Compound Workouts FTW!

At just about any gym you have the ability to choose to do compound workouts or isolation exercises. If you don’t know the difference, here’s the difference:

Compound workouts work a few muscle groups in one exercise. Examples of compound workouts include:  Bench press, squat, pull ups, dead lift, and bent over rows.

Isolation workouts are exercises that work on only one muscle at a time. They isolate that muscle. Examples of these would be: Preacher curls, triceps extensions, shoulder press, leg extensions, and leg curls.

Both are great for you and you can get a lot of results by using them in conjunction, such as doing a compound workout like squat that will work about every muscle in your legs and then doing isolation on each muscle to get that extra work done.

However, this post is to explain a lot of the benefits of compound workouts.

1. They’ll work muscles out in less than half the time. Rather than doing 3 sets for abs, 3 sets for quads, 3 sets for hamstrings, 3 sets for calves, and 3 sets for glutes you can do 3 sets of heavy squats and get about the same amount of work done.
2. They will help you condition better. Rather than doing an isolation workout and working one muscle you are working several, and a lot of your body is involved at once so you are going to get winded a lot faster. Get used to doing repitions with good form on dead lift or squat and you will be incredibly well conditioned.
3. They are pure awesome. You may occasionally hear someone ask how much you can preacher curl of chest press, but it’s more likely you’ll be asked how much you can bench or squat or weighted pull up when asked how strong you are. When asked these questions you want to be strong and built on a solid foundation so these workouts are generally the right ones to do in the gym world.

That’s all I’ve got to say about compound exercises in this post. I’m sure I can give you more information later and some information on isolation workouts as I am always learning new things myself. Keep working out and remember to build mass, one pump at a time. 

Lastly, take a look at this shirt my friend bought. I thought it was hilarious so here it is.