"Muscle groups are components of systems, and when the systems are worked, so are their components"
Mark Rippetoe
"How can I work the inner, upper, side of my left pec"
"How do I increase the size of this part of my thigh?"
"What are the best biceps curl exercises you would recommend"
Questions predominantly geared towards either isolating one muscle group or towards chasing some unrealistic physical ideal. Now, its not like I have anything against isolation work and indeed they do have their place in many programs (as do machines and cables), but most of the guys who ask these questions major in the minors. Why are they trying to isolate their triceps when they should really be working to improve their main lifts (bench press, squat, and deadlift)? What's the point in trying to isolate your biceps and lats individually when heavy chinups will work both simultanously whilst stimulating the growth hormone response elicited by full body training? And what if you don't use weights, what then? are you not going to work out or indeed move at all? If that were the case, history would be littered with the remains of ancestors who just stood still whilst being eaten by sabre tooth tigers. My point is, KEEP YOUR TRAINING SIMPLE! Don't make it more complicated than it needs to be. Perform the basic exercises hard and with good technique, go home, and have a life.
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| "Go ahead, make your jokes, Mr. Jokey... Joke-maker. But let me hit you with some knowledge..." |
Push
Pull
Squat
Hinge
Lunge
There are other important movements, such as twisting, loaded carries etc, but these are the basics and will give you the most bang for you buck, especially if you are short on time.
FUNCTION
Training a movement works many muscle groups in concert. These are called compound exercises. Compound exercises almost always beat isolation exercises with regards to overall muscle growth, muscle "toning", fat burning, and functional carryover to athletics and daily life. Will a bicep curl (isolation) or a deadlift (compound) make you better at picking up something heavy from the ground? A deadlift of course, because training also follows the rule of specificity, meaning you get good at what you train. Doing curls will make you better at doing curls, and while this is good, I can't remember the last time I had to lift a 20 kilo steak to my mouth (well, there was that fateful night, years ago at that Argentinean steak house, but I try not to remember that). Exceptions to the compound beats isolation rule are of course in the rehabilitation of clinical populations, although even this is up for some serious debate among experts.
AESTHETICS
But what about my six pack and big arms you may cry! While I don't disagree with the notion of training solely for appearance (Heck we all wanna look good right!?), why do just that when you can have an aesthetically pleasing, as well as functional and healthy body? I've worked in geriatrics, and believe me, when you're 80 you're not gonna care about having a six pack or how many versions of triceps extensions you can do, you're gonna want to be able to sit down and get back up again without suffering an anal prolapse. And girls, don't think that hundreds of repetitions with light weights or living on the elliptical bike is going to tone you up. A steady diet of heavy push, pull, squat, and hinge movements will do more for your body recomposition (read: firm butt) than all the rest combined.
THE MOVEMENTS
SQUAT
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| GET DOWN!! |
A squat is any movement where you bend your knees and lower your hips down toward the ground. You basically sit down and stand back up. Doing so requires considerable leg strength, as well as the ability to stabilize the spine. It also improves hip mobility and general flexibility. Babies squat, as do adult humans in most sports, and in many daily activities. Training the squat is one of the most important things you can do as it is also one of the key attributes humans lose as they age. Aesthetically, it is important because a muscular and toned upper body looks weird sitting on top of a skinny pair of legs, and unless you never plan on taking your pants off or wearing shorts in front of another person, you better get squatting!
Examples of good squat exercises
Bodyweight squat
Barbell Back squat
Barbell Front squat
Goblet squat
Box squat
Jump squat
PULL
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| Somewhere in the world.. Mario Lopez' robotic identical twin is doing barbell rows topless in a living room.. |
Humans tend to pull themselves toward things, or things toward them. Our tree climbing ancestors were dependent on it for survival. Pulling food to our faces is far more appealing that just ramming our faces into food, and usually without the resultant neck pain and unsightly eating style. Pulling exercises are also a wonderful prophylactic for muscoskeletal disorders. Neck, back and shoulder pain can often be attributed to the protracted shoulders and increased kyfotic spinal curves in many individuals (shoulders hunched forward and excessively rounded upper back). This changes the biomechanics of normal anatomical shoulder and neck function, often leading to injury. Pulling exercises tend to promote thoracic extension and scapular retraction (a straight back and pulled-back shoulders), normalizing the functional shoulder girdle/neck relationship. Aesthetically for men, pulling exercises pull back the shoulders and create the image of a broad chest, as well as straightening out the abs thus creating the appearance of a flatter stomach. Women will enjoy an improved posture, a visually larger chest, and a more pronounced "hour-glass" effect. Most men tend to bench press themselves to early shoulder surgury, as well as decreasing this pull-back effect. Do a reverse Nike and just don't do it. Just... Don't.
Examples of good pull exercises
Chin up
Barbell row
Single arm dumbbell row
Seated row
Chest supported row
PUSH
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| Genetically mutated russian super baby? Or 1950's circus dwarf? Seriously, I have no idea.. |
When we're not pulling stuff towards us, we're usually pushing it away. Now I usually recommend doing more pull exercises than push, as pulling is more therapeutic for the body. Pushing however can make you very strong and is useful in athletics as well as for physical aesthetic enhancement. While the bench press is a useful indicator and builder of raw upper body strength, it might not be ideal for muscular hypertrophy (growth) due to the shorter range of motion in the joints involved in the movement. It also does not provide the atheletic carryover as for example a shoulder press or pushup, as those movements anchor the press into a kinetic chain from the hands to the feet, meaning your whole body presses, not just your arms (it is worth noting, that elite level bench pressers use significant leg drive during heavy benching, a discussion of which is outside the scope of this article). For girls, pushing will give you the arm strength to not have to rely on a man, and for men, pushing will make give you the arm strength to not have to rely on a man.
Examples of good push exercises
Push up
Bench press
Shoulder press
Incline dumbbell bench press
Dips
HINGE
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| Mario Lopez' EVIL robotic identical twin. You can tell by the red shorts and the fact that he's not smiling.. |
When was the last time you picked something up? Im guessing it happens so often you don't even remember. The ability to hinge at the hip is something so vital in training that it rivals the squat in functionality, and perhaps (in my opinion) exceeds it. You hinge when you perform a deadlift or back extension. It refers to the ability of the trainee to isometrically (statically) contract the muscles of the trunk to hold them rigid whilst hinging, or bending at the hip. During this motion your glutes (butt) are either performing a concentric (shortening) hip extension, or eccentric (lengthening) hip flexion, whilst keeping the spine held rigid and straight. This protects the spine and teaches proper lifting mechanics, and when trained with heavy weights, improves the lifting proficiency of an individual under less than ideal conditions (such as when you round your back lifting a heavy box or sofa, or when wrestling an oiled up sumo wrestler on a hot day). Good, strong hip extension will also tone and build your backside, rendering brazilian butt lift surgery unnecessary for the posteriorly impaired. It also strengthens your posterior chain, which consists of all the muscles on the back of your body, translating to better performance in almost all sports. So don't be a back hater, make Sir Mixalot proud!
Examples of good hinge exercises
One-legged Deadlift
Kettlebell swing
Back extension
LUNGE
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| Lunges may save your life one day.. |
If you dont know what a lunge is you've probably been living under a rock for the past few thousand years from a time when lunges didnt exist and humans simply flew on the backs of pterodaktyls to get everywhere... Well, it could happen. For the cavemen out there, a lunge is any movement where you take a step in a given direction, and lower your other knee to the floor, putting you in a split stance, sort of a spread-out squat. Now, while I don't necessarily believe lunges are needed for simple body recomposition (getting ripped), they are indeed useful for trainees. The split stance in a lunge creates more instability and therefore does not allow as much weight to be used, however, this very instability can be remarkably useful to athletes, or those who (for structural reasons) cannot perform correct bilateral squats. A football or basketball player rarely works under perfect conditions of uninterrupted stability, and so stability must be enhanced. Lunges may be useful for an individual focused on fat loss due to the larger recruitment of muscle motor-units and our ability to use metabolic variants that work better for conditioning, such as walking lunges, jumping lunges, and my favorite, backward lunges. And before you ask yes, I do have a favorite lunge variation, and no it's not weird! is it?!?
Examples of good lunge exercises
Forward lunge
Backward lunge
Bulgarian split squat
Jumping lunges
Walking lunges
Jumping lunges
Walking lunges
CONCLUSION
I hope that my ramblings have convinced you of the benefit of movement based vs isolation/muscle group based training. I am in no way completely mocking isolation training, and specificity programs can be useful. However, consider this, there are no movements in nature where you purely isolate just one muscle. Machines were designed artificially for this purpose and their application in training flies in the face of millions of years of mammalian evolution. The only problem with movement based training is that it often has a learning curve, that is, it requires time to learn. But if there ever was anything worth investing in, surely its your health? It really does suck when its gone.
Furthermore, training simple movements, hard and with purpose, is much more time efficient that doing a 6 day bodybuilder split where each day focuses on a different muscle followed by ravenous gorging on genetically modified protein isolates. Ladies and gentlemen, that is no way to live.
I rest my case.
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Note: All of the exercises described above can be easily searched for on YouTube. However, if you have any difficulty or are unsure of how to perform them, seek out a qualified coach in your area or send me a tweet and ill try to help you out.
Note: All of the exercises described above can be easily searched for on YouTube. However, if you have any difficulty or are unsure of how to perform them, seek out a qualified coach in your area or send me a tweet and ill try to help you out.
