Compounded Interest

The collective power of compound exercises.

AN ISOLATION exercise is like Lebron James. A compound exercise is like Steph Curry and Kevin Durant with maybe Klay Thompson and Draymond Green joining in. By incorporating more than one body part in a team effort, you can use more weight than when a muscle goes alone. Generally, the more complex a body part, the easier it is to work with compound lifts. On the other hand, simpler body parts, like calves and biceps, are stressed best with isolation exercises. However, we’ve provided a guide that allows you to make every body-part routine a team effort.

QUADRICEPS

Other than leg extensions and leg adduction and abduction, every quad exercise is compound. Squats, hack squats, Smith machine squats, and leg presses, and all their variations (one leg, front, etc.) involve the glutes and hamstrings as well as quad muscles. The lower back and calves may also chip in. It’s easy to do all-compound quad workouts.

HAMSTRINGS

Stiff-leg or Romanian deadlifts target the hams with other lower-body muscles. Likewise, though most bodybuilders think of lunges as a quad and glute exercise, they actually work hams (and glutes) more than quads.

UPPER BACK