Compound Exercises

 

A compound exercise or lift is a movement that uses multiple muscle groups and joints. These exercises allow you to move more weight, burn more calories and improve your overall strength and muscle mass. The most commonly recognized compound exercises are the squat, bench and deadlift known in powerlifting; but others include the overhead press, pull-ups, lunges, hip thrusts and barbell rows. When you consider these exercises, it's important to note that most are executed using free weights rather than machines. Free weights force your muscles to work together simultaneously to stabilize your body through the lift and require full body muscular movement. This is the "best bang for your buck" when it comes to overall strength, muscle density/size, fat loss, athleticism, and aesthetics. While you can substitute machine variations (like the hack squat or leg press) for these lifts, it's still best to incorporate free weights as often as possible and use machines as secondary exercises. Compound exercises should be executed in both lower (3-6) rep ranges at heavier weight and higher (8-12) rep ranges at moderate weight. 

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Isolation Exercises

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An isolation or accessory exercise is a movement that uses one muscle group and typically only uses one joint. These exercises allow you to target specific muscles without working others at the same time. This is extremely beneficial for addressing muscle imbalances, working through an injury or achieving a specific look. Physical anatomy and history of an individual can cause muscle imbalances for several different reasons including genetics, injury or previous sport performance. Another notable reason is that some muscles tend to be neglected during compound lifts due to some muscles fatiguing faster than others and/or larger muscles stealing the show. For example, pull-ups and bent over rows both recruit and require bicep engagement. However, the bicep isn't the primary muscle doing the work and therefore, it's slightly neglected as far as gaining mass and size. For that reason, bicep curls are an excellent isolation exercise to pair with the others. Other examples of isolation exercises include hamstring curls, leg extensions, lateral raises, tricep extensions, etc. Isolation accessories are best kept to a higher rep range of 8-12 at all times. 

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Powerbuilding - How they work together

 

Training days are best structured starting with compound exercises and followed by isolation accessory exercises. This allows your body to be challenged from a full power and strength perspective while also targeting each muscle group in more granular detail after the fact. As mentioned in the bicep example above, this allows the muscles in our body to be challenged from all angles.  

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Powerbuilding isn't a crazy new concept or term in the industry. And with that, strength training and bodybuilding are also interchangeable - meaning, all powerlifters are doing isolation work while all bodybuilders are doing compound lifts. What it comes down to is individual goals and how much focus we'll put in one place over the other. While we'll tailor goals accordingly, I want all women at Vogue to really take advantage of testing their strength and building muscle both ways. For those of you thinking "Well, I don't care about how strong I am or how much I bench. I don't want to be a competitive powerlifter or bodybuilder. I just want to lose weight and look tone." Don't worry - I got you. I'm still going to coach you on how to lift like both with excellent form, customize and substitute where needed and get you the body you dream of while doing so!

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Your personal weight training program will be designed to keep you on your toes, have you feeling great and looking great but most importantly, it will empower you and give you confidence. 

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Lastly, let's talk about Cardio options and the importance of keeping up our heart rate...

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Cardiovascular Exercise 

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Cardiovascular (cardio) or aerobic exercise is any activity that increases heart rate, oxygen and blood circulation throughout the body. Regardless of individual goals, everyone should be doing cardio - period. There are so many benefits of doing cardio that the list is near infinite, but most notably, it strengthens the heart, increases stamina and reduces health risks, body fat, and fatigue. We all know what cardio is, but I wanted to walk through the flexibility of this portion of training at Vogue. 

 

Cardio can be done steady state or in intervals on either standard cardio machines (like the treadmill, elliptical and stair master) or doing outdoor activities (like running, biking and jump rope). This type of cardio is great following a typical weight training session where you complete your lifts, hop on the machine or go for a run, hit your calorie mark and you're done. But, cardio can also be achieved through HIIT and circuit workouts using weights, bodyweight, kettlebells, etc. If you've ever done a group class like CrossFit or a Bootcamp, you're probably very familiar with these types of workouts and recognize terms associated with HIIT like Tabata, EMOM, etc. If this is your thing, we can add in smaller HIITs to follow main lifts and/or add in one or two days with a full circuit to break up the monotony of structured lifting. At the end of the day, exercise should be fun and when it comes to cardio, I think its important to find what you like. Depending on your goals, I'll customize your program to your own interests and with options.