Compounds And Isolations
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When you start working out, you will probably hear that there are “compound” and “isolation” exercises. But what are they actually and when should you use which?
Compounds Should Be Your Staple
Compounds are exercises that work many muscles at once, while an isolation mainly targets one muscle. An example for a compound would be push-ups, that work your chest, triceps and the frontal portion of your shoulders, while kickbacks would be an example for an isolation, as they only train one muscle: your triceps.
If you do too many isolations, you may end up with a physique that doesn’t look, shall we say, “organic”, because you may not train the muscles in proportion, develop imbalances and could end up with a biceps that doesn’t look like it goes together with your triceps.
This means that the staple of your workouts should be compounds, where many muscles work at once and all of them will be complimentary to one another.
No Isolations At All?
Does that mean isolations have no room at all in a workout. No, there are two instances where isolations are vital:
- If you worked out for a quite a while and notice a specific body part is lagging behind
- If a body part was injured and needs to catch up
Video
Here is the video to this article:
Picture courtesy of Mike Baird.
10 Comments
I hate isolation exercises.It feels like i haven’t worked out at all.
Nooo, isolations help develop each muscles more. Compound excercises hold back certain muscles because of weak links
Compounds exercise the musclegroups in sync so all the muscles get equally strong after the weak links catch up
I’d say compounds would be better for a beginner who’s trying to lose weight though, otherwise, I’d mainly use isolation and superset muscle groups
Say pull ups for example. They work the back biceps and a bit of shoulder, if you only do pullups for lats and the biceps than you wont have enough biceps compared to lats, that is why I like isolation
You can do bicep pullups
But evil is saying that compounds are the way to go in the beginning. If your only goal is getting fit and healthy then compounds are better. If you’re going to compete as a professional bodybuilder then you need isolations more.
Yeah, the more you use isolations, the better shape you will eventually be in
Personally, I find it’s better to do multiple variations of compound exercises to emphasize different body parts vs doing isolation. Like doing multiple variations of push ups, wide grip for chest emphasis and diamond and sphinx for triceps emphasis.
Very good point