By Tonivc
As a NYC personal trainer I get to travel all around Manhattan and see many various training styles from qualified or unqualified personal trainers. One of my biggest pet peeves is watching a trainer waste a clients time or a gym goer wasting his/her time doing less than impactful exercises.
Single-Joint vs. Multi-Joint
Paige Hathaway Squatting
If you want to make the biggest impact in the shortest period of time, you need to do multi-joint exerces (excluding diet). While this is over stated within the fitness field, I still see many people spending more time on single or isolation exercise vs. multi-joint (compound).
To explain a multi-joint exercise is an exercise that includes multiples muscles at one time i.e. squats, lunges, overhead press, pulll ups.
Single joint exercises are generally isolation movements such as: calf raises, bicep curls, tricep extension, leg curl etc…
If you were to build a house, would you first pick out all the curtains, color of the door, type of shutters etc…? Of course not, those are small details that need to be done AFTER the framework has been completed. In this case the framework is your multi-joint exercises. Focus on the big movements first and than hit the smaller details (single joint) after.
Light vs. Heavy
Another issue I see often, are gym goers hitting the multi-joint exercises such as squats, but not pushing the intensity. Now I’m not saying you need to be grinding out your reps, but I am saying that you should be feeling your muscles working and pushing it enough to get your heart rate up. Generally speaking, if you do a high rep squat with the right weight, you should be breathing pretty heavy.
To be 100% clear, ladies you won’t get huge or manly by lifting appreciable weights either!
http://youtu.be/itV3c1khQvE?t=1m16s
Next time you hit the gym, try to hit the multi-joint exercises with challenging weights and you should feel the difference.
“Train hard, train smart” ~Fusion Trained
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