"Go to your room! You stubborn child!" Ah, how well I remember that favorite phrase of parents everywhere. It is typically used when parents mean to get their offspring to mend their ways. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Isolating a normally gregarious child is a form of punishment that has both positive and negative effects.

What do you do to a stubborn muscle? Many unwary bodybuilders beat it into submission, expecting it to grow in response to destructive overload. The scientific bodybuilder, however, may try isolation techniques. Like the parent-child situation, isolation can work in forcing a muscle to respond favorably, but other beneficial factors may have to be forgone in the process.

Normally, the design features of bodybuilding equipment dictate the movement pattern through which the weight must be moved. That built-in movement pattern will generally lend each muscle or muscle group sufficient isolation from all other muscles to allow it to receive the benefits of overload. However, it isn't always so, and in fact just the opposite is true often enough to make it a serious problem in bodybuilding.

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Definitions of Key Factors

Let's start by al l speaking the same language. What do we mean by isolation, overload, intensity, duration, and the host of other terms used in describing weight training techniques? Those terms listed above are all interrelated-one can't be expounded upon without bringing all the others-and for me to explain how and why you should isolate a muscle forces me to describe all the other terms as well.

Isolation, to a bodybuilder, simply means that a single muscle or muscle group is being overloaded. Surrounding muscles, such as synergistic and stabilizer muscles, may also be involved, but a conscious effort is made to minimize their action in favor of the primary target muscle(s).

The degree of isolation can vary from total isolation of a single muscle to partial isolation of a muscle group (with synergists and stabilizers active) to non-isolation as in a coordinated movement such as the snatch in Olympic weightlifting. All of these degrees of isolation have their uses in bodybuilding, and it is important to know when to use each method and what the expected outcome(s) will be.

Overload is the term given to applying stress to a muscle or muscle group. The degree of overload can also vary, and can range from slight to severe. In all cases, it is assumed that the stress being applied is greater than what the muscle is normally acquainted. As the muscle(s) adapt to greater and greater levels of stress, the amount of stress that is required to constitute an overload situation becomes commensurately greater as well.

You have heard the old saying that a chain is only as strong as the weakest link. Well, the same can be said of a group of muscles. When a group of muscles act together to move a weight, it is the weakest of the group that determines the total amount of force applied to the weight. And, it is the weakest of the group that receives the greatest amount of overload!

The real significance of the above statement, which by the way is a fact of physics, is that it is always appropriate to overload, and the easiest way to do it is to isolate a muscle. It is not always the best way, however. And the reason for this lies in explaining the relationship among the concepts of isolation, overload, intensity, and duration.

The amount of time (duration) your muscle(s) spend under stress of overload proportions is as important as the overload itself in promoting muscle development. And the exact measure of overload (intensity) is as indispensable an ingredient in successful bodybuilding as isolation, overload, or duration. All of them must be considered in formulating a truly scientific and maximally beneficial training program.

When Is Total Isolation Best?

Many bodybuilders believe that the time to engage in strict isolation exercise is in the precontest stage. It is a widely held belief that a muscle or muscle group becomes more cut-up (or defined) through isolation techniques, and more massive through non-isolation or partial isolation techniques. I am not convinced that this is the case at all.

It may indeed be true that you can improve muscle definition in the latter stages of contest preparation by switching to total isolation movements, but that does not mean that the precontest period is the only time this should be done! In fact, it may be true that such a change in regimen just prior to a contest is the worst thing you con do!

Curtailing moss training can cause you to lose moss, and what you think is on increase in definition may have been due to stricter diet rather than stricter isolation. I strongly believe that this is the case.

Alternatively, or perhaps concurrently, switching to strict and total isolation movements may have been the spark your training needed to pull you out of an overtrained state and back into a muscle-growth cycle once again. The Weider Muscle Confusion Principle applies here- "shocking" your muscles with a different form of stress or different method of contraction is often very productive in causing overtrained or stubborn body ports to respond with renewed vigor.

So, when is the best time to do total isolation exercises? I believe that your training should have a healthy mix of all forms of overload. The concept of holistic training holds the key to how you should train for maximum cell growth.

Holistic Training and Isolation

Every bodybuilder is familiar with the fact that each muscle cell is comprised of several different components. Each cell component serves a different function-mitochondria for endurance, myofibrillar elements for strength, robosomes for protein synthesis, capillaries for delivering nutrients and oxygen as well as removing wastes, and so forth. And each cell component will grow in size and/or number, but only in response to a specific type of overload!

Isolation exercises such as concentration curls, leg extensions, dumbbell flyes, and so forth often must be performed with extremely light weights because the isolated muscle is placed in a restricted leverage position necessitating the use of lighter poundages, and because the possibility of involving synergists and stabilizers to aid in the movement is effectively reduced or eliminated. Some theoreticians in the field of biomechanics argue that the loss of intensity that invariably occurs with total isolation exercises is inconsequential and that bodybuilders can still achieve maximum muscle growth despite the lighter poundages. Behind their reasoning is the notion that overload is overload, and as long as the individual muscle is taxed beyond its normal limits it will respond by developing.

I believe that this point of view is largely true, but in some instances must be modified. The reason for this belief is that I view intensity as an important element in developing strength, and with greater strength a bodybuilder can optimize the extent of overload for ever-increasing gains in size. Without occasionally injecting intensity into your workouts, your strength levels will fail to improve significantly to allow you to apply greater and greater levels of overload stress to the muscle.

Another reason why I think isolation must be tempered with considerations of intensity is that it is functionally impossible to achieve total isolation in the vast majority of muscles in the first place. For example, consider cross flyes, which is an isolation exercise for the pectorals. While the pectorals are contracting to draw the dumbbells upward and across the upper torso, the lats, triceps, deltoids, and several other smaller muscles are synergistically contracting both to assist in controlling direction of movement as well as to stabilize other body parts to make the flye movement possible. The same kind of multimuscle involvement occurs while doing leg curls, tricep pushdowns, lat pull downs, and so forth.

Multimuscle teamwork is the way the human body works. To get specific muscles to develop you either have to completely isolate them, which is very often impossible, or you have to make them the weakest muscles in the group that is working. Only then will the isolated muscles receive the full benefit of maximum overload.

Even this is difficult to do in many cases. Sometimes it is necessary to engage the cumulative contraction of several muscles at a time because of the biomechanical impossibility of isolation. This is true in perhaps the majority of exercises, and includes such movements as squats, bent rows, military presses, and hyperextensions. In such cases, the greatest amount of overload is felt by the weakest muscle in the group, and the stronger muscles get commensurately less. If the muscle's strength is such that the load being moved doesn't tax the muscle at least to the arbitrary level of 60%- 70% of its maximum, there will probably be little, if any, adaptive response. The intensity factor is just not sufficient for adaption to occur.

If, however, that same exercise is performed with a heavier than normal weight, those stronger muscles may indeed be taxed sufficiently to promote growth. Sometimes the only way to perform such a bypass operation is to either cheat part of the movement or engage several synergists to assist by altering the movement pattern of the exercise slightly. A typical example of this kind of practice is seen in the bench press. By bringing the elbows in toward the sides slightly there will be greater emphasis upon the anterior deltoids and less upon the chest. Conversely, moving the elbows out to a position where they are perpendicular to the torso effectively reduces the anterior deltoid involvement and focuses more strictly upon the pectorals. Similarly, the wider the grip in the bench press, the less will be the triceps' role in the movement.

A New Perspective on Training

The only reasonable way to maximize the development of a single muscle is to arrange your exercise movement in a way that draws the two ends of the muscle toward the midpoint of the muscle's belly. This can be accomplished either by having the movement occur at the insertion end of the muscle, or, less commonly, at the origin end of the muscle. Typically, the insertion end of a muscle is located farthest away from the midpoint of the body, and the origin end is closest to the midpoint of the body. An example of this kind of dual movement function can be seen in abdominal crunches. Raising the torso accentuates the upper portions of the abdominal muscles (the abdominals originate on the lower ribs), while raising the pelvis accentuates the lower regions of the abdominals (the abdominals insert in the pelvis).

Then, in addition to the above contraction requirement, consideration must be given to the principles of overload and isolation (you must exceed the stress level that the muscle is used to), and the intensity and duration factors (the weight must be sufficiently heavy to force on adoptive response and it must be applied for sufficient time to cause the desired response). If these requirements are fulfilled then it makes little difference whether there has been total isolation or partial isolation. Development will take place. Mixing the types of movements often will have the net effect of variable levels of stress being placed on the muscle, and that's desirable because it fulfills the concept of holistic training. Variability is the key to maximum development, and you should remember that your muscle cells are capable of many different types of development, all of which will add to your size.

To totally complicate the whole picture, any given muscle may perform several different functions in human movement. For example, the biceps brachii consist of a long and short head. While they are prime movers in elbow flexion, the long head assists in shoulder joint abduction (as in lateral raises for the deltoids), while the short head assists in shoulder joint flexion (e.g., front dumbbell raises), adduction (e.g., lot pull downs), and horizontal flexion (e.g., bench presses).

I mention this diversity of the musculoskeletal structure only to point out the fallacy of arguing for or against the effectiveness of total isolation movements. There ore very few movements that can be termed total isolation movements, but again, it is of little consequence. The rules-of-thumb for exercise selection almost always are going to include the following concepts:

• Overload isolation, intensity, and duration.
• Muscle contraction through the midline of the belly of the muscle for best isolation and overload.
• Contraction by keying on either the insertion end of the muscle or the origin end. Or, better yet, both.
• Use of a variety of exercises and overload methods' throughout a training cycle, for muscle confusion-this improves overall responsiveness in the long term.
• Maximum overload is achieved when the force generated goes through the muscle's midline, and commensurately less tension (intensity) is achieved the farther the force line varies from the midline.
• To be effective, an exercise should supply enough isolation such that at least 60%- 70% of the muscle's force generating capacity is exceeded.

Don't worry about achieving total isolation! Instead, concentrate on generating enough intensity for maximum overload for each muscle or muscle group. Then, apply it for sufficient time to stimulate growth.

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