Are basic exercises necessary for muscle building?
Basic exercises for muscle building.
Basic exercises for muscle building are movements that involve at least two joints.
For example, basic exercises for muscle building include exercises such as squats, deadlifts or bench presses.
Single-joint exercises vs. multi-joint exercises
Squats are a multi-joint exercise. With multi-joint exercises, the movement takes place across several joints (e.g. knee and hip joint). Several muscle groups are loaded at the same time. Unfortunately, the various Muskeln have different force curves. Multi-joint exercises produce an almost straight-line (linear) pressure, and the resistance on the muscles therefore varies very strongly. With single-joint exercises, the resistance is transferred directly. The advantage of multi-joint exercises lies in the so-called spread effect (indirect training effect). This effect describes the observed increase in strength of the surrounding, not directly trained muscles when training large muscle groups. These structures never fully fatigue, however.
Hormone release
The reason why it is often claimed that you must perform basic exercises for muscle building lies in hormone release. Often, in connection with squats, reference is made to the hormone release during the exercise. However, this plays no role with regard to the muscle hypertrophy effect. Muscle hypertrophy is a local process that occurs independently of the release of so-called "anabolic hormones" after training, provided that hormone concentrations are in the permissive range. Whether you train your chest muscle separately or together with your legs plays no decisive role for chest muscle growth.
So are basic exercises for muscle building necessary?
The goal in muscle training is to channel as much of the resistance as possible to the Muskel being trained. This is in contrast to sports where, for the purpose of demonstrating strength, the resistance must be distributed across as many Muskeln as possible. However, the more isolated the training resistance acts on the target muscle, the greater the muscular load and thus also its fatigue. What is ultimately decisive for muscle building is therefore total muscle fatigue. This can be achieved both through basic exercises and through any other strength exercise.
It is therefore not absolutely necessary to include basic exercises for muscle building in your training plan.
The following points are more important for muscle building:
- Make sure you perform the exercise correctly.
- Move the resistance slowly and without momentum
(approx. 10 seconds per repetition). - Move the resistance through the full possible range of motion.
- Perform the exercise until complete fatigue.
- Choose a resistance with which you reach fatigue within a tension duration of approx. 60 - 120 seconds.
- Consume approx. 20g of high-quality Protein every 3 - 4 hours.
