Too many athletes fall for the hook of isolated movements. Don’t repeat their mistakes, don’t sacrifice your progress for the love of single-joint movements. Play the game with basic exercises!

Author: Todd Boomgardner

The training process is a series of choices. You choose the goals you want to achieve and determine what you need to achieve them. Then you decide to devote some of your time and energy to moving towards these goals. It’s simple, isn’t it?

In fact, there are other choices that have a huge impact on the training process, but we rarely give them even a fraction of our attention. One of the most important aspects is to define the concept within which we will consider the human body. Is it a set of independent parts called “muscle groups” that need to be separated and worked out one at a time? Or is it a single system that needs to be trained and strengthened with intense and global incentives?

To be honest, you don’t have to answer this question. I give my hand to cut off that a quick glance at the training program and how you spend time in the gym is enough for me to accurately determine your attitude to the subject of discussion. If week after week, for hours on end, you wade through the jungle of dozens of exercises and try to work each muscle group from all possible angles, then you are a supporter of isolated movements. And I am here to tell you that it is time to change your approach and use it as actively as possible.

I know what you’re thinking: “But Todd, I want to pump up my arms. Therefore, I will train biceps and triceps. And leave me alone”. This point of view distorts the very essence of how the human body moves, grows, and how it generally works. If you want more muscle, stronger muscle, and are aiming for a more athletic physique, basic exercises are the best choices available. This is why almost every one of you should send isolated movements to hell.

Hypertrophy and single-joint movements

Mechanical stress, exercise volume and calories make the muscles grow. This is a simplified explanation, but I prefer it over most of the other explanations because it is clear and easy to apply in practice.

If you are going to build muscle mass according to the proposed scheme, it is clear to you that the highest number of muscles is involved in high-load exercises that create maximum mechanical (muscle) tension. Think about how many joints and muscles are involved in squats, deadlifts, presses, and rows. There is nothing supernatural in these movements. Yes, they are difficult, complex, but when done correctly, they create such a load on the muscles that no isolated exercise can compare.

This is also true in relation to the volume of the load. To stimulate muscle growth, which is provided by heavy compound movements, it will take an unrealistic amount of single-joint exercises.

Without exception, all compound movements are the most effective use of precious time spent in the gym.

Strength and single-joint exercises

Despite the fact that strength is most often symbolized by tense biceps, strength indicators are largely determined not by muscles, but by nerves. Muscle tissue is only able to withstand stress when the central nervous system and its peripheral signaling systems tell the muscles to generate stress. To train your brain and central nervous system motor centers, you need powerful stimuli that require a quick response. But this is much simpler than nuclear physics. All you have to do is lift a heavy load quickly.

Heavy loads are incompatible with isolated exercises. I’m sure you can pick up a weight that will make lifting the biceps an extremely difficult exercise, but it will not be a real challenge for the nervous system.

Biceps curls can stimulate local muscle growth and increase muscle resistance to stress, but the impulse that the brain receives will never be the emergency alarm that shouts “watch out!” Therefore, you will not receive the impulse without which it is impossible to develop the real strength of all muscle groups.

Athleticism and single-joint exercises

The body parts are not isolated from each other. Every muscle, joint, tendon, and bone is part of a system, which in turn makes up an even larger system. The only reason we call the biceps, or hamstrings, independent motor units is due to the curiosity of the ancient Greeks who identified these structures during the dissection of a corpse.

It is enough to look at the human body as a unified and global motor system, and not as isolated motor units in an atlas of anatomy, and it becomes obvious that muscles and joints do not work alone. We move using a complex articular system that extends from head to toe. And as long as artificial devices such as machine rollers do not isolate the joint, natural movement will require the involvement of many joints throughout the body.

Single-joint movements are often performed in a sitting or lying position, and the movement occurs in one joint along the simplest trajectory, which is never seen in everyday physical activity. In sports, we also move freely in space without any external stabilizers like benches, seats or nautilus machines.

Consider this and ask yourself which makes more sense – squats or leg extensions? You know the answer.

Lifting weights cannot be replaced by anything

If you are a competitive bodybuilder and you really need a high bicep peak for your upcoming performance, some single-joint exercises will definitely come in handy. But for most of us, they are simply unnecessary.

I cannot communicate with every athlete, but many people choose single-joint exercises because:

1. They think that pressing or curling can be a substitute for complex multi-joint exercises; or
   
2. They want to develop a specific muscle group or tighten lagging muscles to improve strength in basic exercises.

An example of the latter would be people who believe that machine leg extensions will help them with squats, or that they will be able to tighten more after working out their biceps directly. However, the truth is that simply increasing the volume of the core exercises is a much more effective way to accomplish this.

I know from my own experience that almost all athletes became bigger and stronger when they gave up single-joint exercises for high training loads. Your body doesn’t care about biceps, triceps, or quads. It only evaluates the intensity of the stress factor and adapts to stress, and therefore, well-chosen compound exercises with a high load are best suited to boost muscle growth.

And so that you can quickly reach your cherished goal, I will list my favorite basic exercises to replace the popular single-joint exercises.

Instead of curls for biceps – pull-ups

Most of the pulling movements place a load on the biceps, but the pull-ups are the most effective and powerful of all the pulling options. Pull-ups develop massive arms and a strong back at the same time, so it’s a great and win-win option.

Instead of spreading arms to deltas – presses

The bench press and overhead press hit the deltoid muscles. After the army press or bench press, do not rush to move on to accented deltoid work, but add a couple of approaches to the bench press and give the deltas a heavy load.

Instead of leg curls – Romanian deadlift

Lifting a heavy load and developing an athletic physique requires strong back muscles. PCT trains the hamstrings to become larger and stronger while standing, which is much more applicable in sports and daily life than bending the knees while sitting or lying down.

Instead of leg extensions, front squats

Squats are the king of lower body exercises. Many guys spend years perfecting their squatting skills but stay on the verge of success by ignoring the front squat.

When done correctly, the front squat is a safe movement that generates significant force, which is many times more effective than endless leg extension in a machine.

Basic exercise program

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

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