Early in my training career, back in the early 1990s, I spent most of my time training clients with an isolated approach. I divided the body into muscle groups such as quadriceps, hamstrings, calves, lats, pectorals, deltoids, biceps, triceps, and abdominals. I would then group two or three of these muscle groups into a single workout and select two to three exercises per body part. Pretty simple.
The “classic” split was chest, shoulders, and triceps on day one; back, biceps, and abdominals on day two; followed by legs (quadriceps, hamstrings, and calves) on day three. This style of training has its benefits: you can increase muscle size, or hypertrophy, within a specific muscle. It was also easy to implement, especially as the gym industry was booming. Facilities were expanding from 5,000 to over 30,000 square feet, and new machines were developed to fill these larger spaces.
Around the turn of the century, circa 2001–2003, some strength coaches began to question this protocol. They asked: if a muscle is larger, does that necessarily mean it’s stronger? Just use the eyeball test and watch Olympic lifters. They can lift and control enormous loads, two to three times their body weight, and yet, they often don’t appear especially large or overly muscular.
It was during this time that a shift toward movement-based training began. Instead of isolating the quadriceps with leg extensions, I began to favor lunges or squats. Instead of training the chest with a machine fly, I’d choose a horizontal pushing exercise like a push-up, sometimes with my feet suspended in a TRX for added core engagement. As time went on, research began to validate this new approach, showing that a global or movement-based style of training engages more muscles throughout the body.
The big breakthrough was the realization that we don’t move in isolation. We’re not robots and our muscles work together in concert. Take the goblet squat with a kettlebell, for example: as you lower into the bottom of the squat, your hamstrings contract while your quadriceps lengthen. As you drive out of the bottom position, the quadriceps contract and the hamstrings stretch. And that’s not even mentioning the glutes, which are also heavily involved. The squat is anything but isolated. Many argue that what makes this exercise so beneficial is the sheer number of muscles engaged in a single movement. Yet, if you visit any big-box gym, you’ll often find a line for the leg press machine and empty squat racks.
I believe the biggest difference between these two approaches is that movement-based training requires more motor control. Your brain, as the center of your nervous system, sends signals to your muscles to contract and relax. The better your motor control, the more effectively you can control your muscles. Just watch a child learning to walk. They stumble and fall as their body learns to coordinate itself, becoming stronger and more competent over time.
I’ve shared before how, after winning a national bodybuilding competition, I strained a hamstring playing softball at a family picnic. My legs were well developed, but at that time I didn’t have the motor control needed to sprint quickly and generate a series of forceful muscle contractions from a standstill.
So, what’s the answer? Which approach is best? What if you want to move like a gazelle and look like a cartoon superhero? Maybe the recipe is to incorporate elements of both styles into your training.
Perhaps the optimal approach isn’t to choose one or the other, but to blend both. Train for strength and power using movement patterns and use isolation training to build hypertrophy in specific areas, if that’s your goal. Instead of arguing that one method is superior, consider that you can train for both functionality and aesthetics. I believe it’s possible, but you need a strategy.