Once in the gym, most beginners have meager knowledge of physical education, sports, and muscle development, which are based on the characteristics of human anatomy. Lack of necessary knowledge is the reason for the failure of novice athletes to achieve their goals. The article discusses issues related to basic and isolating exercises, the concept of which is important for every athlete to have before drawing up their training plan.
Compound or basic exercises
By this concept is meant any exercises that require movement in more than one joint to implement them. This definition involves the involvement of many muscle groups. The latter fact, in turn, suggests that either the whole body, or most of it, will experience stress.
A vivid example of basic exercises are squats, during which the athlete performs movements in the thigh and knee joints, as well as in the ankle. At the same time, the buttocks, quadriceps, biceps femoris, calf muscles and, to some extent, the lower back and abdominal load get a load.
Isolating exercises
Considering the issue of basic and isolating exercises for girls and men, it is necessary to define the latter.
By isolating exercises we understand such movements of our body that are carried out only with the help of the work of one joint. You can often find such a definition that supposedly insulating exercises work out a specific muscle, but this is not true. Firstly, it is impossible to isolate one muscle in our body, and secondly, any movement even in one joint makes even a small, but nevertheless, muscle group work.
An example of this type of exercise is to bend the arm holding the dumbbell at the elbow. With this movement, the main load falls on the biceps muscles of the working arm, while the movement occurs in only one joint, the rest of the body is at rest.
Thus, basic and isolating exercises differ from each other in the number of joints that are involved in their implementation. Therefore, the former are often called multi- or multi-joint, and the latter are called single-joint.
Which exercises are better?
The mistake of beginners is that they spend most of the time in the simulator, performing isolating exercises. It is not right. The fact is that only basic exercises are used to effectively gain muscle mass of the whole body, since each of them develops several muscle groups at once. Moreover, they stimulate the production of testosterone and growth hormone in the body, while training the respiratory and cardiovascular systems, as well as coordination abilities. Therefore, choosing between basic and isolating exercises, the bet should be placed on the first.
Isolating exercises should be included in the training program only for the purpose of more complete study of a muscle group so that it does not look poorly developed against the background of the rest of the muscles.
List of basic and isolated exercises
Now we turn to the specific names of the considered types of physical exercises.
In powerlifting, three basic exercises and three additional ones are considered basic (in the list below they are listed in order):
- deadlift;
- bench press on a training bench;
- Squats
- "paddle" using a bar;
- pull-ups;
- army bench press.
So, deadlift involves the muscles of the legs, lower back, arms, shoulders and trapeze. The bench press on the bench loads the triceps, shoulders and chest muscles. Squats train your legs and lower body completely.
Now we give the second part of the list of basic and isolating exercises:
- bending the arm holding the dumbbell in the elbow in front of you;
- bending the arm holding the dumbbell in the elbow behind the head;
- lateral dumbbell lifts in a standing position on straight arms;
- spreading the arms to the sides in front of you using the appropriate power simulator;
- lifting the body in the supine position (both using the simulator, and without it);
- lifting a straight or bent leg when the athlete is on all fours;
- bending the knees in a sitting position using the simulator.
As can be seen from this part of the list, each of these exercises involves only a few muscles during its execution. These can be muscles of the upper body (biceps, triceps, and others) or lower (buttocks, biceps, and others).
The technique of performing basic basic exercises
In this paragraph, we briefly describe the feature of the technique for performing three basic exercises: deadlift, bench press and squats.
Deadlift (photo below) is performed as follows: the athlete approaches the barbell, bends his knees, takes the bar wider than the width of his shoulders, his back is even, and his eyes are directed forward. Then the initial push is performed by movement in the femoral joint, after which the knees come into action. Final position: the athlete stands straight, straight arms hold the barbell.
The bench press on the bench (photo below) is performed as follows: the athlete lies on the training bench, the buttocks and upper back are firmly on it, and the legs rest against the entire surface of the foot on the floor on both sides of the bench. Then the athlete takes the barbell with a grip, which is slightly wider than the width of his shoulders. After the correct initial position has been taken, the athlete begins to raise and lower the barbell to the chest using movements in the elbow and shoulder joints.
Finally, the squats are as follows: the athlete puts his legs a little wider than the width of the shoulders, then, keeping his back straight, bends the legs at the knees, lowering his body until the knees extend further than the toes of the feet, after that you need to raise the body again returning to the starting position.
The techniques described are classic. Naturally, there are a large number of types of these exercises, for which you need to master a slightly excellent technique. In any case, for a beginner it is preferable to first learn the classical performance.
Isolation Exercise Technique
In this paragraph, we describe three types of exercises: biceps, triceps and buttocks.
- Biceps. The athlete sits on a bench, spreads his legs wide, rests his elbow on one knee against the knee, takes a dumbbell in the other hand. Having rested the elbow of the working arm in the inner part of the leg, he begins to perform bending and straightening the arm at the elbow.
- Triceps. The athlete stands straight, legs shoulder-width apart, takes a dumbbell in one hand and lifts it by the head, with the other hand holds the elbow with the first. Exercise consists in raising and lowering the dumbbell behind the head using the work of the elbow joint.
- Buttocks. The athlete lies down on a special simulator with his stomach (see photo below), his legs are fixed, he puts his palms on the back of the head, after which he begins to perform flexion and extension of the body, lifting it and lowering it. Note that the described movements create a load not only on the buttocks, but also on the biceps (inner thigh).
The basis of the technique for performing isolating exercises is the reliable fixation (or emphasis) of the working joint.
Basic and isolated buttock exercises
We will specially raise this issue in a separate paragraph, since many girls focus on this part of the body. Buttocks are one of the largest muscles of our body, therefore effective training for them is to maximize the load. This can be done by practicing basic and insulating exercises on the buttocks. Good examples of the former are deadlift and squats. As for the second, in addition to the bending and extension of the trunk in the supine position noted above, we note a couple of exercises:
- The athlete gets on all fours, then, tears off the knee of one leg from the floor and raises the bent leg up.
- This exercise is performed similarly to the first with the only difference being that a straight leg should be raised and lowered.
Both exercises are excellent for buttock training. Moreover, they can be made with extra weight attached to the ankle.