Mindconnection Brainpower Informational eNewsletter 2023-08-20

To get the adaptive response that improves size and strength, your exercises need to produce three things:

Metabolic stress. The body responds to this with a stress hormone (e.g., cortisol) spike, followed by a growth hormone (e.g., testosterone) spike.
Time under tension. The body responds to this with improvements to the blood supply system (e.g., capillarization).
Muscular damage. The body responds to this with repair efforts. If the other two happen well enough, the new cells will be better versions of the ones you damaged.

Exercises are generally categorized as either compound movements or isolation movements. Most athletes focus on compound movements, most gym rats focus on isolation movements, and bodybuilders do both.

Compound movements

These involve multiple joints. Squats and deadlifts are examples of big compound movements, because they involve so many joints and large muscles. Lat pulldowns also fall into this category, but mostly for the size of the muscles. Standing calf raises are examples of small compound movements, if done in free space (due to the balance aspect). The bench press is in the middle, neither large nor small; it works primarily the front delts which are not that big and the pecs which also are not that big. Not like legs or lats. For safety reasons, compound movements should not be done to failure. They should be done with light enough weight that each rep can be done in perfect form. There's a lot of central nervous system activity with these, don't program that system to have poor form.

Isolation movements

The goal with these is to focus on a single muscle. The leg press is an isolation movement, and because the hamstring is usually the weak partner in the leg you should avoid this exercise unless you need it for physical therapy. Biceps curls, triceps curls, and seated calf raises are examples of isolation movements. You can do these to failure without worrying about safety. You can really focus with the mind-muscle connection and go for maximum intensity. One advantage of isolation movements is you can put a lot less weight on a joint. How you turn your hands or angle your body for reduced mechanical advantage can play a big role in using less weight to get the same muscular damage. Less weight means less joint damage, less ligament strain, and less tendon inflammation.

Comparing the two

For maximum metabolic stress, compound movements are clearly the winner.
Time under tension is the same either way, except more muscle mass is under tension with compound movements.
Isolation exercises can produce far more muscular damage to a given muscle than can compound movements. You can also do very high reps with isolation exercises (for example, as a finishing set) to flush out metabolic waste.

Combining the two

Always start with the compound movements. You want to do these before you have fatigued muscles. Then move into the isolation exercises. Many trainers modify this by doing "pre-exhaustion" of the dominant muscle in a compound movement. For example, you do a set of side lateral raises before doing a set of overhead presses. I also have adopted this modification. But a caution, here. It means you reduce the weight significantly. Otherwise, you overload an unstable joint and that means high risk of an injury. One reason for pre-exhaustion is to work the weaker muscle and another is to just have less weight to deal with.

When thinking about how to combine the two, make "use less weight" a big factor. Ronnie Coleman went the other direction, and now he's on crutches. Then there's 8-time Mr. Olympia Lee Haney, who apparently got doused in ego-repellant as a kid. He is a couple of years older than I am, and he looks fantastic. He is in it for the long haul, and I think when he's 80 he's still going to look amazing.

Good training isn't about seeing how much weight you can toss around. It's about making a good training plan that will reliably produce adaptive response and then sticking to it. Yes, you can modify the details. Change things up so you don't get bored and so that you remain challenged at each session. But stick to the plan. Be fully there in each session, treating it as if it is the one session that's going to make the big difference. When you approach training this way, those sessions add up to a big difference over time.

Mindconnection eNL, 2023-08-20

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