diff --git a/syft/federated/federated_client.py b/syft/federated/federated_client.py
index d3276c6a73a..ce77f30b5af 100644
--- a/syft/federated/federated_client.py
+++ b/syft/federated/federated_client.py
@@ -57,7 +57,8 @@ def _build_optimizer(
 
         if optimizer_name in dir(th.optim):
             optimizer = getattr(th.optim, optimizer_name)
-            self.optimizer = optimizer(model.parameters(), **optimizer_args)
+            optimizer_args.setdefault("params", model.parameters())
+            self.optimizer = optimizer(**optimizer_args)
         else:
             raise ValueError("Unknown optimizer: {}".format(optimizer_name))
         return self.optimizer