🔥COMPOUND VERSUS ISOLATION

📍Compound
➖In compound exercises, you are typically doing major lifts like squat, deadlift, bench press, overhead press, etc. These exercises all have something in common and are generally focused on more than “isolation” exercises.

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➖The common factor in compound exercises is that it is a multi jointed movement typically. Meaning, that there is more than one joint involved during a lift.
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➖Example
Let’s take for example the squat. The squat requires the ankle, knee, and hip joint to either flex or extend in order to have a proper squat. Similarly in a bench press. The elbow flexes and extends while the shoulder horizontally abducts and adducts.

➖Compound exercises are focused on more because they allow more muscle to be utilized which means you can use heavier weights which also means that there is a bigger stimulus for growth.

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📍Isolation
➖Isolation exercises is kind of the opposite and generally involves motion at a single joint, or is targeting one specific area.

➖Example
Preacher bicep curls is a great example of an isolation exercises which attempts to create active insufficiency of the short head of the bicep because it crosses the shoulder joint and originates up on the coracoid process of the scapula. This means that it will be too short to create an effective force meaning the long head of the bicep will be the one doing most of the work. Therefore you would be “isolating” the long head of the bicep along with the brachialis. You can also do this with the calves. You can do seated calf raises which would “isolate” the soleus muscle.

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➖I write “isolation” with quotations because you can’t truly completely isolate a single muscle. There will still be more than just that one muscle involved, but to a lesser degree.
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Hope this helped you out in guiding how you would want to structure your own program and with exercise selection.