The Magic of Compound Excercises

Are you all looking forward to the weekend? Is anyone feeling a bit stiff and sore after their workouts this week?

You guys have all been making great progress and slowly getting stronger and fitter which is exciting.

So for most of my clients coming to the gym is a little bit of “me time”...where you can switch off from the real world and have a good workout.

Not everyone registers exactly what exercises we do week to week or indeed what muscles they work and why.

Compound exercises...this are what we base the majority of our workouts around. But why?

1) More Muscles are worked

A compound exercise involves the use of more than one major muscle group at a time. Typically, there is one larger muscle group that ends up doing the majority of the work, and then one or more smaller muscle groups that are recruited secondarily.

2) Makes real life activities easier

An exercise which involves pushing (supermarket trolley, wheelbarrow or pram), pulling (sweeping, hoovering), squatting or deadlifting, is training more than one major muscle group, and that makes it harder work but more beneficial.

3) Get the results you want in the quickest time

Compound exercises allow you to engage more muscle groups (just in case you missed that the first time), which in turn allows you to lift more weight, which in turn allows for faster and more consistent progression, which in turns causes a lot of good stuff to happen that all leads to the results you want.

So which exercises are the compound ones?

Bench Press

Primary Muscle Group: Chest Secondary Muscle Groups: Shoulders, Triceps

Shoulder Press

Primary Muscle Group: Shoulders Secondary Muscle Group: Triceps

Dips

Primary Muscle Group: Chest Secondary Muscle Groups: Triceps, Shoulders

Rows

Primary Muscle Group: Back Secondary Muscle Group: Biceps

Pull-Ups, Chin-Ups, Lat Pull-Downs

Primary Muscle Group: Back Secondary Muscle Group: Biceps

Deadlifts

Primary Muscle Group: Hamstrings, Glutes, Back Secondary Muscle Groups: Much Of Lower Body, Much Of Upper Body

Squats

Primary Muscle Group: Quads Secondary Muscle Groups: Glutes/Hamstrings, Lower Back

Our compound based workouts get your metabolism fired up, increase your lean muscle measurements and get you burning more calories at rest. Wasting time and energy doing hundreds of bicep curls and tricep kick backs won’t get you the results you want. (More on isolation exercises next time).

See you soon

“Fall in love with the process and the results will come”