training on a caloric deficit.

 

[gspieler]

I would think if the root cause is a muscular imbalance, than it would be almost a prereq that the cross-sectional physiological area of a muscle would have to change, either in form atrophy or hypertrophy. And out of those two options, I think it's pretty obvious which one most would prefer. But I don't mean to generalize, it's all about context, as you said.

 

[ImpulseSC]

This is potentially a silly question, but here goes: When it comes to corrective exercises (exercises to improve posture, pre-hab or re-hab injury and/or address strength imbalances) is hypertrophy necessary?

If so, does this mean the effectiveness of such methods will be decreased if one is shedding bodyweight?

Intuitively it would seem to be context dependent. You can improve the way that your glutes activate without necessarily needing to make them bigger. I am speaking specifically, for my case, of needing to improve my VMO strength/size to assist in patellar tracking.

Upper back work (e.g. facepulls, rotations) for shoulder health seems like something that would benefit from hypertrophy, also.

It may be confusing to think about only muscle hypertrophy as the only benefit from exercise. Muscle fiber recruitment would be area you would see the most rapid improvement. Also, increased joint ROM, which would definitely improve posture.
As far as decreased effectiveness from shedding bodyweight, eat a healthy diet to ensure more fat is lost than muscle. Since fat is above the skeletal muscles, that may be misconstrued as increased muscle mass.
Back to your first question, corrective exercises are not for increases muscle size, but for retraining movement patterns.

Hope this helps

 

[Synapse]

It isn't necessary, rather it will necessarily happen.

You can "activate" a muscle all you want - if one side of a flexor/extensor (or whatever grouping we're talking about) is much smaller than the other, then that needs to be remedied for any real postural improvements. You don't get a dude with massive pecs and no posterior shoulder size to lose his gorilla shoulders through pure movement rewiring.

It's inseparable and moot anyway. If a muscle is seldom recruited, it will atrophy. If it is often recruited, it will grow as much as the new movement patterns/overload demand. It's a case of the chicken or the egg.

The weaker muscle will necessarily hypertrophy with activation. It may not be all that noticeable when you're talking stabilizers, but if a dude has massively tight hip flexors and quads, his ass is going to explode as soon as he starts learning to recruit it.

 

[LZD]

Thanks everyone. Hoping for this:

...his ass is going to explode as soon as he starts learning to recruit it.

Hope it happens with my left VMO as well.