The Basic Exercise Program

Too many athletes fall for isolated movements. Do not repeat their mistakes, do not sacrifice your progress in the name of love for single-joint movements. Lead the game with basic drills!

Author: Todd Bumgardner

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 the definition of the concept within which we will consider the human body. Is it a set of independent parts called "muscle groups" that should be separated and worked out one by one? Or is it a single system that should be trained and strengthened with intense and global incentives?

To be honest, you can not answer this question. I give my hand on cutting off that for an unmistakable determination of your attitude to the subject of discussion, a cursory glance at the training program and how you spend time in the gym is enough for me. If week after week, for hours on end, you make your way through the jungle of dozens of exercises and try to work out each muscle group from every possible angle, then you are a supporter of isolated movements. And I'm here to tell you that it's time to change your approach and use compound exercises as much as possible.

I know what you're thinking: “But Todd, I want to build my arms. Therefore, I will train biceps and triceps. And leave me alone". Such a point of view distorts the very essence of how the human body moves, grows, and how it is generally arranged. If you want more muscle, stronger muscles, or if you want to build a more athletic physique, compound exercises are the best choice available. That is why almost every one of you should send isolated movements to hell.

Also called isolated movements, these exercises focus on movement in one joint.

Examples: bicep curls, leg extensions, leg curls, and almost all exercises performed on machines. If the purpose of the exercise is to “work out” a particular muscle group (for example, the middle delta or short head of the biceps), these are single-joint movements.

They are also called basic or compound movements; to move the load, these exercises require the coordinated work of many levers and joints.

Examples: Free weight exercises such as squats, deadlifts, barbell rows, barbell and dumbbell presses, pull-ups. If you feel soreness and fatigue in many muscle groups the day after performing a movement, it is most likely a multi-joint movement.

Mechanical tension, load volume and calories cause muscles to grow. This is a simplified explanation, but I prefer it to most of the other explanations because it is clear and easy to put into practice.

If you are going to build muscle using the suggested scheme, you will understand that high-impact exercises that create maximum mechanical (muscle) tension involve the most muscles. Think about how many joints and muscles are involved in squats, deadlifts, presses, and deadlifts. There is nothing supernatural in these movements. Yes, they are difficult, complex, but when performed correctly, they create such a load on the muscles that no isolated exercise can compare with.

This is true in relation to the volume of the load. For the muscle growth stimulation that heavy compound movements provide, you will need an unrealistic amount of single-joint exercises.

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

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

Heavy weight is incompatible with isolated exercises. I'm sure you can pick up a weight that will make the biceps curl an extremely difficult exercise, but it will not be a real test 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 not be that emergency signal that will scream: “Watch out!” Therefore, you will not receive an impulse, without which it is impossible to develop the real strength of all muscle groups.

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 refer to the biceps or hamstring muscles as independent motor units is because of the curiosity of the ancient Greeks, who isolated these structures during the dissection of a corpse.

It is enough to look at the human body as a single and global motor system, and not as isolated motor units in an atlas of anatomy, and it becomes clear that muscles and joints do not work alone. We move using a complex joint system that extends from head to toe. And until artificial devices like rollers 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 is made in one joint along the simplest trajectory, which is never found in everyday motor activity. In sports, we also move freely in space without any external stabilizers like benches, seats, or nautilus machines.

Think about it and ask yourself which makes more sense, squats or leg extensions? You know the answer.

If you're a competitive bodybuilder and you really need a high bicep peak for an upcoming performance, some single-joint exercises will definitely come in handy. But for most of us, they are simply not necessary.

I can't talk to every athlete, but many people choose single-joint exercises because:

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 pull themselves up more after a direct biceps workout. However, the truth is that simply increasing the amount of load in the basic exercises is a much more effective option for solving this problem.

I know from experience that almost all athletes have gotten bigger and stronger when they forgo single-joint exercises in favor of high training loads. Your body doesn't care about biceps, triceps, or quadriceps. It only assesses the intensity of the stress factor and adapts to the loads, and therefore, well-chosen compound exercises with a high load are best suited for forcing muscle growth.

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