Exercise Selection - Part 6 of Anabolic Muscle Building Factors

The more expensive a piece of exercise equipment is, the more muscle it'll build you, right?

WRONG.

Gyms, health clubs, and infomercials have been using a sneaky trick for years to vaccum your hard-earned m.oney right from your wallet...

By featuring the latest, greatest, shiniest piece of equipment, they make you believe that the key to building a great body is to use complicated machinery.

Nothing can be further from the truth. Your body has NO way of knowing what type of machine you're using, and how much it costs. The only thing your muscles feel is load and intensity. Whether you curl a rock, dumbbell, or use some "seated curling station", all your biceps feel is the load.

So, exercise machines are not better than free weights. In fact, exercise machines lack  a very important element that helps you achieve better results. Machines typically focus on isolated movements, which are single-joint movements that stimulate and involve only one muscle group... Moreover, machines provide a lot of stability during a lift, which prevents your stabilizer muscles from being worked.

Free weights, on the other hand, promote compound movements, which are multi-joint movements that stimulate and involve more than one muscle group (For example, bench press involves chest, front deltoids, and triceps). Moreover, free weights help to recruit and build those all-important stabilizer muscles.

This is not to say that machines don't play any role in a workout routine. Machines are very effective during the early stages of a beginner's workout routine. In other words, if you're just starting out with weight training, spend some time on the machines to build up you strength and conditioning. Afterwards, you never need to use a machine ever again, and you can move on to free weights (barbells and dumbbells).

When working with free weights (barbells and dumbbells), the type of moves you want to primarily focus on are compound movements, as defined earlier. Compound movements work more than one muscle group at a given time. For example, the bench press is a classic compound movement. It works the chest, shoulders, and triceps in one single move!

Compound movements stimulate more muscle fiber, which increases your intensity, which sends a stronger signal to your central nervous system, which boosts your anabolic hormoes production...

Confused? Don't be...All I'm saying is that compound movements require a lot more work, which helps you build a lot more muscle. Good deal, right?

But, isolation movements, the type that work one muscle group at a time, do play a key role in your workout routine. You shouldn't ignore them altogether. Strategically using a combination of compound movements and isolation movements will help you achieve dramatically better muscle gains than using only one type of move.

So, next time you check out a workout routine, make sure that it carefully considers the exercise selection techniques I mentioned in this email. Choosing the right workout routine is 1/3 of the muscle building battle!