Hi

I thought I'd kick off the next few emails on one of the topics that anyone who's been training for a while is likely to be familiar with and that's the question of compound vs isolation exercises.

I'll set out my position from the start, I'm a fan of compound, but not at the exclusion of isolated!  Without wanting to get all "new age", the body is a single system and any exercise routine should workout the whole body.  Ok, that being said, what are some of the things to consider when it comes to this ....

Let's start off with a couple of simple definitions
 - compound exercises -- these work more than one muscle group at a time and typically, these are the major muscles.
 - isolation exercises -- as the name implies, this is where the exercise is more focused on a single muscle group.

Both forms of exercise provide a range of benefits depending on your objectives and your body.

Bottom line,
 - If an exercise involves pushing, pulling, squatting or deadlifting, it’s usually training more than one major muscle group, and that makes it a compound exercise. Because multiple muscle groups are involved, you can lift more weights, resulting in faster and more consistent progression.
 - If an exercise involves raising, curling or extending, it’s usually training just one major muscle group, and that makes it an isolation exercise. However, as it is a single muscle group, the weights involved will be lighter, which means that the results are less visible.

This is one of the reasons why people tend to focus on the compound workouts - results are more visible which provides more motivation to continue training.

Clearly, you need to do both!  Think about it another way, if you were only doing exercises to focused on your upper body, but ignored your lower body, it'd look very strange as your body wouldn't be proportional and this is similar with the compound and isolation exercises.  It's also another reason to mix up your workout to include free weights as this exercises/strengthens your core muscles.  Determining which is "better" for you, will depend on how long you've been training, your goals and your body.  I'll cover more specifics in the next few emails.

As I said at the outset, your training programme has to workout the whole body.  

Paul