Mass Attack: Compound Movements For Symmetry and Size

It is common place to see popular bodybuilders using special techniques and exercises to try to isolate individual muscles, or even parts of muscles. Sometimes they even claim to be able to change the shape or add striations or contours to the muscles by doing certain rep ranges, rep tempos and specific angles.

In reality muscles can only do two things: get bigger, or get smaller.

When they get bigger the striations become deeper, their naturally predetermined shape becomes more apparent, new veins crop up to provide blood supply and the fat covering them is stretched to show more definition. But in reality all that is really happening is a change in size.

The only other factor that affects the way muscles look is reducing the layer of body fat that is covering them.

The Elite Level

Now that being said, there is some wisdom in what these iron-veterans are doing. When you get to the top level of physique development it is often the minor details that set apart the good from the great. Minor imbalances in symmetry can crop up and need to be addressed, this can be due to a dominant synergist (like the delts overpowering the chest or the hamstrings overpowering the glutes in certain movements), or it can be simply a visual issue: having narrow clavicles requires more focus on medial delts, or bad bicep insertions require some extra arm size. I myself have to do some very specific pull down movements in order to activate and train the lower fibers of my lats because my teres major takes over in most pull down movements. However, an experienced bodybuilder and a beginner or intermediate lifter should train very differently!

You better believe that long before I started doing weak point training I was trying to get my deadlift over 500lbs, my squat over 400lbs and my bench over 300lbs. 80% of my development I can attribute to spending a good half-decade to simply getting stronger in the compound barbell lifts that train the whole body.

Advanced Techniques

For every pro bodybuilder you see doing a single arm cable exercise, you’ll see thousands of gym rats who have been following the same techniques for years who hardly look like they work out. This is the consequence of applying a customized technique that an advanced athlete has developed after decades of training haphazardly into your routine. Remember, the body awareness, control, and the amount of time that top level bodybuilders have spent with their bodies in the gym is immense. It literally has taken me over seven years before I could actually effectively isolate my lats in a pull down motion without having other muscles dominate the movement.

Simply put, advanced techniques are for advanced lifters and doing them as a beginner will not make you advance; it will make you stagnate.

Lifting Heavy

Muscles, while aesthetically pleasing, have always been designed to move. Thus, the best way to get maximum muscle activation has always been, and always will be to move heavy things. For 99% of lifters in the beginner and intermediate stage, deadlifts, squats, free weight chest presses, free weight shoulder presses, free weight rows, and pull ups or pull downs are all that are needed to develop a fantastic physique.

Compound lifts allow you to use heavy weight, target multiple muscles, and follow the natural movements of our bodies in order to develop symmetry.

A Beginner’s Approach

Beginners do best training their bodies frequently because they aren’t yet able to do so much damage that they require a lot of recovery. They also grow quickly and their physiques are ready to put on size. Research has shown that muscle recovers and is ready to be trained again in 24-48 hours, that only one or two sets is needed for beginners to grow maximally and that beginners don’t have the capacity yet to truly put themselves in a recovery hole. So, what makes the most sense is a full body split for a beginner, a setup that is low on volume per session, and is done three times per week on either a M/W/F setup or a T/Th/Sa setup.

Examples of great routines that have been developed for hypertrophy are the HST program designed by muscle physiologist Bryan Haycock and Starting Strength designed by the famous strength coach Mark Rippetoe. Depending on your goals, be they strength or size, you could go with either.

The List: Compound Exercises

Chest

Flat bench presses (barbell, dumbbell or machine), incline/decline bench presses (barbell, dumbbell or machine), dips

Back

Deadlifts, chinups, weighted pull ups, pulldowns, rows (barbell, dumbbell, or machine), T-bar rows

Shoulders

Military presses (barbell, dumbbell or machine), upright rows, and remember front delts are worked on all presses!

Biceps

Underhand-grip chinups, underhand-grip pulldowns, underhand grip rows (all types), and remember biceps get slightly worked on all rows and pulldown movements regardless of grip

Triceps

Dips, close-grip bench presses (barbell, Smith machine), and remember triceps get significantly worked on ALL presses

Legs

Glutes/Hamstrings Dominant:

Deadlifts, sumo Deadlifts, stiff legged deadlift, back squats (low bar), RDL/SDL, leg press (high foot position press through heels), lunges (long step, press through heel), step-ups (step leg at 90 degrees press through heel), Hip Extension (Barbell, bodyweight, dumbbell or machine)

Quad Dominant:

Front Squat, back squats (high bar), hack squat, lunges (shallower step, press through midfoot), Leg Press (normal foot position, press through midfoot), step-ups (step leg at ~45 degrees press through midfoot)

Final Point

Just remember, you will get maximum recruitment of your entire lower body when you go heavy on squats. Leave the close stance, feet turned out partial range of motion leg presses to the pros and the beginners who don’t know any better!

Advanced Techniques: Pre-exhaus

The pre-exhaust technique involves working a muscle group using an isolation move before before moving on to a heavier compound joint exercise. This goes against a basic rule of beginning bodybuilding which tells us that a good rule of thumb is to perform heavy multi-joint exercises first, then move on to the lighter isolation moves. There is a method to the madness though. The pre-exhaust technique allows us to fatigue the targeted muscle group so that when we perform the heavier compound joint movement, the targeted muscle will be the first to fail as opposed to the secondary accessory that are used in the exercise.

Let’s look, for example, at using the pre-exhaust principle for chest. To isolate the chest muscle, we’ll start off with a move that eliminates the accessory muscles often used in chest moves like the triceps and shoulders. Pectoral flyes are a good choice (I like to do these on the pec-deck machine for pre-exhaust work, but dumbbells work fine too). Once you’ve finished your flye sets, move on to a heavy compound lift like incline or flat bench barbell presses. Because you’ve already pre-fatigued your chest with the flyes, your chest should give out before your triceps and shoulders, thus ensuring a complete workout of the pectoral region. Often, in chest and back work, you may find some of the accessory muscles involved in the movement (triceps and biceps respectively) giving out before the larger muscle you’re trying to target does. The pre-exhaust technique is a way around this problem and a great way of busting through plateaus to boot. Give it a try!
Here are some other examples of pre-exhaust movements for various other bodyparts:
Back: Pre-exhaust with Straight-arm Pulldowns or Machine Pullovers, then move to Lat Pulldowns or Barbell Rows
Legs: Pre-exhaust with Leg Extensions or Leg Curls, then move to Squats or Leg Presses
Biceps: Pre-exhaust with Concentratrion Curls, then move to Barbell Curls
Triceps: Pre-exhaust with Dumbbell Kickbacks, then move to Skull Crushers
Shoulders: Pre-exhaust with Lateral Raises or Front Raises, then move to Shoulder Presses
Note: I recommend beginners avoid using pre-exhaust in their routines as it could possibly lead to overtraining. Intermediate lifters can use the technique, but should be careful of how frequently they employ it in their routines. Using it every workout can lead to overtraining.