Compound exercises are the basis of Total-body Training, and aside from being the method widely used by legendary lifters, it unquestionably carries a unique approach in developing a physique that ultimately responds to real life challenges. Unfortunately, over the decades, body split programs became the gold standard of weight lifting. And eye pleasing machines gradually replaced the free weights section of public gyms, thus persuading the crowd to train with more comfort and less effort.
This, however, resulted in a body that was beautiful, and yet, so fragile.
But if the idea of possessing a beautiful yet sturdy physique always interested you-then knowing the benefits of compound exercises is likewise important.
In this article you'll find the reasons why this method is crucial for strength, muscle size, or fat loss. No matter which level you belong-either beginner, intermediate, or advance; it will definitely throw away your doubts out of the window. And give you a good reason for choosing the best way to workout.
The Beauty of Balance and Strength
Whenever you perform compound movements, balance between your muscles is never left behind. For instance, let's take for example the dead lift, which is an exercise that requires upper and lower body strength.
Beginning from the barbell on the floor, the muscles on the posterior chain along with the gluteus, hamstrings, and calves, will have to work together in order to lift the weight and move your body into an upright position. In contrast with isolated exercises, wherein each single muscle group is worked out with a different movement (making the program a lot more tiring and time consuming); the former provides you stability and harmony throughout the whole muscular system, thus forcing your muscles to contract and work the way they were designed-as a whole unit.
In addition, performing unilateral movements such as the single leg dead lift or one arm dumbbell press- help your body to activate muscles which are not stimulated (e.g. stabilizers) using bilateral exercises.
Increase Load
Another beauty of this method is that it allows you to increase the weight without putting too much stress on the joints. For example, the triceps extension, which is a very general exercise for the triceps-does have a weight limit. Merely lifting a 30 pound dumbbell with this exercise becomes impossible even for the advance lifter. Whereas performing the simple "dip", grants a heavier load for the triceps (including your own body weight.) By doing this, the dip becomes a good exercise choice compared to the triceps extension, carrying even more benefits than the latter.
No Worries about Core
An additional benefit of compound training is core development. Rather than executing exercises such as crunches or sit ups-multi joint training provides a more efficient way to train the core simultaneously with different muscle groups.
Exercises like the squat or dead lift, force your abdominals to work harder in order to prevent your spine from bending forward. And they stunningly get more ferocious while doing single hand pushes like the "one arm bench press."
Don't get it wrong! In terms of superior strength, especially for athletes-core training is very essential. But it's such a wide topic that practically deserves its own book.
Higher Metabolic Cost
No one would argue that losing fat requires a large amount of energy, and that's what compound movements provide-higher energy demands.
From a metabolic point of view, there's always a huge difference between a squat and an arm curl. The former challenges hundreds of muscle groups and sends your heart and breathing rate sky high, while the latter doesn't. This, forces your body to use that extra fat around your belly, and help you not only get stronger-but leaner too.
Compound training has always been the program of the fathers of body building. And aside from its long history and fairly forgotten method, it provides a unique approach to prepare your body to real life challenges, that will ultimately carry over to many physical activities; making you faster, stronger, leaner, and healthier-the natural way.
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