Isolation or Compound Exercises

[adeft]

I've started working out for about a month now. Today, at the gym this guy told me that isolation exercises aren't really helpful and told me I should just do compound exercises. He said that I should only do like benching, squating, etc. Is this true?

[adeft]

Are compound exercises enough to build your muscles such as biceps and triceps? Should I do only compound exercises or add a few isolation exercises?

[BOLT.]

Compounds will add a significant amount of muscle to your frame, especially in the beginning. Isolated exercises become more important as you become more advanced. Right now, doing mostly compounds could be very useful, but isolated exercises eventually become as vital as compounds as you begin to actually build your body. Right now you just want to gain as much muscle as you can because it will come fast.

[HollywoodBody]

Are compound exercises enough to build your muscles such as biceps and triceps? Should I do only compound exercises or add a few isolation exercises?

you want to do mostly compounds, like other people have already said. But to answer your question, no- compound exercises generally aren't enough to stimulate significant growth in the biceps or triceps. Try to do isolations AFTER you do compounds. So spend most of your time and energy doing compound lifts, for example dips and benchpress on chest day. After that, you can do cable pulldowns to isolate the triceps. But this should be one of the last things you do on that day. Never do isolation exercises before a compound lift.

[:::JMANN:::]

Compounds will add a significant amount of muscle to your frame, especially in the beginning. Isolated exercises become more important as you become more advanced. Right now, doing mostly compounds could be very useful, but isolated exercises eventually become as vital as compounds as you begin to actually build your body. Right now you just want to gain as much muscle as you can because it will come fast.

i think that was actually a good reply. i personally like the main focus of my training to be heavy compounds, but i always have a few isolation lifts in there as well for maximal developement.

[THe WeapoN]

compound exercise are the best for stimulating more muscle, and should be the base of any good routine to finish off e nd with a isolation exercise