Hi

Yesterday we delved into compound exercises, so today it's only natural to focus on isolation exercises.

As a recap, isolation exercises focus on one major muscle group at a time, with movement/engagement of other muscles kept to the mimumum.

Why Use Isolation Exercises?

Isolation exercises are often recommended to correct muscle imbalance or weakness that often occurs after an injury. Isolating a specific muscle is sometimes necessary to get it to activate and increase its strength. Often, after an injury, a muscle becomes weak and other muscles compensate for that weakness. If you never retrain the injured muscles to fire properly again, it may set up a biomechanical imbalance that is difficult to correct.  One of the main reasons to keep the use of any support strap, etc, to the minimum whilst recovering.

Even if your weakness isn't noticeable because other muscles are compensating, imagine how much stronger you would be if all the muscles were firing at maximum contraction. That alone is a good reason to occasionally do isolation exercises.

Another reason to perform specific isolated exercises is to increase the size or bulk of a specific muscle group. If you want big biceps for your spring break beach vacation, you'll probably want to add some bicep isolation work to your regular exercise routine.

Here's a list of the most common isolation exercises and which muscle groups are trained:

 • Flat, Incline or Decline Flyes (dumbbell, cable or machine)
   Muscle Group Trained: Chest

 • Lateral Raises or Front Raises (dumbbell, cable or machine)
   Muscle Group Trained: Shoulders

 • Biceps Curls (barbell, dumbbell, cable or machine)
   Muscle Group Trained: Biceps

 • Triceps Extensions (barbell, dumbbell, cable or machine)
   Muscle Group Trained: Triceps

 • Leg Extensions
   Muscle Group Trained: Quads

 • Leg Curls 
   Muscle Group Trained: Hamstrings

 • Calf Raises
   Muscle Group Trained: Calves

Basically, if an exercise involves raising, curling or extending, it’s usually training just one major muscle group, and that makes it an isolation exercise.

Most healthy athletes will use compound exercises for the majority of a training program and use isolation exercises to complement that program as needed.

Paul