When it comes to resistance training, there’s two types of exercise commonly performed as part of your workout – compound exercises and isolation exercises.

Let’s start by defining these two movements. A compound exercise is one that recruits a number of different muscles to perform one repetition. A good way to think of this is that, generally speaking, if movement occurs across more than one joint then you’re performing a compound movement. For isolation exercises, you’re working a single muscle group in (surprise surprise) isolation and therefore movement is only occurring at one joint.

Here are some examples of compound exercises:

EXERCISE	JOINTS MOVEMENT OCCURS	MUSCLE GROUPS USED
SQUAT	Hips, Knees, Ankles	Quadriceps, Hamstrings, Calves, Glutes
DEADLIFT	Hips, Knees, Ankles, Back	Quadriceps, Hamstrings, Glutes, Lower Back, Forearms
BENCH PRESS	Elbows, Shoulders	Chest, Triceps, Shoulders
SHOULDER PRESS	Elbows, Shoulders	Triceps, Shoulders
PULL-UP	Elbows, Shoulders	Biceps, Forearms, Upper Back, Shoulders
LUNGE	Hips, Knees, Ankles	Quads, Glutes, Calves

 

And some isolation exercises: 

EXERCISE	JOINTS MOVEMENT OCCURS	MUSCLE GROUPS USED
BICEP CURLS	Elbows	Biceps
TRICEP PUSHDOWNS	Elbows	Triceps
LATERIAL RAISES	Shoulders	Medial Deltoids
DUMBBELL FLY	Shoulders	Chest
LEG EXTENSION	Knees	Quads
CALF RAISE	Ankles	Calves

 

As with a lot of factors when it comes to training, one isn’t necessarily better than the other because it is dependent on individual goals, available time, equipment availability etc. It is a good idea to be familiar with both types, and the muscles they train, so you’re able to modify your workouts to suit your requirements.

We’re hesitant to say the words “positives” and “negatives” because all exercise is positive in our eyes! However, both types of exercise do have their advantages and “not-so-advantages” shall we say…

 

Pros and Cons of Isolation Exercises

Advantages

• Allows all of the tension throughout an exercise to be focussed on one muscle group, maximising stress, muscle damage (this is a good thing remember) and adaptation within that muscle group.
• Helpful for those nursing injuries that might prevent compound movements as it still allows you to train muscles in isolation of one another.
• Generally easier to perform and can be done on machines.

Not-so-advantages

• Make workouts more time consuming as multiple specific exercises have to be performed.
• Need to be performed at lower weights as only one muscle group is working to perform the repetition.
• Not very “functional” i.e. transferable into real world scenarios as it’s rare to only use a single muscle group to perform an action.

 

Pros and Cons of Effective Compound Exercises

Advantages

• Allows you to hit multiple muscle groups in one exercise, which can speed up workouts without sacrificing training certain muscles.  
• Can lift heavier weight, good for improving strength.
• They’re functional movements: Deadlift = Picking up the shopping bags, Shoulder Press = putting something on the top shelf etc.
• You can perform multiple compound movements with just one bar – if you wanted to Squat and Shoulder Press for example, you can just adjust the weight on the same bar – handy for busy gyms!

Not-so-advantages

• Harder to perform as they require form to be maintained across multiple joints.
• Can require a spotter for heavier weights as they’re not being performed on machines.
• Our bodies are smart, when one muscle group starts to fatigue, secondary ones will take over. This can mean it’s harder to target a specific muscle as others will be contributing to the exercise. A good example here is Bench Press which many believe is the best exercise for developing chest strength. Whilst it does hit the chest muscles, if you think about the movement which occurs, you’ll realise that the triceps and front-shoulder muscles are also used a lot and will take over when our chest begins to fatigue.

Research

One study reported that compound (lat pull down) and isolation (bicep curl) exercises which targeted the Biceps, when implemented into a 10-week training program in young untrained men, elicited equal increases in muscle thickness and peak torque (how much force the muscle can generate) [1]. Similarly, a review of existing literature which compares compound and isolation exercises found that both acute effects and long-term adaptations were the same for both modalities of exercise [2]. Further research is warranted to determine how modality effects outcomes for specific goals such as muscle strength vs muscle endurance, but for now the research suggests that both compound and isolation exercises elicit favourable changes when implemented into strength training programs.

Hopefully you now have a better understanding of compound and isolation exercises, when one might be more suitable than the other, and examples of each! As we discussed above, your choice depends on factors such as goal, time, equipment availability, experience and injuries – so weigh up the factors and make your decision accordingly.

References

1 - GENTIL, P., SOARES, S. and BOTTARO, M., 2015. Single vs. Multi-Joint Resistance Exercises: Effects on Muscle Strength and Hypertrophy. Asian journal of sports medicine, 6(2), pp. e24057-e24057. 2 - GENTIL, P., FISHER, J. and STEELE, J., 2017. A Review of the Acute Effects and Long-Term Adaptations of Single- and Multi-Joint Exercises during Resistance Training. Sports Medicine, 47(5), pp. 843-855.