Compound Movement = Functional, Fat Burning Movement
At AOC, we’ve always been about functional movement exercises.
What is that?
Functional movements are literally movements that have function. They mimic real-world patterns that we use day in and day out. Thankfully, functional exercise is becoming more and more popular, and we could lend some thanks to compound exercises for that.
Compound exercises are exercises containing multiple movement patterns while activating multiple muscles within that pattern. Good examples are the squat pattern, lunge pattern, and rowing pattern.
Isolated exercises focus on strictly one or two muscles with every movement. I’m sure everyone can think of an example, but when I think of isolated exercises, my instant visual is an Arnold Schwarzenegger-type sitting on a bench doing one-arm bicep curls, admiring himself in the mirror. But that’s just me…
So why use compound exercises instead of focusing on one area?
Simple: you get more out of the workout! Not only can you get a full body workout by incorporating functional movements into your training program, but you end up keeping your heart rate up, improving your cardiovascular system and burning more calories.
Eventually, once you’ve learned the movement pattern platforms and are solid in them, you can always add different elements such as load to increase your strength and burn more fat!
In addition, by training in a manner that simulates real-world activities, you decrease your chance for injury and become a better athlete (which are all are!). Also, not that many people give much thought to their future years, but if you’ve ever spent some time around seniors, independence is extremely important to their well-being. This means being able to balance on their own, go to the bathroom on their own (think squatting pattern), being able to lunge up if they ever end up on the ground, and simply moving around without relying on their hands to get them there!
So if you really think about it, the benefits of compound exercises are countless and it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that they are critical to our very own survival!
