Nowadays, a lot of people seem to want to build their muscles. Muscle building to certain extent is possible. But making muscles needs a strategy. And fast muscle building program needs ample nutrition. In doing weight training, individuals would usually want more carbohydrate and protein than average people. This is because weight training and other exercises can cause micro muscle tears, which needs carbohydrate and protein for recuperation.

In weight training, there are two weight-training exercises that you can consider for your program. These are the compound exercises and isolation exercises. So what’s the difference between the two types of weight training exercise? Firstly, compound exercises focus on functional fitness. This type of exercise simulates real life activities and uses a wide variety of movements through a wide range of motion. This exercise utilizes multi-joints movements that work several muscles or muscle groups at one time. An example of a compound exercise is the squat exercise, which uses lower body and core muscles. This includes the quadriceps, the hamstrings, the calves, the glutes, the lower back and the core.

Isolation exercises on the other hand, work only one muscle or muscle group and only one joint at a time. These exercises are usually performed with the commercial weight machines found in health clubs. The concept of this exercise is to isolate one muscle group and move from one machine to the next until you work your whole body. This type of exercise is frequently used in physical therapy clinics and rehab centers. This type of exercise helps correct a specific muscle weakness or imbalance that often occurs after injury, illness, surgery or certain diseases. An example of this type of exercise is the biceps curl or the quadriceps extension.

Compound exercises are usually recommended as a training program for healthy athletes. Doing these exercises entail several benefits. This helps burn more calories during exercise, simulates real world exercises and activities, allows a full body workout faster, improves coordination, reaction time and balance, improves joint stability and improves muscle balance across a joint, decreases risk of injury during sports, and many others.

While isolation exercises are recommended to correct muscle imbalance or weakness that often occurs after an injury. This type of exercise is sometimes necessary to activate and increase strength of a specific muscle. Usually after an injury, a muscle can become weak and the other muscles compensate for this weakness. An injured muscle may set up a biochemical imbalance that is difficult to correct unless this muscle is retrained to fire properly again. This type of exercise can also increase the size or bulk of a specific muscle group.

Most healthy athletes utilize compound exercises for the majority of their fast muscle-building program. But they also do isolation exercises to complement their program as needed. Thus, if you are looking for a complete, efficient and functional workout, doing mainly compound exercises during your training is ideal. But you will also need to do some isolation exercises as you might have weak muscles that need to be corrected.