By Deanna Salvador
Are Compound Exercises Good for Losing Weight?
You want to lose weight, shed those pounds and look a little leaner and more toned for the summer. So you spend 20 minutes, 30 minutes, or even a full hour at the gym on the treadmill hoping to achieve a smaller physique. And after a few months of dedicated work and consistency, you get exactly that! You get the same body with the same proportions but now youve just become smaller. This is where resistance training comes into play. By increasing muscle mass, you can become smaller AND sculpt your body the way you want. You can look significantly leaner earlier in your fitness journey by adding more muscle and definition to your physique, compared to if you just lost all the weight (including muscle) and still look soft. So now that you know that lifting weights is key to your body transformation, lets tackle exactly what are the best compound exercises for weight loss.
When you decrease your rate of energy expenditure, it becomes a risk factor for weight gain.
Resistance training exercises can be categorized into two main types of movements based on how many joints are working simultaneously. There are isolation movements (AKA single joint exercises), which you can tell by the name, let you isolate a joint. For beginners and for those who want to lose weight however, it is more advisable to use compound exercises (AKA multi-joint movements) over isolation exercises. Why? Because compound exercises use multiple joints, which allows you to recruit more muscle, thus placing a greater demand on your body. Compare doing biceps curls versus doing lat pulldowns. With lat pulldowns, youll get a biceps pump, but youll definitely sweat more on the lat pulldowns, because youre working more muscles. With biceps curls, youre working just the biceps (as you can tell). With lat pulldowns, youre working the biceps, but in addition to that, youre also getting the lats. Double the muscles, half the time. The more muscles you use in an exercise, the more energy youll expend, and as a result, more calories burned.
One advantage of compound exercises over isolation movements is that because you can target multiple muscle groups with one exercise, you can save a lot of time in the gym. Instead of doing isolation movements for every muscle group, which might take you half a day if you are aiming for a full body workout, you can instead do fewer exercises that target more muscles and be done with your workout in less than an hour.
Is that to say you shouldnt do any isolation movements at all? No, thats not the message. Fortunately, it doesnt have to be an either/or type of scenario, where youre doing either compound movements, or isolation movements. You can certainly do both. You can spent 80-90% of your time doing compound movements, and the remaining 10-20% doing isolation exercises for muscles that you really want to emphasize.
Why Proper Form is Important
You know you enjoy that thudding sound of a heavy barbell hitting the ground. It is a euphoric feeling of accomplishment when you have pushed your limits and getting the body you have always desired. But, if you have not dedicated enough effort to perfecting your starting position and technique, you could be subject to injury.
Learning to train smartly will allow you to hit the weights for longer without causing injury. Heres why proper form is so important.
- Reduce injury: Doing exercises with improper form can cause an injury and keep you from your training. For example, a deadlift is a full-body exercise that requires training and precision. You must stand with your feet shoulder width apart, bend your knees, and keep your feet slightly turned outward. If your back is not straight, you can suffer from lower back injuries.
- Use less energy: You will have a smaller range of motion and burn more energy if you dont have proper form. For example, when doing standing biceps curls, if you dont lower the weight all the way down, youre not burning as many calories as you could be.
- Achieve your goals: Having proper form will cause your body to learn techniques faster, and you wont be wasting energy trying to stabilize yourself. For instance, if you are performing a lunge, your starting position is essential for keeping your balance. You need to stand with your feet hip-width apart. Step with your right foot forward into the lunge keeping your back knee bent and preventing the front knee from crossing your toes. Push back into starting position.
Ten Compound Exercises for Weight Loss
- Deadlifts
Primary muscles worked: hamstrings (backs of the thighs), glutes (buttocks), lower back.
2. Squats
Primary muscles worked: quadriceps (front of the thighs), hamstrings, and glutes
3. Bench press
Primary muscles worked: pectoralis major (chest muscles), anterior deltoids (front of the shoulder), and triceps (backs of the arms)
4. Romanian deadlifts (and their close cousin, the one-leg Romanian deadlifts).
Primary muscles worked: hamstrings, glutes, lower back
5. Inverted rows
Primary muscles worked: Rhomboids and traps (mid and upper back muscles), as well as biceps (front of the upper arm)
6. Overhead press
Primary muscles worked: deltoids (shoulder) and triceps
7. Pushups
Primary muscles worked: pectoralis major, anterior deltoid, and triceps
8. 1-arm bent over rows
Primary muscles worked: lats (side of the back), and biceps
9. Lunges
Primary muscles worked: quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes
10. Step ups
Primary muscles worked: quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes
Interestingly enough though, the exercises themselves are not even the most important factor in an exercise program. They’re only the 4th most important factor. Want to learn the 3 most important factors in an exercise program? Fill out the form below, and I’ll email you the top 3.
Do Compound Exercises Burn Belly Fat?
Compound exercises will surely burn more calories than isolation exercises as mentioned earlier, but spot reduction through doing an exercise where youre trying to reduce fat in a specific area, is not possible. When your body uses fat as fuel, it uses fat more evenly throughout your body. This means that when you do ab exercises and burn fat as fuel, for example, the fat will not only come from your belly fat but also fat in the other areas of your body as well. The best compound exercises address more than one targeted area.
Targeting belly fat will have to take multiple strategies. The main ones will have to be proper nutrition and stress management because these two are usually the main culprit of belly fat because of their link to certain hormones. So the answer is yes, compound exercises can burn belly fat but also fat from all the other areas of the body as well.
When beginning your fat loss journey, keep your starting position strong with your back straight, chest out and do the best exercises for your body. Make sure you keep track of the calories burned.
Which exercises Burn the Most Calories?
The answer to that question is a lot simpler than you think. The exercises that burn the most calories would be exercises that are the most intense and that use the most muscle groups (heavy deadlifts, for example). But of course, the more intense an exercise is, the less time we can keep doing it for. Heavy deadlifts, for example, use the whole body to pull the weight off the ground and burn the most calories per rep but you wont be able to lift the same heavy weight for a full hour, right? If you can, you may just not be lifting heavy enough. That, or youre on steroids
For most of us though, prolonged high-intensity workouts are too taxing on our nervous systems, so it is best to either pair up heavy weights with light weights or do moderate weights throughout your workout in order to maintain an elevated heart rate for a longer period of time to help you maximize your calorie burn which well get into detail next.
You can also combine your weight training with other exercises such as the dumbbell row and squats or lunges for multi-joint exercises.
How Can I Maximize My Calorie Burn?
Maximizing calorie burn gets down to the combination of the level of intensity AND the duration youre doing the exercise for. I mentioned pairing up heavy and light weights or doing moderate intensity all throughout your workout. Make sure, as part of your strength training routine that you target major muscles by bench pressing twice a week or some other weight training exercises.
One great way to maintain a moderate intensity without burning out early in your gym session is to switch up muscle groups from one exercise to the next, to not only give a certain muscle group rest while working out on another muscle group but also to minimize rest time and keep the body moving and keep the heart rate up for the rest of your workout. A sample workout that does exactly that would look like this:
- Deadlifts- back, leg
- Inverted Rows- lats, rhomboids, rear delts
- Military Press- shoulders, triceps
- Squat- quads, hamstrings, glutes
- Bent over Row- back, bicepss
- Bench Press- chest, triceps
Doing either steady state cardio or high intensity interval cardio along with the workout
above will maximize your calorie burn and will help you shed those pounds faster. You can do a light walk/jog at the end of the workout as part of your cooldown or you can do the cardio portion on another day of the week. To know more about the benefits of doing both, heres an article on that topic.
For strength training, you could add a barbell row to your exercise routine. Stand with your feet shoulder width apart. Make sure your mid-foot is under the bar. Keep your knees slightly bent and with an overhand grip, hold the bar tightly. Keep your back straight and lift the barbell toward your lower chest. Lower the bar, and after one rep back to the starting position. Assess whether you can do more with the weight you are lifting or if you should lower it and do one rep again. This is one of the best exercises to build upper body strength.
You could also do a bench press routine or pull-ups for the best exercises in strength training and see your muscle mass increase. These workouts require a high rate of energy expenditure to lose weight.
For more information regarding number of reps, check out my article, called “High reps vs Low reps.“
Compound Exercises for Weight Loss For Females
The compound exercises listed above can be done by both males and females. The only thing that might differ would be you ladies out there might be more focused on developing legs, more specifically, the glutes, for example. These compound exercises can be modified to target the glutes so they contribute more to the exercise. For example, when squatting, taking a wider stance with toes pointed slightly outwards opens up the hips, which will then activate the glutes more. The same thing applies to the leg press.
Another example is to add a band to a leg exercise to keep the tension on the glutes even longer. You ladies can also increase the intensity in the leg exercises by adding more sets or weight and even add isolation exercises in the end like using the abduction machine for example. If you are interested in reading more about how to build your glutes, here’s a great article “How to Get a Round Butt Like Jennifer Lopez.”
Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart and straighten your arms parallel to the floor. Bend your knees and squat down as far as you can go, ensuring your knees dont pass your feet. This simple exercise will tone your lower body and upper body. The amount of calories you burn is up to you!
Conclusion
There are many factors that go into getting the body that you want. Some of the best exercises for fat loss can get done using your own body weight. A healthy diet and strength training combined with cardio is a great fat-burning approach. The best compound exercises target several muscle groups at the same time.
It’s not just about going to the gym and doing your workouts. Whether you’re trying to lose weight or build muscle, a lot of it will have to come from fueling your body the right way, sleeping adequately, recovering properly, and managing your stress. For example, eating enough protein is crucial to both fat loss and muscle gain. Protein helps you retain muscle while you’re losing weight and it helps you build and repair muscle when you’re trying to gain weight. If youre wondering how much protein should I eat?, examine.com covered that topic in great depth in this article.
Interestingly enough though, the exercises themselves are not even the most important factor in an exercise program. They’re only the 4th most important factor. Want to learn the 3 most important factors in an exercise program? Fill out the form below, and I’ll email you the top 3.
