I have something to say on isolations… but I never speak up on these kind of threads.
Isolations work! Compounds work! Heavy weights work! Light weights work!
There is no reason to avoid anything because someone else said you should. Find out for yourself what works.
For biceps. I’ve made progress doing deadlifts, 200lb barbell cheat curls, and drop sets of concentration curls going all the way down to a 5lb weight.
As you gain experience through weight training, you will find that almost every exercise works, every program, every weight, every set/rep scheme. It’s the intensity, stress on the muscle, time under tension, length of rest periods, periodization, shocking principles, progressive overload, progressive volume training, maximal strength, maximal speed, maximal endurance, and whatever else type of training that you do that creates change and makes the body work.
There are no right or wrong answers for weight training really… they are all right and they are all wrong sometimes, it depends on your goals, your body’s response to certain methods and your overall commitment and intensity levels that may decide what is right and what works for you.
The best example I have is Calve training. Most people struggle with this because not of their knowledge, but I think its their intensity level. Calves will grow with high reps and light weights, they will grow with low reps and heavy weight… depending on which ones may work the best for you. I found for myself and everyone I have helped in building their stubborn calves, that it had nothing to do with the weight or reps. I use high, medium and low rep ranges. The difference is that I train at a higher intensity level in a shorter amount of time than most people do forcing my calves to respond. I have done the 20 and 30 sets a day of calves and failed because the intensity was spread throughout too much overall time. I have also done the 1 day a week routines of complete failure and breakdown and failed for the same reasons. What I learned was that my calve response to my traing intensity and about 9 out of 10 people I have do my workout succeed… some people have no intensity at all and just can’t be trained.
My routine: For Calves…
light day 25-50 reps
3-5 sets of 3-5 exercises with no rest between exercises(this is the key) and full contraction… the time under tension is immense and so is the pain.
heavy day… same routine but 5-15 reps
5 supersets of 4-5 exercises back to back with no rest.
medium day, the same thing- reps 15-25
Then for changes I’ll do 10 drop sets sometimes until I reach 100 reps with the first reps around 20… then rest pause and do maybe 10 more, I’ll keep them going for about 2 minutes until I reach around 100 total reps- putting my calves through hell and pushing them through pain. This is how I originally built my biceps- through pain staking reps of isolations. I use heavy dumbbells and barbells now because that’s what I respond to best. Sometimes its best to isolate a muscle and build it up so you can actually feel it working. This is why barbell curls work for me now, because I learned to feel my muscle working through those isolations. Now I can do a heavy barbell curl and pull with more biceps now instead of back… I have muscle control now. I think it would be wise to use every exercise in the book and every program and scheme out there until you find your sweet spots and what your body responds best to. Not to mention you create one hell of an overall physique. This is one concept I truely believe in for your maximum potential. Arnold used everything known to man to build his body… whose going to argue with those results?
Calve Frequency-
Sometimes I’ll train them 3 days in a row, sometimes every other day, sometimes once a week, sometimes 2 or 3 days on and 3 or 4 days off. Always changing and always increasing intensity by adding weight and cutting rest periods down as much as possible. I force them to do what they don’t want to; this requires alot of guts and alot of pain. I’m a big believer in the old school saying “No pain, no gain”. I think the key to calve training is putting the most intense workload on them in the shortest amount of time you can. I use this principle for alot of my training to increase intensity. AGAIN… “Intensity + Commitment = RESULTS!” You would be better off going 15 minutes of hell on your calves than an hour of bullshit. Again if they are not put through the pain barrier and alot of pain then you’re just going through the motions.
I am a big supporter of supersets, drop sets, stripper sets, high time under tension about 40-60 seconds and very intense training in short amount of time for specific hypertrophy training. I don’t give a fuck if you’re doing a dumbbell curl or a deadlift or chin up or barbell cheat curl… it all works, make it work for you or find what works best for you. Strength training would obviously follow less reps and more rest between sets protocall.