Compound vs Isolation Exercises

One of the most common important ways of categorizing weight training workouts is how they train the body and the group of muscles that are being used when performing the workouts. This way we can categorize exercises into two groups. These are:

• Isolation exercises
• Compound exercises

Perhaps you have heard a lot of theories such as how isolation exercises suck or how compound exercises are the best. However, it is not a good idea to generalize this much. This is because the truth of the matter is that isolation vs compound exercise serves a wide range of purposes in different workout routines based on your goal as well as the body. This means that the only option through which you can know the best workouts for you is by getting to the specifics of each.

Compound workouts

The compound workouts are exercises that involve using more than one of the major groups of muscles each time. In a typical case, there is a single muscle that performs most of the work while the smaller groups of muscles are recruited in a secondary way. Some of the major compound workouts include:

• Flat, decline or incline press - This mostly workout the chest, shoulders and the triceps
• Dips - Workouts the chest as the primary muscle group and the shoulders and triceps as the secondary group of muscles
• Overhead shoulder press - These primarily work the shoulders and the triceps as the secondary muscle group.

Other exercises include dead-lifts, squats, pull-ups; chin up s and the lat pull down.

Isolation exercises

These are the workouts that affects only one key muscle group. In a typical case, the movement is done in a way where  there is avoidance of the use of the muscle groups and this leaves one group of muscles isolated and with the ability to do the work. These include bicep curls, triceps extensions, flat, decline or incline flies, calf raises, leg curls and much more.