A bicep curl is an isolation exercise

I wanted to do a quick post today to show you the difference between what we call compound and isolation exercises. It’s quite important to know the difference if you’re using weights which you should know by now are important not only for building muscle, but also losing weight, as the more muscle in the body, the less room for fat. If you’ve not implemented strength training into your programme then you need to, and I’ve got a great solution for you which I’ll come onto in a moment.

But first of all, what’s the difference between a compounds and isolation exercise?

A compound movement is where several muscle groups are being used at once. So, in the example below we have a press up. The press up is a big ‘pushing movement’ which develops the pectorals (chest), triceps (back of arms, or bingo wings!) and delts (shoulders). A compound exercise is great because when multiple muscle groups are recruited, you get more bang for your buck – perfect if you’re short of time and want to get the whole body exercised. By putting a series of compound exercises together in what we call a circuit, you can seriously increase the heart rate, which is ideal for fat stripping workouts.

Compound = Pressup

Now an isolation exercise is where one muscle group is being recruited, such in the example below of the tricep kickback. These exercises are great if you’re looking to build a certain area of the body, but if you’re looking to get overall strength, you can easily make do with big compound movements. In my bootcamps we tend to work large muscle groups (compound), which create more of a hormonal response, thus generating more fat stripping and weight loss cells.

It would take three isolation exercises to get the same benefit of the pressup. You would have to perform a tricep exercise, a shoulder exercise and a chest exercise. By executing compound movements, these are what we call functional exercises, movements that your muscles would require for day to day operation, recruiting multiple muscles, at different intensities.

Isolation = Tricep Kickback

Where isolation exercises are definately beneficial, I think they tend to be overused for many people who simply want to lose weight – bigger compound movents such as squats, deadlifts and the above pressup are fantastic for both. People get conditioned in the gym to working all of the isolation machines, where they could simply hit the compound movements and get the same results.  Plus remember your rep ranges 15 for toning, 12 for size and 8 and lower for strength. Having said that, you need to work until you feel uncomfortable remember, let the lactic acid in the muscles build up until it’s like a balloon about to pop!

If you’re looking for more exericse demos, with all the muscles used then head over to http://www.strength-training-anatomy-exercises.com

If on the other hand you’re looking for specific fat burning workouts then one of which I would highly recommend is Craig Ballantyne’s Turbulance Training System which I have arranged you a $4.95 trial of.