Choose exercises that suit your needs and your body…
Now I’m going to let the cat out of the bag: while the main compound exercises are undoubtedly the most effective tools for building mass in general, isolation exercises are far from the trivial, worthless movements they are often made out to be. In some individuals, isolation exercises actually stimulate more growth in a particular muscle involved in a compound movement than the compound exercise itself does. This comes down to both mechanical and neural factors.
Mechanical factors
The reality is that some people simply do not have a skeletal structure well suited to compound exercises. For example, people with very long legs find squatting particularly difficult. Because of their body structure, they often struggle to stimulate any significant growth in leg muscle mass through squats, front squats and even leg presses alone.
This certainly does not mean that building muscle is impossible with certain body structures; that would be untrue. Your body’s structure and individual characteristics instead determine how you should approach training and which tools (exercises) you should use.
The same approach does not work for everyone, and some people need to think much more carefully about how they train their bodies. This may well mean including isolation exercises such as leg extensions or leg curls, as well as exercises that work each arm or leg separately (unilateral exercises). For example, people with short, stocky legs have a frame better suited to squatting and may therefore achieve complete lower-body development through squats alone.
The same is true of all compound exercises. The lesson is that the less favorable your biomechanics are for a particular compound movement, the more carefully planned assistance work you need to perform that movement well and build the muscles involved.
Neural factors
Because of your body’s individual characteristics and the tendency of certain muscles to dominate, you may not always be able to optimally recruit the muscle (or muscle group) that is supposed to do most of the work in a particular compound exercise. When you perform an exercise with the aim of developing your chest, for example, your body does not know that you are trying to use the movement to develop a specific muscle. It simply recognizes that a heavy weight is bearing down on you, that you must not let it overpower you, and that you need to lift it. Your nervous system therefore automatically recruits the muscles best suited to performing that movement.
For example, if your deltoids and triceps tend to dominate when you bench press, your chest muscles will consistently contribute little to pressing movements, while your body will rely heavily on your deltoids and triceps to complete them. This explains why some men bench press enormous weights yet have virtually no chest muscle mass. In this situation, you need to include more isolation work for your chest to build its muscle mass and increase its contribution to the press. The reverse is also true. Some people are chest-dominant and need virtually no isolation assistance work beyond pressing to build substantial chest muscle mass.
It follows that we should not be framing the discussion around whether isolation exercises or compound exercises are better or more useful. The key is for you to find the right balance of compound and isolation exercises to maximize performance and fully develop your physique.
Of course, we can all build a good amount of mass using compound exercises alone and focusing on progression. However, to achieve maximum development in both mass and performance, the main priority for 90% of people who train should be incorporating the right isolation exercises into their training in sufficient volume.
If you have done nothing but presses for a long time, you have probably reached only 80% of your potential in both performance and mass. Reaching your full potential may simply require that remaining 20% of isolation work.
[url=http://www.fitness.ee/artikkel/1358/parim-treeningu-artikkel-mida-olen-lugenud-i]The best training article I’ve ever read… I[/url]
[url=http://www.fitness.ee/artikkel/1362/parim-treeningu-artikkel-mida-olen-lugenud-iii]The best training article I’ve ever read… III[/url]
Original article [url=http://www.t-nation.com/article/most_recent/the_thib_system_8212_fatigue_and_best_exercises]HERE[/url]
Author: Janar Rückenberg (translation)
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