Well, first of all it’s because I always trained this way.
When I started training, it was for football. The first two years (13-14 years of age) I basically trained on my own in the school’s gym. It wasn’t well equipped at all; it had a squat rack, a leg press machine, a universal machine (shoulder press, bench press, leg press, lat pulldown), leg extension, leg curl, a bench press and some dumbbells.
I didn’t know much back then, and nobody was designing programs (well the Phys.Ed teachers were, but only to kids 15 and above). There was no internet, no book that I could buy and I didn’t even know what muscle magazines were. So my source of info was pretty slim.
Most guys there where all doing chest and arms (big surprise) but I was a receiver and reasoned that all I needed were legs to run fast. So for those tho years I would basically do leg press, leg extension and leg curls… with some upper body stuff on the universal machine.
Once I turned 15 I joined a real gym. The trainers there were actually great coaches. One (the owner) was a former member of the Canadian national weightlifting team and the other one was the one who would become my mentor… Jean Boutet who trained a lot of pro hockey players, most of the town’s college football players and some olympic athletes. Jean was a big believer in the big basics and always emphasized doing a few things very well instead of a lot of things average.
He taught me my first important lesson, one that I continue using to this day: ‘If you can’t justify putting something in a program, don’t do it’.
He convinced me that no amount of 35lbs flies could ever stimulate more chest growth than a 300lbs+ bench press… that a leg extension could never rival a squat, that a leg curl could never beat a deadlift.
He once told me ‘If a leg extension is not as effective as the squat, if you want to do more volume why not simply add more squat… it’s the thing that works’.
For most of my formative years I followed that advice to a ‘T’. My workouts basically revolved around the squat, bench, deadlift, power clean, barbell row, military press and chin-up. Normally doing 3 of those per workouts, for lots of sets… most of the time I did 6 x 6.
When I stopped playing football I switched to olympic lifting. My workouts stayed on the same path. I was doing 3 or 4 movements per session. Always one variation of the clean, one of the snatch, a squat, pull or deadlift and a jerk or press. Again I rarely did less than 5 sets per exercise, sometimes doing as many as 15 sets of 2 reps.
It is only when I stopped olympic lifting and decided to get into bodybuilding that I started doing more isolation work. The reason was not so much that I believed that they were needed for growth, but rather because my extensive focus on the big lifts left me with some imbalances.
My biceps, although not small, were lagging behind my triceps. Mostly because I did a lot more pressing and holding at arms length than I did upper body pulling when I trained as an olympic lifter.
My chest was lagging behind my shoulders. That’s because of all the overhead work I did as an olympic lifter, and the avoidance of too much bench pressing (a tight chest makes it hard to reach proper overhead position in the jerk and snatch). So when I switched to bodybuilding, the bench press and variations didn’t lead to a great pectoral development simply because the shoulders were doing all the work.
My lats were lagging behind my traps, lower back and rhomboids… again, because those three muscles are used a lot more than the lats in the olympic lifts.
So I did have to use more isolation work to bring up lagging body parts. At that point I DID have a justification for using them. Simply put, my body was not efficient at recruiting those lagging muscles and the isolation work became more of a motor learning tool than an actual muscle-building tool.
Once that I corrected these weaknesses (well, still working on the lats one!) I no longer required a lot of exercise variation. My bicepsactually grew more from doing only one curling exercise (mostly straight-bar, steep angle preacher curl) but for plenty of sets and my chest began responding to doing a ton of bench pressing work.
Actually when I tried to include more variation ‘trying to hit the muscle from various angles’ I lost strength and size. Probably because the work on the less effective exercises necessited a reduction in volume on the most effective exercises (thus less stimulation) while causing more fatigue and increasing recovery requirements.
Neurally speaking it is also true that by doing more work on the same movement you become more efficient; thus increasing strength which leads to a larger overload of the muscles and eventually more mass.
I’m talking from experience here.
Doing tons of exercises is alluring. As I mentionned earlier, changing your body is an emotional thing. On one hand we want to improve so much that we want to believe that somewhere there exist THE ONE exercise that will give you the gains you dream of; and on the other side we’re afraid of missing out if we don’t hit the muscle from every angle possible.
YES different exercises will have a SLIGHTLY different effect on the muscle. But most of the time this is insignificant.
I’m not saying that doing tons of exercises doesn’t work… I’m just saying that most of the time it is unecessary and maybe even counterproductive if that means that you can’t get as much out of the most effective exercises.
