the thing is i don't work my arms anymore, at least directly. so i feel like something is missing + i don't wanna look like the guy with a huge chest and back and small arms in comparison. what i need is a guarantee from someone who only did compounds and has big arms
My arms have never been huge, but from about 2009 to late 2012 I seldom did any arm isolation exercises, and my arms grew just fine with bench press, overhead press, pull ups and rows. If the most you've deadlifted is 200lb, then the presence or absence of isolation exercises is relatively low on the list of priorities for what you need to get bigger -- not to imply you shouldn't be doing them, but there are other issues that need to be covered first (such as eating enough to grow, having a balanced routine and practicing progressive overload).
Wardy257 said:
The exercise that allows you to move the biggest weight will have the biggest effect on your muscles.
When I was younger, I read a fitness article that preached the exact same thing, and used that logic to prescribe doing static holds with up to 300%1RM just short of lockout (in the strongest part of the ROM before locking out). I actually followed that programming for a while. Would you like to guess how successful it was? It's the exercise that puts the most tension on the muscles that will have the biggest effect on them, not the one that uses the most weight.
Jrahien said:
I never recommend isolation exercises to people unless there is profound imbalances in strength. Otherwise, isolation could cause imbalances, which is somewhere you really don't want to go. Plus, isolation does not train you to coordinate multiple muscles to work together as they would in daily, functional life. (Good luck finding a body builder that can last through an entire drop-in fitness class.)
Just recommending random isolation exercises (or even random compound exercises) could easily cause muscle imbalances. Incorporating one, the other or both into a balanced program will have the opposite effect.
It's my experience that if you want to be generally functional for everyday life, you'd best be good at a lot of different things. That includes compounds and isolation exercises, and multiple variations of most exercises. Bodybuilders actually have that pretty well covered, better than someone like me might. Remember, strength is a skill, so if all you're good at is squatting, deadlifting and pressing, while it will have more functional carry-over than not being able to squat, press or pull, it will
mostly just make you good at squatting, pressing and pulling. As soon as you step out of those realms, and the further away from them you step, even the best exercises become nothing special.
Those fitness classes use entirely different functions to the ones that bodybuilders train for. Of course a bodybuilder who doesn't do those classes, if s/he stepped into one, would go abysmally at it. The same way that if they've never worked a manual job before, they'll still be fairly incompetent on their first day, despite having more strength, endurance, and understanding of how to move heavy objects safely.
