I will get a little more theoritical than usual in this 2 part series; but for those of you not so familiar with geeky anatomy stuff I will still try to make it as simple and understandable as possible. 

 Synergistic dominance…what the hell does that mean? 

Synergistic dominance refers to muscle action during movement.  Let’s start at the basic: when you have muscles performing an action (flexion, extension, etc.) you will have an agonist muscle as well as antagonist and synergist muscles.  The agonist is the primary muscle involved in the movement performed; the antagonist is the opposing muscle to the one performing the action, which must relax as much as possible to let the agonist contract; and, the synergist(s) is the muscle(s) that assist the agonist in its action.  Let me give you a very simple example for those of you who that I might have already lost.  In a simple bicep curl exercise, the action performed is an elbow flexion.  In this case, the agonist muscle would be the biceps brachii since it’s the main muscle performing the action.  The triceps brachii would be the antagonist because it’s the one on the other side of the arm and one of its functions is to extend at the elbow joint; therefore the triceps must relax to allow the biceps to contract more effectively. 

The brachialis muscle is also an elbow flexor, but is definitely not the strongest one; therefore it assists the biceps during a biceps curl exercise.  In this case the brachialis would be a synergist muscle to the biceps.

This is just to give you a basic idea of what synergist muscles are and what their implication is in different muscle actions.

  So now we know that synergist muscles assist the agonist in its action; but what is synergistic dominance?

 At every joint in the body, depending on the action performed, you usually have many different synergist muscles.  The concept of synergist dominance is pretty much a muscle imbalance that refers to an agonist muscle not doing its job for different reason (dormant muscle, weak agonist, short or stiff antagonist, etc.) and the synergist taking over most of the work load to compensate for the problem.  Then, what happens when a muscle that is supposed to just assist another one in its action is forced to take over?  It puts more stress on that synergist muscle (more than it would be supposed to handle) and it puts you at risk for different types of injuries:  muscle strains, muscle pulls and

 tendonitis/tendinosis just to name a few.  And the thing is it can also create some pretty bad muscle imbalances across your body and that can lead to a lot more problems.  Therefore, it is very important to get muscles to work optimally so the athlete can perform at high level without being exposed to overuse injuries because of muscles not activated properly.

 The goal in this part one series was to give you an idea of what synergist dominance is and what can result from it if that type of imbalance is not taken care of.  In part 2, I will give you more concrete examples and how you can help fix them with proper training