Doing a Compound Exercise is exactly what can take your workout from good to great. What exactly does that mean? Compound movements are ones that put multiple muscle groups and two or more joints to work at the same time. They can help you gain lean muscle mass and burn more calories, all while saving you time in the gym. The more muscles working, the more energy (calories) burned.
While there’s no way to speed results and nothing will replace consistently working hard, there are ways to make sure you’re training smarter; doing compound exercises is one of them.
Compound exercises involve multiple muscle groups while isolation exercises (like a bicep curl or leg extension) concentrate on a single muscle group. There are benefits to both, but when it comes to doing more work in less time, compound exercises are the way to go.
There are two main types of compound exercises you should know:
Single movements that involve multiple muscle groups and joints such as: Squats and Deadlifts.
Two moves put together to create one fluid movement, such as: a bicep curl into a shoulder press.
Whichever type you’re doing though, when performed correctly, will burn calories like nothing else.
Since compound exercises involve more muscle groups, they can be used to move heavier loads of weight. Putting more stress on the body has been known to create higher hormonal responses, which in turn leads to more muscle growth. Let me explain:
When you strength train you are actually damaging and fraying the muscle fibers, versus when you fatigue the muscles by depleting their energy stores. Don’t worry! The damage is a good thing. It is the damage which signals the hormonal response that activates during the recovery period.
Adding in Compound Movements to your everyday routine will help you shred the fat in less time. Here are a few of my favorite compound movements:
