What are compound exercises and why are they good for you?
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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.
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Mango vs Pineapple – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing mango to pineapple, we picked the pineapple.
Why?
It was close! Both of these tropical fruits have almost identical macros, and when it comes to vitamins and minerals, mango has slightly more vitamins while pineapple has slightly more minerals, so that balances out too. Their glycemic loads are 11 and 13 respectively, so: very low, and very similar.
See also: Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?
In terms of what sets them apart:
Mango has a lot of vitamin A, to the point that it can interfere with blood-thinners if you take those.
Pineapple has bromelain, an enzyme with unique anti-inflammatory properties that we must devote a Research Review Monday to one of these days, because there’s a lot to say, but the short version is, it’s very powerful.
Since bromelain is found only in pineapples, whereas vitamin A is easy to find in abundance in many foods, we went with the pineapple.
Enjoy!
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Aging Is Inevitable… Or is it?
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Aging is inevitable… Or is it?
We’ve talked before about how and why aging happens. We’ve also talked about the work to tackle aging as basically an engineering problem, with the premise that our bodies are biological machines, and machines can be repaired. We also recommended a great book about this, by the way. But that’s about interfering with the biological process of aging. What about if the damage is already done?
“When the damage is done, it’s done”
We can do a lot to try to protect ourselves from aging, and we might be able to slow down the clock, but we can’t stop it, and we certainly can’t reverse it… right?
Wrong! Or at least, so we currently understand, in some respects. Supplementation with phosphatidylserine, for example, has shown promise for not just preventing, but treating, neurodegeneration (such as that caused by Alzheimer’s disease). It’s not a magic bullet and so far the science is at “probably” and “this shows great promise for…” and “this appears to…”
Phosphatidylserene does help slow neurodegeneration
…because of its role in allowing your cells to know whether they have permission to die.
This may seem a flippant way of putting it, but it’s basically how cell death works. Cells do need to die (if they don’t, that’s called cancer) and be replaced with new copies, and those copies need to be made before too much damage is accumulated (otherwise the damage is compounded with each new iteration). So an early cell death-and-replacement is generally better for your overall health than a later one.
However, neurons are tricky to replace, so phosphatidylserine effectively says “not you, hold on” to keep the rate of neuronal cell death nearer to the (slow) rate at which they can be replaced.
One more myth to bust…
For the longest time we thought that adults, especially older adults, couldn’t make new brain cells at all, that we grew a certain number, then had to hang onto them until we died… suffering diminished cognitive ability with age, on account of losing brain cells along the way.
It’s partly true: it’s definitely easier to kill brain cells than to grow them… Mind you, that’s technically true of people, too, yet the population continues to boom!
Anyway, new research showing that adults do, in fact, grow new braincells was briefly challenged by a 2018 study that declared: Human hippocampal neurogenesis drops sharply in children to undetectable levels in adults after all, never mind, go back to your business.
So was adult neurogenesis just a myth to be busted after all? Nope.
It turned out, the 2018 study had a methodological flaw!
To put it in lay terms: they had accidentally melted the evidence.
A 2019 study overcame this flaw by using a shorter fixation time for the cell samples they wanted to look at, and found that there were tens of thousands of “baby neurons” (again with the lay terms), newly-made brain cells, in samples from adults ranging from 43 to 87.
Now, there was still a difference: the samples from the youngest adult had 30% more newly-made braincells than the 87-year-old, but given that previous science thought brain cell generation stopped in childhood, the fact that an 87-year-old was generating new brain cells 30% less quickly than a 43-year-old is hardly much of a criticism!
As an aside: samples from patients with Alzheimer’s also had a 30% reduction in new braincell generation, compared to samples from patients of the same age without Alzheimer’s. But again… Even patients with Alzheimer’s were still growing some new brain cells.
Read it for yourself: Adult hippocampal neurogenesis is abundant in neurologically healthy subjects and drops sharply in patients with Alzheimer’s disease
In a nutshell…
- We can’t fully hit pause on aging just yet, but we can definitely genuinely slow it
- We can also, in some very specific ways, reverse it
- We can slow the loss of brain cells
- We can grow new brain cells
- We can reduce our risk of Alzheimer’s, and at least somewhat mitigate it if it appears
- We know that phosphatidylserine supplementation may help with most (if not all) of the above
- We don’t sell that (or anything else) but for your convenience, here it is on Amazon if you’re interested
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When BMI Doesn’t Measure Up
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When BMI Doesn’t Quite Measure Up
Last month, we did a “Friday Mythbusters” edition of 10almonds, tackling many of the misconceptions surrounding obesity. Amongst them, we took a brief look at the usefulness (or lack thereof) of the Body Mass Index (BMI) scale of weight-related health for individuals. By popular subscriber request, we’re now going to dive a little deeper into that today!
The wrong tool for the job
BMI was developed as a tool to look at large-scale demographic trends, stemming from a population study of white European men, who were for the purpose of the study (the widescale health of the working class in that geographic area in that era), considered a reasonable default demographic.
In other words: as a system, it’s now being used in a way it was never made for, and the results of that misappropriation of an epidemiological tool for individual health are predictably unhelpful.
If you want to know yours…
Here’s the magic formula for calculating your BMI:
- Metric: divide your weight in kilograms by your height in square meters
- Imperial: divide your weight in pounds by your height in square inches and then multiply by 703
“What if my height doesn’t come in square meters or square inches, because it’s a height, not an area?”
We know. Take your height and square it anyway. If this seems convoluted and arbitrary, yes, it is.
But!
While on the one hand it’s convoluted and arbitrary… On the other hand, it’s also a gross oversimplification. So, yay for the worst of both worlds?
If you don’t want to grab a calculator, here’s a quick online tool to calculate it for you.
So, how did you score?
According to the CDC, a BMI score…
- Under 18.5 is underweight
- 18.5 to 24.9 is normal
- 25 to 29.9 is overweight
- 30 and over is obese
And, if we’re looking at a representative sample of the population, where the representation is average white European men of working age, that’s not a bad general rule of thumb.
For the rest of us, not so representative
BMI is a great and accurate tool as a rule of thumb, except for…
Women
An easily forgotten demographic, due to being a mere 51% of the world’s population, women generally have a higher percentage of body fat than men, and this throws out BMI’s usefulness.
If pregnant or nursing
A much higher body weight and body fat percentage—note that these are two things, not one. Some of the extra weight will be fat to nourish the baby; some will be water weight, and if pregnant, some will be the baby (or babies!). BMI neither knows nor cares about any of these things. And, this is a big deal, because BMI gets used by healthcare providers to judge health risks and guide medical advice.
People under the age of 16 or over the age of 65
Not only do people below and above those ages (respectively) tend to be shorter—which throws out the calculations and mean health risks may increase before the BMI qualifies as overweight—but also:
- BMI under 23 in people over the age of 65 is associated with a higher health risk
- A meta-analysis showed that a BMI of 27 was the best in terms of decreased mortality risk for the over-65 age group
This obviously flies in the face of conventional standards regards BMI—as you’ll recall from the BMI brackets we listed above.
Read the science: BMI and all-cause mortality in older adults: a meta-analysis
Athletic people
A demographic often described in scientific literature as “athletes”, but that can be misleading. When we say “athletes”, what comes to mind? Probably Olympians, or other professional sportspeople.
But also athletic, when it comes to body composition, are such people as fitness enthusiasts and manual laborers. Which makes for a lot more people affected by this!
Athletic people tend to have more lean muscle mass (muscle weighs more than fat), and heavier bones (can’t build strong muscles on weak bones, so the bones get stronger too, which means denser)… But that lean muscle mass can actually increase metabolism and help ward off many of the very same things that BMI is used as a risk indicator for (e.g. heart disease, and diabetes). So people in this category will actually be at lower risk, while (by BMI) getting told they are at higher risk.
If not white
Physical characteristics of race can vary by more than skin color, relevant considerations in this case include, for example:
- Black people, on average, not only have more lean muscle mass and less fat than white people, but also, have completely different risk factors for diseases such as diabetes.
- Asian people, on average, are shorter than white people, and as such may see increased health risks before BMI qualifies as overweight.
- Hispanic people, on average, again have different physical characteristics that throw out the results, in a manner that would need lower cutoffs to be even as “useful” as it is for white people.
Further reading on this: BMI and the BIPOC Community
In summary:
If you’re an average white European working-age man, BMI can sometimes be a useful general guide. If however you fall into one or more of the above categories, it is likely to be inaccurate at best, if not outright telling the opposite of the truth.
What’s more useful, then?
For heart disease risk and diabetes risk both, waist circumference is a much more universally reliable indicator. And since those two things tend to affect a lot of other health risks, it becomes an excellent starting point for being aware of many aspects of health.
Pregnancy will still throw off waist circumference a little (measure below the bump, not around it!), but it will nevertheless be more helpful than BMI even then, as it becomes necessary to just increase the numbers a little, according to gestational month and any confounding factors e.g. twins, triplets, etc. Ask your obstetrician about this, as it’s beyond the scope of today’s newsletter!
As to what’s considered a risk:
- Waist circumference of more than 35 inches for women
- Waist circumference of more than 40 inches for men
These numbers are considered applicable across demographics of age, sex, ethnicity, and lifestyle.
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Live Life in Crescendo – by Stephen Covey and Cynthia Covey-Haller
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Stephen Covey is of course best known for his “7 Habits of Highly Effective People“, while the dozen books he wrote afterwards, not including this one, did not get the same acclaim.
Not including this one, because this one was published posthumously and, notwithstanding the order of the names on the cover, in all likelihood his daughter wrote most of.
And yet! The very spirit of this book is in defiance of 7 Habits being his “early career” magnum opus. We say “early career”, because he was 57 already when that was published, but it was one of his earlier books.
In this work the authors lay out the case for how “your most important work is always ahead of you“, and that it is perfectly possible to “live life in crescendo“, and keep on giving whatever it is that we want to give to the world.
We also learn, mostly through storytelling, of how people are infinitely more important than things, and that it is there that we should put our investments. And that while adversity may not make us stronger, it just means we may need to change our approach, to continue to be productive in whatever way is meaningful to us.
Bottom line: if ever you wonder how your future could live up to your past (in a good way), this is the book to get you thinking.
Click here to check out Live Life in Crescendo, and figure out what your next great work will be!
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Sticky Jackfruit Burgers
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All the taste and experience of pulled pork, without the increased risk of cancer and metabolic disease. On the contrary, jackfruit introduces lots of fiber, vitamins, carotenoids, and flavanones. We’ll have to do a main feature about jackfruit sometime; it’s an unusual fruit especially for its protein content, but for now, let’s get cooking!
You will need
- 1 can (14oz/400g) green jackfruit, drained (the flesh will not, in fact, be green—this is referring to the fruit being unripe and thus still firm in texture, which is what we want. The outside of the fruit, which will not be in the can, will have been green)
- 1/4 red cabbage, thinly sliced
- 1/2 carrot, grated
- 6 mangetout, thinly sliced
- 2 tbsp mayonnaise (your preference what kind, and yes, vegan is fine too)
- 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tbsp gochujang paste (if you can’t find gochujang paste locally, you can either order it online (here it is on Amazon) or substitute with harissa paste, which is not the same—it uses different spices—but will do the same job here re texture, umami taste, and level of spiciness)
- 1 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
- 1 tsp apple cider vinegar
- 1 tsp garlic paste
- 1 tsp tomato paste
- 1 tsp ginger paste
- 1 tsp chili flakes
- 3½ fl oz water
- 2 burger buns (unless you make them yourself, burger buns will probably not be healthy; you can, however, also look for small round wholemeal breads—the name of which varies far too much by region for us to try to get a catch-all name here—and use them in place of burger buns)
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Combine the garlic paste, ginger paste, tomato paste, gochujang paste, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, and chili flakes in a saucepan
2) Boil the 3½ fl oz water we mentioned; add it to the saucepan, mixing well, turn on the heat and let it simmer for 5 minutes or until it is thick and sticky (it will thicken more as it cools, too, so don’t worry if it doesn’t seem thick enough yet). Set it aside.
3) Dry the jackfruit (using strong kitchen paper should be fine), add the olive oil to a skillet and bring it to a high heat; add the jackfruit and fry on both sides for a few minutes, until it looks cooked (remember, while this may look like animal meat, it’s not, so there’s no danger of undercooking here).
4) When the jackfruit looks a nice golden-brown, add two thirds of the sauce from the saucepan, and break apart the jackfruit a bit (this can be done with a wooden/bamboo spatula, so as to not damage your pan), When it all looks how you’d expect pulled jackfruit (or pulled pork) to look, take it off the heat.
5) Combine the carrot, cabbage, and mangetout in a small bowl, adding the apple cider vinegar and mixing well; this will be the coleslaw element
6) Mix the remaining sauce with the mayonnaise
7) (optional) toast the burger buns
8) Assemble the burgers; we recommend the following order: bottom bun, pulled jackfruit, coleslaw, gochujang mayo, top bun
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Level-Up Your Fiber Intake, The Fun Way!
- 10 Ways To Balance Blood Sugars
- Our Top 5 Spices: How Much Is Enough For Benefits?
Take care!
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The Age-Proof Brain – by Dr. Marc Milstein
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Biological aging is not truly just one thing, but rather the amalgam of many things intersecting—and most of them are modifiable. The cells of your body neither know nor care how many times you have flown around the sun; they just respond to the stimuli they’re given.
Which is what fuels this book. The idea is to have a brain that is less-assailed by the things that would make it age, and more rejuvenated by the things that can make it biologically younger.
Dr. Milstein doesn’t neglect the rest of the body, and indeed notes the brain’s connections with the immune system, the heart, the gut, and more. But everything in this book is done with the brain in mind and its good health as the top priority outcome of all the things he advises.
On which note, yes, there is plenty of practical, implementable advice here. For a book that is consistently full of study paper citations, he does take care to make everything useful to the reader, and makes everything as easy as possible for the layperson along the way.
Bottom line: if you would like your brain to age less, this is an excellent, very evidence-based, guidebook.
Click here to check out The Age-Proof Brain, and age-proof your brain!
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