Basic, formative and isolating exercises in their total mass are usually identified by the nature of the impact on the athlete’s body, through the number of muscles or muscle groups involved in their implementation. Certain exercises, depending on their type, give completely different results. In order for us to talk about the most effective construction of the training process, we must first understand their classification and purpose in order to understand what kind of result should be expected. This will be discussed in this article.
Introduction
Both in the description of exercises and in training programs, we have repeatedly mentioned such expressions as “base”, “form” and also “isolation”. Today we will try to clarify these definitions. We are specifically talking about three types of exercises, which in the training process are divided into three categories: basic, formative and isolating. Both its appropriateness in relation to a particular training program and the resulting result depend on the type of exercise, so understanding the essence and seeing the difference between them is really necessary. To begin with, let's describe in just a nutshell what these terms mean, and then move on to a more detailed description.
- Basic exercises - involve the maximum number of muscles or muscle groups, and also involve several joints. Used to build overall muscle mass and increase strength. Example: bench press, deadlift, squats, pull-ups.
- Formative exercises - involve one or several muscles or their groups and involve one or more joints. Used to sharpen the shape and give the muscles relief. Example: vertical row, hack squats.
- Isolation exercises involve one muscle or muscle group, often involving only one joint. Used to build specific muscles and increase their strength. Example: seated leg extensions, reverse flyes in the butterfly machine.
Well, such a truly brief description certainly does not give us a complete picture of what is happening, but now it becomes clear to us that exercises as such should not be used chaotically in the training process. In order to understand in what order they should be integrated into the program, you must first understand the mechanism of their effect on the athlete’s body. Let's move on to this.
Isolated exercises
If the main task of the base is to increase muscle mass, then the main task of isolation is to “polish” problem areas and give the body a beautiful relief.
Isolation exercises work only one muscle group and one joint. With the help of isolation exercises, you can work out a specific muscle well and accelerate the fat burning effect in a certain area.
During the drying period, performing female athletes increase the percentage of isolation exercises and reduce the number of basic exercises. This is necessary to achieve the desired muscle definition.
Here are visual examples of some isolation exercises:
What are basic exercises
Basic, as we have already found out, are called heavy multi-joint exercises, which sometimes involve up to two-thirds of the muscles of the body. It is for this reason that they are the foundation of muscle building. But why does engaging a large number of muscles or muscle groups lead to active muscle building? Let's figure it out.
To formulate the answer as simply as possible, it would sound something like this. Since the basic exercise involves several muscle groups, the total weight lifted by the athlete is significantly higher than what could be lifted by using only one muscle or muscle group, which is quite logical. It also follows that the more weight you lift, the higher the traumatic effect, or rather the training stress, that the working muscles receive. As we know, healing and growth followed by compensation are the body's natural response to such training stress. Hence the conclusion that the more muscles simultaneously receive stress, the greater the compensation effect will be obtained as a result. The logic of such conclusions is incredibly simple and absolutely logical, but if we had not mentioned the role of the hormonal system in the process of muscle building, such an answer could not be called complete.
The connection between physical exercise and the endocrine system, which regulates the release of hormones, is explained by the spread of nervous stimulation from the brain to the spinal cord. This phenomenon is called central motor command. The more weight you work with, the more the intensity of the load increases and, as a result, the motor command that initiates the release of hormones.
It is quite logical that when performing such a complex basic exercise as squats with a barbell, the nervous excitement that is transmitted from the brain to the spinal cord will be stronger than when performing, say, seated leg bending or extension, where only one joint and working weight work much lower. Since the fact that hormonal release during strength training depends on the volume of muscles involved in the exercise is scientifically proven, it can be concluded that for building muscle, the advantage of basic exercises is obvious.
BASIC. The most popular basic exercises are: bench press, deadlift and squats. No less effective multi-joint basic exercises are pull-ups and dips.
Exercises for the buttocks
Every girl dreams of having toned and beautiful buttocks. The presented trainings will give your buttocks relief and the correct shape.
Bridge for pumping the buttocks
When performing it, you need to achieve a burning sensation in the muscles, then the effect of the part being worked will be effective. If you feel that your weight is not enough, you can place a barbell weight of about 10 kilograms on the area below your abdomen.
Lunges with dumbbells in hands
This is probably one of the best exercises where you can work your buttocks.
Plie squat
The squat uses dumbbells. Use the platform. It will allow you to get additional space when squatting. Follow your plie squat technique, your buttocks should be slightly below your knees.
Performing steps on the steppe
The best effect for working out the buttocks is a high step. The higher it is, the more difficult it is to perform the approaches, but the more effective for your butt. This technique can also be used by guys. You can do them at home or in the gym.
What are formative exercises
As a rule, such a term is quite rare among bodybuilders. Most often, in the terminology of both athletes and instructors, you can hear about either basic or isolating exercises. However, formative exercises have their place, they are known to everyone and are quite popular. They are used to form volume, highlight symmetry, trim the shape and outline the relief of both specific muscles and their individual areas and bundles.
This can best be demonstrated by using the angled barbell bench press as an example. The basic bench press on a horizontal bench pumps up the entire volume of the pectoral muscles, but if we want to emphasize the load on the upper or lower edge of the pecs, we need to resort to using incline benches. The higher the inclination of the bench relative to the horizontal, the more the emphasis of the load will shift to the top of the pectoral muscles (in the area of the collarbones). The lower the inclination of the bench relative to the horizontal, the more the emphasis of the load will shift to the bottom of the pectoral muscles (to the plane of the solar plexus). Thus, the up angled barbell press and downward angled barbell press are exercises that allow you to shape the upper or lower edge of the pectoral muscles. Hence the name of the type of exercise – formative.
Quite often, formative exercises are included in the training program to enhance the effect of basic exercises, since they allow you to include in the work those areas of muscles and their fibers that cannot be “reached” when performing the “base”, as we described in the example above. This in turn allows the working muscle to be pumped more fully, which ultimately adds significantly better shape and fullness to it. At the same time, by performing a bench press at an angle, you shift the emphasis of the load to the upper or lower edge of the chest, which will not automatically allow you to pump up its entire volume, which means this exercise can no longer be called basic. This is the difference between a formative exercise and a basic one. Here we note that, like a regular bench press on a horizontal bench, the angled press also includes the front deltoids and triceps in the work, that is, it involves several muscle groups and does not allow us to call the exercise isolating. This is the difference between a formative exercise and an isolating exercise.
The hormonal release when performing formative exercises is less significant than when performing basic exercises, however, this type of exercise is ideally suited for “pumping,” that is, pumping blood into the muscles that a specific exercise is aimed at forming. This helps to expand the capillary network in the working muscles, and allows large volumes of hormones to be purposefully transferred through the bloodstream precisely to those areas and areas of the muscles that you are forming.
FORMING. The most popular forming exercises for the chest: bench press at an angle. On the back: vertical row. Legs: hack squats. Shoulders: Arnold press. Triceps: French bench press. Biceps: Hammer curls with dumbbells.
Basic and insulating
Building biceps is one of the main problems of many athletes. Thus, many beginners try to build up their biceps, as they consider this muscle to be the main indicator of the human body. The biceps often loses its shape if it is not constantly stressed, unlike the biceps. In this section we will tell you about various biceps exercises.
More details
The main problem area for many women is the triceps muscle, or as it is often called triceps. Very often the muscle turns into a “rag”.
If a person does not purposefully exercise loads on the triceps muscles (and in everyday life this muscle is not trained in any way), this naturally becomes noticeable in the shape of the arms.
We will tell you in this article how to keep the triceps muscles in excellent condition.
More details
Helpful advice!
Do you often spend time on your neck? But the condition of the skin can give all the information about the owner. Sagging skin and the first wrinkles do not make us attractive at all. And in order to always look young, you need to actively take care of yourself. Today we will present a set of exercises for the neck muscles, which you can do in any free time: at home, at work, sitting on the couch.
More details
Any muscle in our body requires training. The back muscles are no exception. If you have beautiful posture, you will be confident.
Look, only insecure people run about their business with a hunched back, while confident people walk with a straight and beautiful back. To do this you need to train. Not much - just 10 minutes a day.
We will tell you about some exercises in this article.
More details
What are isolation exercises
If we look at the training process through the prism of factors influencing the acceleration of protein synthesis in muscles, increasing the concentration of hormones in the blood and hydrogen ions in the muscles, we will come to the conclusion that this effect is achieved mainly through performing basic and, to some extent, formative exercises. But if we are talking about isolation exercises that involve one muscle or muscle group, we must also be aware that the working weight in the exercise will be significantly lower. And this leads us to the conclusion that the central motor command, which we have already talked about and which initiates the release of hormones, will be extremely small, which significantly reduces the result obtained at the output compared to basic or formative exercises. The disadvantages are clear, but what are their advantages?
Once again, we will give an example of such a popular basic exercise as the barbell bench press on a horizontal bench. By and large, in addition to the pectoral muscles, the anterior deltoids and triceps are also involved, that is, we lift the weight of the barbell by involving at least three muscles in the work. For comparison, let’s take an isolating exercise for the chest - information in the butterfly simulator. The simulator fixes the position of the body, back, shoulders and arms so that all movements are performed exclusively through the efforts of the pectoral muscles. Thus, in the bench press the weight is distributed over several muscle groups, and during the exercise in the butterfly machine, the entire load falls exclusively on the pectoral muscles. The training in the simulator is not at all suitable for increasing mass, but it allows, as follows from the type of exercise, to work the pectoral muscles in isolation, that is, in a targeted manner and with better quality. And here's how it works in practice.
The fact is that an increased concentration of hormones in the blood and hydrogen ions in the muscles can be achieved both when performing basic and when performing formative and isolating exercises. And even more than that. Isolation exercises allow you to achieve significantly higher concentrations of these substances. Once again, performing the same information in the butterfly simulator, you perform the work exclusively with the pectoral muscles, and when failure occurs, you can be absolutely sure that it has occurred due to the depletion of energy reserves in the pectoral muscles. At the same time, in the bench press, failure can occur due to exhaustion of the triceps or anterior deltoids, at a time when the concentration of free creatine in the pectoral muscles has not yet reached a sufficiently high level. As a result, the processes of protein synthesis in the pectoral muscles will be negligible. This is the difference between isolation exercises and basic and formative exercises.
INSULATED. The most popular isolation exercises for the chest: butterfly and crossover exercises. On the back: T-bar row. Legs: leg extensions in the simulator. Shoulders: reverse flyes in the machine. Triceps: dumbbell extensions. Biceps: Scott Bench Raise.
Basic and isolation exercises - what's the difference?
All exercises used in bodybuilding can be divided into basic, or as they also say, multi-joint, and isolating, single-joint.
Basic exercises include exercises that can make several muscle groups (joints) work simultaneously, i.e. If an exercise involves two or more muscles, then it is considered basic. To perform such exercises, significant effort is required from the body - and as a result, it is more effective for muscle growth than isolation exercises. This is why the “base” is the basis of all strength training, a mandatory component of all training programs.
But there are some nuances: not every basic exercise is multi-joint. Barbell curls are considered a basic exercise! Although if you do it correctly, it only uses the elbow joint. By all logic, it should be called isolating, but there is a tradition of calling some of the most effective exercises basic.
Unlike basic exercises, isolation exercises work only one muscle, using a single joint. These exercises in training are auxiliary.
Example - a workout may consist of three basic exercises, which are the main ones, after which a single isolating exercise is added to them, which plays a supporting role. This concludes the training. This is just an example, the point of which is to show that you need to start with hard work, cause a surge of hormones (which is provided by the base), and then isolation exercises help to load specific muscle groups. This training composition is good for advanced athletes, but beginners should generally abandon isolation exercises and focus on basic ones.
Exercises
In order to familiarize yourself with a complete illustrated list of exercises, techniques for performing them and tips, you can follow the links to articles with the corresponding title. Each exercise has a label describing what type of exercise it belongs to: Exercises for the chest muscles Exercises for the back muscles Exercises for the leg muscles Exercises for the shoulder muscles Exercises for the biceps Exercises for the triceps Exercises for the abdominal muscles
Why don't my biceps get bigger?
Most likely, you have noticed such an injustice: someone does exercises with dumbbells at home and shows off their sculpted biceps, while someone carries weights in the gym, but cannot achieve such an effect. What is the reason for this difference?
First of all, it is worth learning that strength exercises are effective for everyone, always. This fact has been proven by numerous studies by sports doctors. However, the potential of the muscular system is determined by genetics. People have different ratios of white and red muscle fibers, so the response to the same exercise will be different. For this reason, exercises are performed in complexes.
In addition to the wrong choice of training program, the reason may be:
- abuse of cheating;
- incorrectly selected equipment;
- lack of rest and overtraining;
- low calorie diet;
- monotony of exercises performed.
The most common mistake is overtraining, followed by insufficient nutrition. Beginners want to achieve results as quickly as possible, and because of this, they strive to train as often as possible and do as many exercises as possible during a training session. As a result, the muscles do not have time to recover, they do not grow, but, on the contrary, are destroyed.
To increase the size of your biceps brachii muscle, you need to work on the percentage of total muscle mass in your body. Therefore, it’s worth starting with general strengthening programs, later adding basic exercises, and even later – isolating exercises.
It is better to train the biceps together with the back muscles; for such a split, 2-3 exercises will be enough.
Not only frequent training, but also short pauses between strength sets lead to overtraining and degradation of muscle tissue. Another common reason is lack of daily routine and insufficient sleep. Nutrition cannot be ignored; in order for muscles to grow, you need a surplus of incoming energy, a large amount of protein and healthy carbohydrates in your daily diet.
Perhaps this is due to technical errors:
- protruding elbows during exercises;
- throwing the barbell using the forces of the whole body, not the hands;
- too small amplitude of movement;
- lifting the elbows up when bending them.
Each of these mistakes will cause muscle growth to stop. When performing any of the biceps techniques, the elbows should be pressed against the body, this will ensure a stable load on it. At the end point, you cannot fully extend your elbows, otherwise the biceps will relax, this cannot be allowed, it must be tense. The strongest tension comes at the upper limit of the amplitude, so you need to stop there for a couple of moments, fixing the load.
You can familiarize yourself with other subtleties in the material “How to properly pump up your biceps yourself?”
Afterword
So, we have covered quite a lot of material in the most accessible form. To summarize, it is worth recalling that no matter how you look at it, it is the basic exercises that are the core component of building training programs. Formative exercises are somewhere between basic and isolating exercises and they are also very important in the training process. You will not build up large muscle mass with them, as with the “base”, and at the same time, you will not pump up specific muscles as with the “isolation”. Isolation exercises are important for high-quality, targeted training of individual muscles. If your goal is to build muscle, building a workout exclusively from such exercises is quite pointless, since the results will be minimal. The ideal muscle-building training program should have enough variety and should include all three types of exercises combined in the most effective way.
List of isolation exercises for different muscle groups
Isolation exercises on a separate muscle group allow you to achieve a visible aesthetic result from the work of a bodybuilder. Exercises for different muscles of the body are described below.
Press
Crunches are suitable for localized abdominal training. Raising the lower extremities does not apply here, because they work the quadriceps.
Obliques
Tilts of the body in different directions are suitable. Possible addition in the form of cable traction, weights.
Breast
The following exercises can mainly be classified as isolated:
- Dumbbell press (simulator - inclined, flat bench). The dumbbell bench press is convenient because... allows you to more strongly load different muscle groups of the chest due to the deep lowering of the projectiles. Triceps and anterior deltoids receive minimal load.
- Reduction of arms (simulator – crossover). An isolating activity pumps up the inner part of the chest. The athlete is required to concentrate on the negative phase of the movement. At the point of peak contraction, it is important to statically squeeze the muscles - this will improve the relief of the selected area.
- Dumbbell flyes (simulator – inclined, flat bench). The placement of the projectiles allows you to stretch the external muscle tissue. You need to lower the dumbbells as low as possible, ignoring the upper quarter of the movement (connecting the dumbbells above your head).
- Press (simulator – lever/block equipment designed for pumping pectoral muscle tissue). Pressing on special machines allows you to work out individual chest muscles, so when visiting the gym, pay attention not to classic equipment, but to specialized hardware.
Advice! An isolation exercise is best done at the end of a workout.
Shoulders
We list isolated exercises for this muscle group:
- Dumbbell swings . Designed to pump the middle delta, as a result the shoulders become spherical. Raise the dumbbells low so that the load does not switch to the trapezius. When lifting shells, the little finger is higher than the thumb.
- Swing dumbbells/barbell at chest level . An isolating exercise will pump up the anterior deltoid. To avoid impact on your legs and back, lean against a wall.
- Barbell row to the lower part of the face . Aimed at working out the middle delta. When performing, the barbell is taken with a wide grip. The projectile passes straight along the body, at the top point the elbows are higher than the hands.
Advice! You should not lift the barbell above your chin - the peak contraction of muscle tissue occurs in the middle of the chest.
Isolated exercises of this muscle group include:
