Are Isolation Weight Lifting Exercises Wasteful For Maximum Muscle Building?
|
By :
Francesco Castano
|
A popular bodybuilding notion asserts the superiority of compound weight lifting workout plans as compared with isolation movements; proponents claim that the most effective method of muscle building involves choosing weight lifting workout routines that stimulate the greatest number of muscle fibers. Moreover, followers of this form of weight lifting believe that because the amount of weight used in compound exercise is larger than isolation movements, overall muscle growth will also be significantly superior, and therefore a weight training session should center around compound exercises as its foundation. But many will push this notion further, removing all isolation exercises from their weight training routine, focusing completely on compound workouts alone, with the assumption that this will offer the most substantial muscle size increase.
As is usually the case with bodybuilding folklore, the truth is far different from the popular claims, as although compound weight lifting exercises certainly will be extremely effective, and should become the basis for any effective weight lifting workout plan, a few isolation exercises are also necessary for any weight lifter who wishes to produce the best possible muscle growth, and those who avoid isolation exercise will begin to produce a disproportional physique, with certain muscle groups, such as the arms, becoming less impressive as the chest and back begin to explode with muscularity, and this issue stems from a lack of proper isolation methods.
Arms are one muscle group where this is very common, with some claiming that compound back exercises are alone capable of producing complete biceps development, and compound chest and shoulder exercises will beef up the triceps with large amounts of muscle mass, all without any isolation exercises to target these particular areas. Performing compound weight lifting movements will certainly allow the smaller muscles such as the biceps to grow, but the focus of the workout set when performing a compound weight lifting movement such as seated rows is the back, with the biceps, in this instance, used for support in completing this exercise. The goal is to focus upon the back muscles during seated row, and therefore, the arms will not receive sufficient overload since the back muscles are to experience maximum emphasis, meaning that the biceps are only trained to a certain percentage of their potential capacity. This same idea applies to triceps during bench press, where the goal is to fatigue the pecs, and the triceps are not to fail prior to the chest in order for the weight lifting movement to function as intended, therefore, the triceps only receive a fraction of the necessary overload.
Because of this, isolation exercises targeting smaller muscles become necessary if those areas are to reach their genetic potential, meaning that isolation weight lifting exercises rejected by some bodybuilders, such as curls, side laterals, and triceps dips become critical in providing sufficient overload to reach failure for smaller muscles, as a bodybuilder, with these additional exercises, is then able to propel those isolated muscles to complete failure, and therefore produce the greatest muscle growth.
There is no doubt that an effective weight lifting workout regimen cannot be based upon isolation exercises alone, and certain bodybuilders on the other extreme unfortunately become obsessed with performing every available weight lifting variation of a specific exercise, extending their workout length to the point of emotional breakdown. Therefore, the proper pairing of compound and isolation movements are necessary for those who wish to achieve the most dramatic gains in muscle size, without bypassing any particular muscle group. The error many make is to either surround their weight lifting workout sessions with far too few isolation exercises, where smaller muscle groups suffer, or they alternatively perform such a substantial quantity of isolation exercises that their weight lifting workouts lack intensity, which derails the potential for maximum muscle building.
Remember that the most potent bodybuilding methods involve a proper blend of both compound and isolation weight lifting exercises to dodge any of these potential pitfalls. If you currently find that smaller muscles such as the biceps, shoulders and triceps are lagging in size when compared with other muscles (chest, back, quads, etc), then you should strongly consider implementing some isolation exercises for these particular muscles so that they can grow to their maximum genetic limits.
|
Author Resource:-
Francesco Castano authors MuscleNOW.com, a workout routine for building muscle mass without supplements or drugs. He also owns FatVanish.com, where you will find his natural weight loss program.
|
Article From article monkeys article directory
Submitted
2009-07-23 07:43:33
|
 Printer ready view |
Want this article for your site? -  HTML ready view
Article source - http://www.articlemonkeys.com/Are-Isolation-Weight-Lifting-Exercises-Wasteful-For-Maximum-Muscle-Building-7520.html
|
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.articlemonkeys.com/images/icon_Rss.png "XML Feed For RSS") Rss Feed for Category - http://www.articlemonkeys.com/rss.php?rss=164
|
|
|
|
.jpg "Free Traffic System - Increase Targeted Website Traffic with Free
Unlimited One Way Links")
