For many years I have completed online Zoom consultations with people from all over the world to help them create a training program that caters to their specific needs. Often these programs are designed with the intention of restoring function to a faulty movement or correcting muscle imbalances causing chronic pain. People were often surprised when the corrective program did not include an exercise for every muscle group, and I was regularly asked the question, “Do I need more exercises so I can develop strength into other muscles?” I have seen a big shift in the last 10-15 years towards functional training, which is a good thing, however, there is still a lack of understanding as to what these movements do. In this article I will explain why you do not need an exercise for each muscle group and to focus your training on improving movement patterns.
Are Functional Exercises Enough to Build Serious Strength?
I have already discussed this in great detail before so I don’t want to spend too much time repeating myself here so if you want to read more about this check out this article – Can you build muscle size with functional movements?
Most experienced gym enthusiasts will tell you that doing only a handful of exercises is not enough to build muscle and make you stronger. To some degree they may be right as you will need more than a handful of exercises to continually challenge the body with different angles, positions, equipment, and speeds of movement.
However, you will not need a 5 day split workout that has an exercise for every muscle. To build strength in your arms you don’t need bicep curls and a stack of tricep pushdowns to do this. They can help to some extent but most of the time they are a waste of your time for if you were already training with compound and integrated movements where you have already used these muscles.
If you want to get more out of these muscles do an extra set or include another integrated exercise that is similar with its demands. The main thing to understand is that you do not need to work every individual muscle with its own exercise to make it stronger, you just need to move well.
Training Individual Body Parts Takes A Lot Of Time
If there is one thing that almost every person would love to have, it is more time. Most people are already under pressure to fit in time for family, friends, work, household chores, without having to find hours of gym training. If you could use a training method that could produce the same result in half the time wouldn’t you try that?
Not to mention that training too often is not better anyway and risks over-training and negates any gains you might have made. Not to mention that you can become obsessed by your body appearance and lack time for social interaction with friends and family.
The other thing that people do not understand is that integrated movements use the muscles in the way they are designed to work with their synergistic partners whereas isolating muscles disrupts this complex interaction. Split programs where you break the body up into separate body parts has the potential to ruin efficient movement. More on this later.
The most important point to understand though is that you can work multiple muscles in one integrated movement.
Note that I say “integrated movement” and not a compound movement. An integrated movement uses the body in a standing position using every joint from your feet to your shoulders. Whereas a compound exercise like a bench press for example uses more than one joint but is not truly integrated. It is not that compound movements are not good it is just that they are not truly exposing the body to full body stability and coordination demands that create great movement efficiency.
Sure, there may be times you need to isolate a muscle group for a specific weakness but if you are moving well with the “big” functional movements there would be no need to isolate.
Let’s look at some examples.
How Many Muscles Are Used In Integrated Movements?
To give you a good understanding of just how many muscles are used with integrated movements here is some examples with the first one being the chin up.
If I was to perform 4-5 sets of each of this exercise I would be working all of these muscles to their limit.
For the chin-up exercise this is equivalent to doing
•4-5 sets of bicep curls
•4-5 sets of abdominal training
•4-5 sets of upper back strengthening
•4-5 sets of rotator cuff strengthening
•4-5 sets of forearm grip strengthening
Let’s look at a lower body example.
The squat exercise is even more complex as there are so many muscles involved in this movement with various adductors and abductor muscles all working simultaneously with the prime movers of quads, hamstrings and glutes. Not to mention the core trying to stabilize the spine and pelvis. Even the latissimus dorsi works as a stabilizer in this movement.
For the squat exercise this would be the equivalent to doing
•4-5 sets of leg extensions
•4-5 sets of leg curls
•4-5 sets of hip thrusts
•4-5 sets of calf raises
•4-5 sets of the pallof press for the core
If I was to take this further I could use a squat exercise that uses an upper body movement with it as seen in the video below.
Even better than that would be looking at contralateral movements like the single cable push or single cable pull that use joints with different actions on opposite sides of the body by enhancing the strength of the slings.
These movements are incredibly good at improving the body for walking, running and throwing and improve not just the strength of the muscles involved but also their ability to help the body move fast. This is often so hard for people to do and these exercises are perfect for doing this and apply to people of all ages.
A good example of this is seen in the video below.
What About Isolating The Core?
This is another big misconception that you have to isolate the abdominal muscles in order to make them stronger. However, did you know that many of the functional movements strengthen the abdominal muscles much more effectively than planks and sit ups?
Once again I wrote a massive article about this where I compared several isolated exercises versus functional ones using EMG analysis to determine which exercise activates four of the key core muscles the most. While the isolated exercises could activate one part of the abdominal muscles they were almost non-existent with the other three muscles. Whereas the functional movements activated all four.
This is the article if you want to check it out – What improves core strength more – Isolated or integrated exercise?
Here is one of the examples.
You can see quite clearly how much extra the rectus abdominis and back extensors work in the deadlift versus the plank where there is hardly any back extensor work at all. The oblique activation in both exercises is very similar, which many people may find quite surprising as they would have expected the plank to have much higher activation.
This is a perfect example of where just because you don’t “feel the burn” of the abs in the deadlift, they are definitely working to their full capacity. The deadlift is superior for abdominal activation in that it demands activation of ALL four muscles tested.
What does all this mean?
The more efficient you become at these movement, the stronger and more efficient your entire body becomes. All of the muscles within this pattern are now improved, but even better than that is the fact I also change any motor program that shares the same relative timing and positioning. In other words any movement that looks similar to a chin up or the squat is now improved.
Whereas isolated exercises have no way for the brain to transfer that information to anything you use in daily life or in sports for your body does not move in this way.
Joint Stability & Timing
The danger of performing isolation exercises is they have the potential to ruin the timing and sequence of muscles needed to create stability of our joints when we move.
For example in the pictures above it is clear to see how many muscles are involved in performing the movement. What is not clear and more difficult to understand, is the role of several other muscles working further from the moving limbs that are working to provide stability.
When you appreciate that almost every case of injury is related to poor stability of joints you can see how detrimental the isolated strength philosophy can be. Often a single muscle is blamed for creating injury when in reality it was several muscles.
The strength of these muscles is not of importance, the timing is!
For example the muscle interaction during the act of walking every muscle from the trunk down has one function the minute your foot hits the ground. All the muscles of the lower limb (glutes, quads, hamstrings etc) act together to stop the ankle, knee, and hip from bending to prevent you falling to the ground. All the muscles have the same function which is to apply the brakes and slow you down.
This goes right against the concept of the origin and insertion understanding of movement. But when you really think about it you will see it will make perfect sense. During the landing phase of running the quads are contracting eccentrically to prevent the knee from flexing while the hamstrings are contracting to prevent both the knee and the hip from flexing. We have not even spoken about the role of the muscles in the foot and ankle as they are also contracting at various stages to decelerate, lock, and unlock the multiple joints in the foot to provide motion.
There is a sequence of events where all muscles work eccentrically to slow a movement down, and then within a millisecond contract to create a movement.
Whenever we perform an isolated exercise we are employing a muscle action that is against the function of the nervous system and a pattern that we would never use. This does not necessarily mean it is “bad”, for there may be a specific purpose for doing this, it just means it is against how our brain coordinates movement using what is known as motor programs. It is also unlikely to change the movement causing pain if the fault within the movement is not addressed.
“Patterns are groups of singular movements linked in the brain like a single chunk of information. This chunk essentially resembles a mental motor program, the software that controls movement patterns. A pattern represents multiple single movements used together for a specific function. Storage of a pattern creates efficiency and reduces processing time in the brain, much as a computer stores multiple documents of related content in one file to better organize and manage information.” – Gray Cook.
Functional can really be simplified into observing how we move in a standing position where all joints and muscles are involved in either a role of stabilizing or moving.
When you begin to look more at the way a movement is coordinated and spend your time trying to enhance the efficiency of this movement you will see greater results with your training. You will no longer get hung up on what appears to be a weak or a tight muscle for you know it could be so many different things.
Below is a great video I suggest to watch that explain the timing concept in detail.
Strengthen The Neuromuscular System Not Just The Muscles
The traditional resistance training model focuses on isolating the muscle within a safe and simple movement pattern in order to fatigue the working muscle as much as possible. In this situation, neuromuscular activation (brain), is actually minimized. Simple isolation movements do not challenge and overload the nervous system, rather it is “dumbed down”. The consequence is low skill integration.
Movements are predictable and the objective is to perform the same movement at the same speed with the same technique every time. Movement performance is sacrificed for hypertrophy and muscle definition which is a potential disaster for any sporting athlete but also for the average person looking to improve fitness.
Have you ever wondered why beginners can improve their strength really quickly once they learn the correct technique? It was not their muscles that changed, it was the neuromuscular system that improved.
When people are not sure of the technique they slow things down so their brain can make sense of everything. There is just too much information to process, and they cannot move unless they look at it piece by piece. And while it helps them to see things more easily and prevents them from falling over, the slow timing they have adopted quickly ruins their strength. Moving too slow is very inefficient and forces muscles to work out of their normal role forcing load upon a muscle that is not designed to handle it. This is where muscle imbalances and injuries are often created.
This also explains how a person who can move 400kg on a leg press may be very weak with a squat. (see the article – Why machine training creates the illusion of strength).
The neuromuscular requirement of the leg press is minimal and stability is created by the machine. The strength of the muscles is not of any use in the squat where timing and stability of joints from the big toe right up to the head and neck is essential. If any of these joints is compromised the strength is dramatically reduced.
Is Isolation Training Completely Useless?
No absolutely not. There is still a place for isolated exercise and there are many times where you will need to use these especially with injury rehabilitation in the early stages when pain and compensation make it impossible to use integrated movements. I use these all the time with people each day and they can be invaluable in getting people to be able to move without pain.
Even without injury or pain they can be great complementary exercises if used wisely and in combination with the integrated movements that you want to improve. The key is to use them as a stepping stone to improving functional movement. Once you are able to complete functional movements well spend all your time improving the strength and efficiency with those instead of wasting time isolation muscles in the hope that it makes you stronger.
Do You Need More Ideas?
I know that we have only scratched the surface with exercise ideas and how to really maximize everything we have just covered and you must be thinking I need more ideas on how to do this right. Well to make your life easier a few years ago I created a training resource that listed 101 different workout ideas using the philosophy discussed in this article.
Click here to see more about this and get your PDF report instantly.
Summary
I hope this article has given you more knowledge about creating strength training programs based upon movement, instead of muscles. We must let go the thinking of the past where we needed an exercise for every muscle group and appreciate we can improve our strength much more quickly by using integrated movements. By spending time to improve the efficiency and strength within these movements you will improve the strength of every muscle in your body.
About The Author
Nick Jack is owner of No Regrets Personal Training and has over 20 years’ experience as a qualified Personal Trainer, Level 2 Rehabilitation trainer, CHEK practitioner, and Level 2 Sports conditioning Coach. Based in Melbourne Australia he specializes in providing solutions to injury and health problems for people of all ages using the latest methods of assessing movement and corrective exercise.
References
•Functional Anatomy of the Pelvis and the Sacroiliac Joint – By John Gibbons
•Movement – By Gray Cook
•Corrective Exercise Solutions – by Evan Osar
•Tight Hip Twisted Core – by Christine Koth
•Diagnosis & Treatment Of Movement Impairment Syndromes – By Shirley Sahrman
•Low Back Disorders – by Dr Stuart McGill
•Ultimate Back Fitness & Performance – by Dr Stuart McGill
•Psoas Solution – by Evan Osar
•Motor Learning and Performance – By Richard A Schmidt and Timothy D Lee
•Assessment & Treatment Of Muscle Imbalance – By Vladimir Janda