Which type of exercise is better? Basic or Isolation?
That all depends on what you are trying to accomplish. Are you trying to build strength or size, or are you trying to refine the musculature that you already have?
Basic exercises, also referred to as compound movements, are the exercises that work several groups of muscle together with a single movement. The best example of a basic movement is the squat.
Each time you squat down and then press your body back up, you are working muscles in your quadriceps, hamstrings, buttocks, lower back, and other back muscles. Many muscles throughout the body are also actively involved in stabilization during this lift.
Isolation exercises are the movements that stress only one muscle group at a time. An example of an isolation exercise is cable chest flyes. With each repetition you do, the weight is moved almost completely by your chest muscles.
Building the Right Foundation
If you are trying to build a base of strength or muscle size, basic exercises are key to your success, and for most people out there, basic exercises should compose a majority of their workouts.
This is because basic movements will give you the best gains for the amount of effort you put in. It’s true that working more muscles with a single workout is clearly more time efficient than working each muscle separately, but there’s more to it than that. (more…)
Continue reading about Basic Vs. Isolation Exercises, Chisels or Dynamite?
All this time you thought those thousands of sit-ups were going to build you a six pack… only to have me tell you that you might have been wasting your time.
(And chances are, you have no business doing any abs work – unless your diet is great, you are (more…)
Anybody new to the gym knows how difficult it can be to make sense of all of the machines and equipment that fill the workout room. Instead of trying to analyze each of the different machines in the gym, get to know the free weights first. The free weights will give you the greatest returns for the effort you put in.
Barbells are probably the most basic instrument for lifting free weights. They can come in many sizes, but the most standard is called the Olympic barbell (the top bar in the picture above).
The Olympic barbell weighs either 45 pounds or 20 kilograms (44.5 lbs) depending on which part of the world you live in. It’s usually used for the heavier exercises such as squats, bench presses, deadlifts, shoulder presses, etc.
The smaller straight bar shown just below the Olympic bar is great for many upper body exercises where having the weight closer to your body is beneficial. For example, if you were doing standing bicep curls, you may find that having the weights closer to their center of gravity (and closer to you) makes them easier to control. (more…)
Continue reading about Barbells, Dumbbells, Weights and Plates
For Newbies Only:
We will continue our series of Weight Lifting 101 posts here by introducing some new terms that you will have to become familiar with if you are going to succeed in changing the way you look. As you may have already guessed, working out with free weights is a little bit more complicated than doing steady cardio. It’s not as easy as just hopping on a treadmill for 30 minutes.
Since weight lifting is a form of anaerobic exercise, your muscles will not be able to maintain such a high level of intensity for long periods of time. Instead, you will break your exercises into a series of sets that comprise a certain number of repetitions. Let me explain what this means by defining the terms you’ll need to know. (more…)
