By Sahil Handa. Sahil is a student at Harvard University as well as a health and fitness aficionado.

 

At some gyms, you’ll walk in and all of the cables and dumbbells will be being used. At some gyms, you’ll walk in and all of the squat racks will be being used. Which of the two depends on the crowd that goes to your gym. The former are fans of isolation movements; the latter swear by compounds. You can guess who’s who.

What are compound movements and what are isolation movements?

A compound movement is any exercise that engages two or more different joints and stimulates multiple muscle groups. In other words, it’s an exercise that involves moving your body through space or pushing weight away from your body. Common compound exercises include:[1]

  • Lower Body: Back Squat, Front Squat, Lunge, Deadlift, Bulgarian Split Squat
  • Upper Body: Bench Press, Pushup, Overheard Press, Dip, Deadlift, Pullup, Row

An isolation movement is any exercise that engages one joint and stimulates a limited number of muscle groups. In other words, it’s an exercise that involves moving a single body part around a joint. Common isolation exercises include:[2]

  • Lower Body: Hamstring Curl, Bulgarian Split Squat, Leg Extension, Calf Raise, Calf Press
  • Upper Body: Tricep Extension, Bicep Curl, Chest Fly, Lateral Dumbbell Raise

You might be asking which ones are superior for muscle growth. That’s a highly debated question, and, as with most questions in the realm of health, fitness, and wellness, it simply depends on your goals. Let’s have a look through the benefits and drawbacks of each so you can decide.

Benefits of Compound Movements

  • Strength
  1. Compound movements lend themselves to advances in strength. Their heavy loads mean that you can often increase their total weight by 2-5lbs, allowing you to consistently each progressive overload in a given rep range. This helps create progressive overload, aiding muscle gain.[3]
  • Progressive Overload
  1. The heavy weights involved in compound exercises make it is easier to slowly increase that weight over time. To make this clearer, imagine adding a 1lb plate to each side after completing a 200lb deadlift. This change (200lb to 202lb) is a progression for your muscles, but it is not as substantial of a progression as adding the same amount of weight to a 20lb barbell curl would be. Therefore, it is easier to make consistent and measurable progress on various compound lifts than it is with isolation lifts.[4]
  • Time
  1. Compound exercises are time efficient, because they incorporate multiple body parts and tax multiple muscle groups at once. By performing them, you can shorter your workouts while ensuring the same quantity of muscular work. This is great for those with tight schedules!
  2. By the same token, compound exercises’ efficiency mean that they require greater rest times between sets (2-5 as opposed to 1-3.) Although they still work out faster with respect total volume, that’s worth keeping in mind when building a workout routine
  • Hormones
  1. The amount of muscle tissue taxed during compound movements mean that they produce particularly high testosterone and human growth hormones responses.[5] This helps to illicit a maximal muscle building response, although the extent of these effects is debatable[6]
  • Calories
  1. More energy is required while performing compound movements than isolation movements. As a result, compound movements have a higher caloric expenditure. If all else remains equal, these movements will help you create a caloric deficit, making it easier to lose weight.[7]
  • Athletic Performance
  1. Most compound movements have direct crossover to real life scenarios. This means that, on the level of performance, they can improve athletic ability to a greater degree than isolation movements.
  • Core Strength
  1. Most compound movements require stabilization from both your core (abdominal region) and various stabilizer muscles. Developing this strength is key to long term health and control over your own body.

Benefits of Isolation Movements

  • Targeting Specific Muscles
  1. Isolation movements make it easy to do exactly what’s in the name: isolate specific body parts and improve their strength/size. This lends itself to bodybuilding, where your natural body composition may mean that you need to focus on some muscle groups more than others in order to achieve a well-rounded, healthy physique.
  • Overcoming Injuries
  1. Since compound exercises involve multiple muscle groups, they are difficult to perform when you are injured.
  • Imbalances (One Side Weaker)
  1. During compound movements we have a tendency to compensate for our weaker side by shifting the weight towards our stronger body part e.g. pushing more with our favored arm during a bench press or curling with our favored arm during a bicep curl.[8]
  2. Isolation movements force you to use a weight that you can perform unilaterally, correcting currently imbalances and preventing future ones
  • More Frequent Workouts
  1. Isolation movements require less rest and recovery than compound movements because they don’t place as much stress on the central nervous system. This means that it is possible to fit a higher number of workouts in per week when these workouts are mainly composed of isolation exercises. Even if the results won’t be superior, if you love the gym, that’s a plus!
  • Safety
  1. The simple nature of most isolation movements and the light loads they usually involve mean that it is possible to train to failure without risking significant injury. This is not the case for compound movements, such as the back squat, where using heavy loads can risk placing excessive pressure on the lower back if technique is not perfect.

Given all of this information, you might be asking why there’s a common association between isolation movement and building muscle. This is largely due to the presence of anabolic steroids in the bodybuilding industry.[9] These illegal and harmful substances aid recovery, making it possible for professional bodybuilders to focus on isolation exercises in extremely long workouts without fatiguing. For natural lifters, such a practice is not possible. Therefore, a more sensible recommendation is to begin your workout with compound exercises and end your workout with isolation movements.[10] That way, you will be at your strongest for these compound movements but will retain a sufficient amount of volume to allow you to focus on specific muscle groups and enjoy the benefits of isolation exercises.[11] The greater number of recruited muscles and elevated tax on the nervous system activity during compound movements means it is a good idea to take more rest between sets when performing these exercises (3-5 minutes) and less rest for isolation movements (1-2 minutes.)

Despite all of these differences between compound and isolation movements, studies have not shown a clear difference in their effectiveness for muscle growth.[12] What they have absolutely shown, however, are differences in strength improvement, required recovery, muscular engagement, and safety.[13] Therefore, although the above recommendation can be considered optimal for an average natural weightlifter, it is important to consider these other factors when determining how many compound and isolation exercises to incorporate into your training program. If you’re recovering from a lower back injury, it is not sensible to incorporate heavy deadlifts or squats into your routine. Likewise, if you are training for a sport such as running, it is inadvisable to begin your workout with bicep curls.

Having said all of this, it’s also true that progressive overload will result in athletic performance and muscular improvements, regardless of whether it’s achieved with compound movements or isolation movements. Sticking to a less than optimal training routine will yield far better results than consistently slipping up on a perfect one, which means you should take everything with a pinch of salt and give persona preference a real hearing.[14] If you enjoy one kind of, that’s great; just make sure that you are aware of how your training could be more or less effective if it were replaced with another one.

 

Works Cited

 

https://www.verywellfit.com/which-is-better-compound-or-isolation-exercises-3120718

https://www.verywellfit.com/which-is-better-compound-or-isolation-exercises-3120718

https://www.muscleforlife.com/compound-exercises/

Compound vs Isolation Exercises

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4592763/

http://publicbody.com/blog/2015/11/17/dont-live-in-isolation-compound-vs-isolation-movements

Compound Vs Isolation Exercises – Which is better?

How Much More Muscle Can You Build With Steroids?

https://www.aworkoutroutine.com/compound-exercises-vs-isolation-exercises/

5 Bodybuilding Lessons From The Pre-Steroid Era

https://www.iifym.com/isolation-compound-exercises-superior/

https://bayesianbodybuilding.com/compound-vs-isolation-exercise/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2968119/

How Isolation Exercises Are Killing Your Workout

[1] https://www.verywellfit.com/which-is-better-compound-or-isolation-exercises-3120718

[2] https://www.verywellfit.com/which-is-better-compound-or-isolation-exercises-3120718

[3] https://www.muscleforlife.com/compound-exercises/

[4] http://wellfellow.com/isolation-vs-compound-workout/

[5] https://relentlessgains.com/compound-vs-isolation-exercises-which-is-best-for-mass/

[6] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4592763/

[7] http://publicbody.com/blog/2015/11/17/dont-live-in-isolation-compound-vs-isolation-movements

[8] https://cathe.com/compound-vs-isolation-exercises-which-is-better/

[9] https://www.strongerbyscience.com/much-steroids-increase-hypertrophy/

[10] https://www.aworkoutroutine.com/compound-exercises-vs-isolation-exercises/

[11] http://www.healthylivingheavylifting.com/5-bodybuilding-lessons-from-the-pre-steroid-era/

[12] https://www.iifym.com/isolation-compound-exercises-superior/

[13] https://bayesianbodybuilding.com/compound-vs-isolation-exercise/

[14] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2968119/