Why You Can’t Combine Exercises To Get The Best Of Both
Multi-joint exercises, sometimes called “compound exercises,” are great for strength and muscle building because those exercises work many muscle areas at once. Single-joint exercises are a great way to supplement these because those target areas that don’t get targeted as much during multi-joint compound exercises. However, other “compound” exercises - which are usually just disparate exercises put together either in a circuit using the same weight or mashed into one movement - aren’t good for maximizing your effort because they are limited by the weakest area involved in the exercises. Because our lower bodies tend to be stronger than our upper bodies, we cannot progress properly if our lower body lifts (deadlift, squat, etc) are limited by how much we can lift during our upper body lifts (bench, overhead press).
What You Look Like Shouldn’t Matter
Feeling good in our bodies is often wrongly conflated with “looking good to other people.” Many people start working out because they want to change how they look, but there is a genetic limit to what we can change about our bodies. Finding something at the gym that makes it fun and rewarding to do the actual work of working out is much more rewarding and often leads to feeling good even if there aren’t big visual changes to the body.
Plateau?
It’s natural to see diminishing returns as you advance in fitness because the closer you get to your genetic limit, the harder and longer it takes to make progress. Most times when people complain about plateauing, what they’re really complaining about is not seeing the results they want fast enough. Properly managing expectations and accurately tracking your progress is key.
Detraining, Retraining, And Not Sitting Still
Taking a break or having to ease up on your training doesn’t mean that you’ll immediately lose all of the gains you’ve been making. It takes longer than we think to lose the strength, muscle, and endurance we’ve built. Even when do we lose some, it’s not as difficult as we think to get it back.
The Simplest Way To Get In Amazing Shape
The 80/20 principal states that in any field, you can get 80% of results with only 20% of effort, and the last 20% will take the last 80% of the effort. This is meant to be encouraging that you can a lot of good results without having to dedicate all of your time and energy. When it comes to fitness, the 80/20 principle can be applied to build very straightforward routines that will work - if you’re able to stick with it long enough.