Isolations Are Not Necessary!

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.

[quote]Go heavy fool wrote:
I have something to say on isolations… but I never speak up on these kinda 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… they are all right and they are all wrong, 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. Depends on you which one may work the best. 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 iis 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 dont the 1 day a week routines of complete failure and breakdown and failed for the same reason. what I learned was that my calves 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 or 3-5 supersets 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 100 total reps- putting my calves through hell and pushing them thru 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 scholl 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.
[/quote]

Pretty much says it all. If ya don’t wanna do fucking bicep curls then don’t do em but when someone looks at my arms and asks how I got them to 20 inches I don’t tell they got that way because I did squats.

Dan John, one of my favorite authors on this site has posted pictures of himself. he is a very strong dude, but his arms are not that good (from a BB perspective). im sure he doesnt care because he is concerned about his athletic feats.

so, yeah, you can get really strong not doing iso work, but if you are chasing aesthetics(sp) you need some iso work

Direct work has its place, but if I look at a routine and see 4 sets bench, 4 military, 4 row, 4 pullup, 4 curl, 4 incline curl, 2 rack runners, drop sets, whatever you call them in your area, THEN it goes back to balance. I don’t see people that claim isolation work as a necessity screaming for flyes, pec deck, naut. pullover either though. That is reservered for arms.

When I first started out, I used to do a lot of bicep curls. I would spent up to 30 minutes doing them on some days. My arms were not big back in those days. Then I started doing a lot of pull-ups, and my biceps grew.

I think its good advice for beginners to focus on compound lifts. The current trend in people posting on the net that bicep curls are for pussies has everything to with the high school kids/dumbasses posting their pics on the net, talking about how they shred their arms with bicep curls, and who weigh as much as my 5 ft. 2 in. grandmother. The funny thing is that no matter how much this phenomena repeats itself, and no matter how many kids get ripped a new one on sites like this - it keeps happening.

Example
Johhny high-school: here’s my pic. My stats are 130 lbs. and my routine is biceps curls. My diet consists of fruit loops. Should I cut?

Of course isolation lifts have their place, but not for Johnnny dumbass who weighs 130 lbs. and whoes goal is to get big. If his goal is to post his pic on the web and get chewed a new orifice through which to pass his fruit loops, then, that another story.

To look at it from a bodybuilding perspective, you cannot sculpt a twig…you first must have marble.

[quote]jp_dubya wrote:
Direct work has its place, but if I look at a routine and see 4 sets bench, 4 military, 4 row, 4 pullup, 4 curl, 4 incline curl, 2 rack runners, drop sets, whatever you call them in your area, THEN it goes back to balance. I don’t see people that claim isolation work as a necessity screaming for flyes, pec deck, naut. pullover either though. That is reservered for arms. [/quote]

Well I guess the common consensus is that the main muscles get more than enough work with the compounds. Arms on the other hand…see my example.

[quote]Jimfound wrote:
When I first started out, I used to do a lot of bicep curls. I would spent up to 30 minutes doing them on some days. My arms were not big back in those days. Then I started doing a lot of pull-ups, and my biceps grew.

I think its good advice for beginners to focus on compound lifts. The current trend in people posting on the net that bicep curls are for pussies has everything to with the high school kids/dumbasses posting their pics on the net, talking about how they shred their arms with bicep curls, and who weigh as much as my 5 ft. 2 in. grandmother. The funny thing is that no matter how much this phenomena repeats itself, and no matter how many kids get ripped a new one on sites like this - it keeps happening.

Example
Johhny high-school: here’s my pic. My stats are 130 lbs. and my routine is biceps curls. My diet consists of fruit loops. Should I cut?

Of course isolation lifts have their place, but not for Johnnny dumbass who weighs 130 lbs. and whoes goal is to get big. If his goal is to post his pic on the web and get chewed a new orifice through which to pass his fruit loops, then, that another story.

To look at it from a bodybuilding perspective, you cannot sculpt a twig…you first must have marble.[/quote]

Nicely put… well thought out… and makes perfect sense.

I completely disagree! You cannot build a marble if you can never feel your muscle working. Why do you think so many people have problems developing certain muscles? Because they never established a mind muscle connection and this is most easily established throuh intense concentration and isolation exercises.

Even if not to build mass, this connection is more important than any newbie will ever know. More important than some inexperienced weight lifter telling him to do heavy barbell curls… meanwhile he can never build anything bigger than a 15" bicep.

First of all, you nor I have a clue what will work for Johnny High School. Second of all, telling someone to do a compound curl to build his biceps is probably the last thing that’s going to happen to his biceps anyway. You should let him know that form and function of the exercise will depict how much bicep work he will be getting. He may gain near zero mass from a year of solid barbell curls. Say he gains 1/4 of an inch to be generous, and he was looking for an inch or two.

These compounds for beginners are generally for strength. If he’s pulling with his back and not his biceps with proper form, he just wasted a year on barbell curls… I know, I did just that when I first started. I did barbell curls for the first few years and realized I needed to try something else after getting nowhere.

I discovered the mind-muscle connection through constantly flexing my biceps and using strict isolation curls. I accomplished more size gains on biceps in a near 2 months over the 2 previous years of heavy compounds. I now have the muscle control to do barbell curls with correct form and can actually feel every rep tear apart the strands of bicep tissue. The hypertrophy gains can be achieved by using a compound movement with concentrated form to keep increasing strength gains and an isolation movement for tension, stress breakdown for size, and a mind muscle connection to boot.

This breakthrough if accomplished young will save a newbie from many wasted years in the gym, never actually working the muscles he thought he was and getting and the breakdown he thought he was getting. Contractions are very important and can be very easily discovered through an isolation exercise. How the hell can you train a muscle when you’ve never actually felt how it really works?

There is proof in my previous statement if you look at the severe difficulty to develope calves for most people… this is due to very few nerves to actually feel them working. Not only that but the other factor is the intensity level that goes into calve training I find is far inferior to what will be needed to make them actually grow. Not the weight or the reps like most people think.

You need stressful tension… this can be achieved through any amount of weight, the heavier the better, but you need to be able to get a full contraction and be able to get at least 5 solid reps in this supersetted style I have previously mentioned. Then keep the tension going with this heavy weight.

Doing a 5 rep calve raise then resting for a minute or two is a waste… now is the time to go destroy that muscle and hit it with another exercsie or weight you can get some full comtraction reps out of. A full minute of the stress and tension and immense pain is what actually makes the muscle grow. The more mind muscle connection you have, the better it will be for you to keep feeling the muscle work as you push on through the supersets or dropsets… not that bouncing shit when your training nothing.

I would recommend for beginners to do both compounds and isolations, but experiment with everything to see what their body responds best to. I would say a 13 inch gun could use both a barbell curl in strict form for strength and a dumbbell isolation for tension and “discovering a feel for the muscle”. Alot of people curl and use everthing but their biceps… they use forearms, back, shoulders, etc… etc.

For me, my chest gets more mass with dumbbells than barbells. I like a neutral grip dumbbell press(compound) in the 6-12 rep range dropsetted 3 times with 2 other exercises(both isolations) and a 100 rep(compound) finisher for hypertrophy.

[quote]Professor X wrote:
irish_red wrote:

*And yes you wont see me ever post my pictures in the photo section for a long time to come hehe

If that’s the case then why don’t you listen to guys who have actually built a large amount of size. I have NEVER agreed with this current trend to have beginners avoid isolation exercises completely. That makes no sense to me. It is like going to the opposite extreme simply because some newbies are dumb enough to ONLY train chest and biceps for years.

Now we have people completely avoiding biceps work for years. Yes, you should be doing lateral raises and bent over raises. Yes, you should be doing biceps curls and triceps extensions. That is, if your goal is to build a balanced physique. No one even 10 years ago would have ever recommended someone avoid those movements.

Now, it’s the latest thing. Meanwhile, the guys who worked out for years but DID do isolation movements from the start show the results of it.[/quote]

well said professor

[quote]Jimfound wrote:
When I first started out, I used to do a lot of bicep curls. I would spent up to 30 minutes doing them on some days. My arms were not big back in those days. Then I started doing a lot of pull-ups, and my biceps grew.

I think its good advice for beginners to focus on compound lifts. The current trend in people posting on the net that bicep curls are for pussies has everything to with the high school kids/dumbasses posting their pics on the net, talking about how they shred their arms with bicep curls, and who weigh as much as my 5 ft. 2 in. grandmother. The funny thing is that no matter how much this phenomena repeats itself, and no matter how many kids get ripped a new one on sites like this - it keeps happening.

Example
Johhny high-school: here’s my pic. My stats are 130 lbs. and my routine is biceps curls. My diet consists of fruit loops. Should I cut?

Of course isolation lifts have their place, but not for Johnnny dumbass who weighs 130 lbs. and whoes goal is to get big. If his goal is to post his pic on the web and get chewed a new orifice through which to pass his fruit loops, then, that another story.

To look at it from a bodybuilding perspective, you cannot sculpt a twig…you first must have marble.[/quote]

it isnt either or. this is like a debate about vaginal sex vs oral sex. yeah, if i could only do one, id pick vaginal. but i dont have to, i can get a blow job AND i can have intercourse

if i could only lift one way or the other, id only do compound movements, but it isnt detrimental to do both, it is better

I just don’t understand how people think that muscles will grow by being ignored. I can understand where the upper arms are part of compound movements, but what about calves. I can’t think of too many compound movements that really train calves.

[quote]BarneyFife wrote:
I just don’t understand how people think that muscles will grow by being ignored. I can understand where the upper arms are part of compound movements, but what about calves. I can’t think of too many compound movements that really train calves. [/quote]

Read a few of my previous posts if you have a calve problem. I pretty musch explained that it has nothing to do with the movement and there are some other major factors that are involved in development. You can disagree or agree with my training principles.

I would choose the latter, I have 19" calves and I don’t do any routine you will find in a trainers regimen. I got my knowlege from a professional bodybuilder with 21 inch calves and my experience comes from doing this routine for 5 inches of calve growth.

[quote]BarneyFife wrote:
I just don’t understand how people think that muscles will grow by being ignored. I can understand where the upper arms are part of compound movements, but what about calves. I can’t think of too many compound movements that really train calves. [/quote]
Calves get work when you deadlift and power clean or power snatch or push press, but sufficiently? That may be very case by case.

I am still out on this whole debate. Again I counter with the case by case evaluation, needs, whatever. Another post had me thinking about this whole issue, and I don’t know which arguement it serves.

Mike Boyle wrote about working the joints, instead of working the muscles. As I toss this around in my noodle with a still contracted jaw that is not allowing me to get the damned abscessed tooth extracted, whew, The elbow is still a joint? It does get work with various pulling and pushing. Enough? Case by case. goal dependant, etc.