So you’ve got yourself a gym membership or bought a set of home weights. Now what? With the sheer amount of confusing exercise advice out there, it can be hard to decide what to include in a weights routine.

It can help to know there are broadly two types of movements in resistance training (lifting weights): compound exercises and isolation exercises.

So what’s the difference? And what’s all this got to do with strength, speed and healthy ageing?

What’s the difference?

Compound exercises involve multiple joints and muscle groups working together.

In a push up, for example, your shoulder and elbow joints are moving together. This targets the muscles in the chest, shoulder and triceps.

When you do a squat, you’re using your thigh and butt muscles, your back, and even the muscles in your core.

It can help to think about compound movements by grouping them by primary movement patterns.

For example, some lower body compound exercises follow a “squat pattern”. Examples include bodyweight squats, weighted squats, lunges and split squats.

We also have “hinge patterns”, where you hinge from a point on your body (such as the hips). Examples include deadlifts, hip thrusts and kettle bell swings.

Upper body compounded exercises can be grouped into “push patterns” (such as vertical barbell lifts) or “pull patterns” (such as weighted rows, chin ups or lat pull downs, which is where you use a pulley system machine to lift weights by pulling a bar downwards).

In contrast, isolation exercises are movements that occur at a single joint.

For instance, bicep curls only require movement at the elbow joint and work your bicep muscles. Tricep extensions and lateral raises are other examples of isolation exercises.

Compound exercises can make daily life easier

Many compound exercises mimic movements we do every day.

Hinge patterns mimic picking something off the floor. A vertical press mimics putting a heavy box on a high shelf. A squat mimics standing up from the couch or getting on and off the toilet.

That might sound ridiculous to a young, fit person (“why would I need to practise getting on and off a toilet?”).

Unfortunately, we lose strength and muscle mass as we age. Men lose about 5% of their muscle mass per decade, while for women the figure is about 4% per decade.

When this decline begins can vary widely. However, approximately 30% of an adult’s peak muscle mass is lost by the time they are 80.

The good news is resistance training can counteract these age-related changes in muscle size and strength.

So building strength through compound exercise movements may help make daily life feel a bit easier. In fact, our ability to perform compound movements are a good indicator how well we can function as we age.

What about strength and athletic ability?

Compound exercises use multiple joints, so you can generally lift heavier weights than you could with isolation exercises. Lifting a heavier weight means you can build muscle strength more efficiently.

One study divided a group of 36 people into two. Three times a week, one group performed isolation exercises, while the other group did compound exercises.

After eight weeks, both groups had lost fat. But the compound exercises group saw much better results on measures of cardiovascular fitness, bench press strength, knee extension strength, and squat strength.

If you play a sport, compound movements can also help boost athletic ability.

Squat patterns require your hip, knee, and ankle to extend at the same time (also known as triple extension).

Our bodies use this triple extension trick when we run, sprint, jump or change direction quickly. In fact, research has found squat strength is strongly linked to being able to sprint faster and jump higher.

Isolation exercises are still good

What if you’re unable to do compound movements, or you just don’t want to?

Don’t worry, you’ll still build strength and muscle with isolation exercises.

Isolation exercises are also typically easier to learn as there is no skill required. They are an easy and low risk way to add extra exercise at the end of the workout, where you might otherwise be too tired to do more compound exercises safely and with correct form.

In fact, both isolation and compound exercises seem to be equally effective in helping us lose body fat and increase fat-free muscle mass when total intensity and volume of exercises are otherwise equal.

Some people also do isolation exercises when they want to build up a particular muscle group for a certain sport or for a bodybuilding competition, for example.

I just want a time efficient workout

Considering the above factors, you could consider prioritising compound exercises if you’re:

• time poor
• keen to lift heavier weights
• looking for an efficient way to train many muscles in the one workout
• interested in healthy ageing.

That said, most well designed workout programs will include both compound and isolation movements.

Correction: This article has been amended to reflect the fact a weighted row is a pull pattern, not a push pattern.

Mandy Hagstrom, Senior Lecturer, Exercise Physiology. School of Health Sciences, UNSW Sydney and Anurag Pandit, PhD Candidate in Exercise Physiology, UNSW Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Do you suffer from low back pain that recurs regularly? If you do, you’re not alone. Roughly 70% of people who recover from an episode of low back pain will experience a new episode in the following year.

The recurrent nature of low back pain is a major contributor to the enormous burden low back pain places on individuals and the health-care system.

In our new study, published today in The Lancet, we found that a program combining walking and education can effectively reduce the recurrence of low back pain.

The WalkBack trial

We randomly assigned 701 adults who had recently recovered from an episode of low back pain to receive an individualised walking program and education (intervention), or to a no treatment group (control).

Participants in the intervention group were guided by physiotherapists across six sessions, over a six-month period. In the first, third and fifth sessions, the physiotherapist helped each participant to develop a personalised and progressive walking program that was realistic and tailored to their specific needs and preferences.

The remaining sessions were short check-ins (typically less than 15 minutes) to monitor progress and troubleshoot any potential barriers to engagement with the walking program. Due to the COVID pandemic, most participants received the entire intervention via telehealth, using video consultations and phone calls.

The program was designed to be manageable, with a target of five walks per week of roughly 30 minutes daily by the end of the six-month program. Participants were also encouraged to continue walking independently after the program.

Importantly, the walking program was combined with education provided by the physiotherapists during the six sessions. This education aimed to give people a better understanding of pain, reduce fear associated with exercise and movement, and give people the confidence to self-manage any minor recurrences if they occurred.

People in the control group received no preventative treatment or education. This reflects what typically occurs after people recover from an episode of low back pain and are discharged from care.

What the results showed

We monitored the participants monthly from the time they were enrolled in the study, for up to three years, to collect information about any new recurrences of low back pain they may have experienced. We also asked participants to report on any costs related to their back pain, including time off work and the use of health-care services.

The intervention reduced the risk of a recurrence of low back pain that limited daily activity by 28%, while the recurrence of low back pain leading participants to seek care from a health professional decreased by 43%.

Participants who received the intervention had a longer average period before they had a recurrence, with a median of 208 days pain-free, compared to 112 days in the control group.

Overall, we also found this intervention to be cost-effective. The biggest savings came from less work absenteeism and less health service use (such as physiotherapy and massage) among the intervention group.

This trial, like all studies, had some limitations to consider. Although we tried to recruit a wide sample, we found that most participants were female, aged between 43 and 66, and were generally well educated. This may limit the extent to which we can generalise our findings.

Also, in this trial, we used physiotherapists who were up-skilled in health coaching. So we don’t know whether the intervention would achieve the same impact if it were to be delivered by other clinicians.

Walking has multiple benefits

We’ve all heard the saying that “prevention is better than a cure” – and it’s true. But this approach has been largely neglected when it comes to low back pain. Almost all previous studies have focused on treating episodes of pain, not preventing future back pain.

A limited number of small studies have shown that exercise and education can help prevent low back pain. However, most of these studies focused on exercises that are not accessible to everyone due to factors such as high cost, complexity, and the need for supervision from health-care or fitness professionals.

On the other hand, walking is a free, accessible way to exercise, including for people in rural and remote areas with limited access to health care.

Walking also delivers many other health benefits, including better heart health, improved mood and sleep quality, and reduced risk of several chronic diseases.

While walking is not everyone’s favourite form of exercise, the intervention was well-received by most people in our study. Participants reported that the additional general health benefits contributed to their ongoing motivation to continue the walking program independently.

Why is walking helpful for low back pain?

We don’t know exactly why walking is effective for preventing back pain, but possible reasons could include the combination of gentle movements, loading and strengthening of the spinal structures and muscles. It also could be related to relaxation and stress relief, and the release of “feel-good” endorphins, which block pain signals between your body and brain – essentially turning down the dial on pain.

It’s possible that other accessible and low-cost forms of exercise, such as swimming, may also be effective in preventing back pain, but surprisingly, no studies have investigated this.

Preventing low back pain is not easy. But these findings give us hope that we are getting closer to a solution, one step at a time.

Tash Pocovi, Postdoctoral research fellow, Department of Health Sciences, Macquarie University; Christine Lin, Professor, Institute for Musculoskeletal Health, University of Sydney; Mark Hancock, Professor of Physiotherapy, Macquarie University; Petra Graham, Associate Professor, School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Macquarie University, and Simon French, Professor of Musculoskeletal Disorders, Macquarie University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.