#102: Combo vs. Compound Exercises: Which are better for building muscle in midlife?

All workouts with weights are NOT created equal. 

The internet is filled with free workouts that feature combo exercises - and women are wild about them - BUT are they the best way to build muscle?

Unfortunately not. 

In this episode of 40+ Fitness for Women podcast, I explain the difference between combo exercises and compound exercises - and why one is FAR SUPERIOR to the other when it comes to building and maintaining muscle. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 0:56 Exciting Program Updates
• 2:46 Understanding Combo and Compound Exercises
• 5:26 Effectiveness of Combo vs. Compound Exercises
• 9:11 Practical Tips for Effective Strength Training
• 13:46 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Transcript

#102: Combo vs. Compound Exercises: Which are better for building muscle?

[00:00:00] Welcome to 40+ fitness for women. I'm Lynn Sederlöf-Airisto, your host, and I'm a certified menopause fitness coach. And today I want to follow up on the last two episodes, which were really around the benefits of weight training for women in perimenopause and menopause, and then the benefits of having muscle, because those are a little bit two different things.
And today I want to talk about something that I think so many women out there, me included, are really confused about. And that is the difference between combo exercises, compound Exercises, and what is effective which ones should we really be doing in order to strengthen our bodies, build our muscles.
So that's our topic for today, but before we [00:01:00] go into that, Oh, it has been quite a week. I just had my masterclass yesterday. So you're hearing this a week after the masterclass and, it'll actually be kickoff day for my Learn to Lift with Lynn group program on the day that this comes out. So that's kind of exciting to be starting with a new group.
And I do these groups two to three times a year. And it really gives me an opportunity to work more one to one with women because the groups are small. Um, the biggest group to date was eight people. And I think I will cap it at about 10. Because I really want to get to know every single woman in the group and I make customized programs for them and, I want to be able to have the discussion.
And this time I've also expanded kind of the scope of the learn to lift with Lynn program so that [00:02:00] it encompasses more about the non lifting fitness aspects and habits that we should be looking at in menopause. Plus, as a special bonus, I offered free access to my fat loss workshop, which I'll be running or in the early spring, so end of March, beginning of April. So keep your ears open and your eyes open for that. If losing some fat before bikini season or, you know, tank top season is something that interests you because it'll be really like a working workshop where I help you get set up or at least that's my plan right now. Let's see how it morphs as I think about it more and more. 
Anyway, so, on to my topic, which is the compound versus combo exercises. 
All right. So, what is a combo [00:03:00] exercise and what is a compound exercise? They sound almost the same and oh my God, I sure as heck didn't know what the difference was up until I started studying this stuff and started weight training a few years back. 
 So let's start with what is a combo exercise. So a combo exercise is one that combines, so it's a combination of two different exercises and you'll do them in the same exercise, and you see a ton of these online. 
 I think one of the favorite ways of various fitness influencers to make their exercises seem more fun and interesting is you'll see things like somebody doing a bicep curl at the same time as they do a reverse lunge, or they do a squat and then when they're coming up out of the squat they'll [00:04:00] press up, do a shoulder press.
Yeah so all kinds of like combinations of exercises being done at the same time. And kind of the sky's the limit on those combo exercises. It's really up to the imagination, you know, how far you can go with these. 
Okay. So that's what a combo exercise is. Now, what about a compound exercise?
Now a compound exercise is a movement where you are using two or more joints and you're using several different muscle groups at the same time. So these you probably have heard of for example, we've got squats or deadlifts, the bench press. Pull ups and chin ups and various rows.
These are all compound [00:05:00] movements because they train more than one muscle group. 
And then kind of the opposite of a compound movement is an isolation exercise. 
So for example like doing a bicep curl or a tricep extension, doing a leg extension or a leg curl. All right, so that's, uh, the difference there.
Now, you may wonder is there a difference like is something more effective than others?
And if you're asking that I'm glad you're asking that because this is the crux of the whole reason I wanted to have this podcast episode. So When you are trying to build muscle, what you want to do is you want to load the movement that you are doing. So, let's say you're doing a squat. You want [00:06:00] to load the squat so that it is a little bit beyond your comfort zone.
So you are pushing your muscles to really work, okay? And if you're doing a squat or a bench press or a deadlift it is straightforward enough. If you're following a program and you know what weights you did last time, you pick weights that you know challenge you and you go ahead and you do your session using those challenging weights. And that's all well and good. 
Now when we're talking about a combo exercise, you're doing two unrelated Movements kind of back to back without changing the weight that you're using. So let's say you're doing a reverse lunge coupled with combined with a [00:07:00] bicep curl. Now your biceps are fairly small muscles.
So, the amount that you can actually curl is going to be limited. And on the other hand, your legs have much larger muscles, so when you do the reverse lunge, you should be able to manage a much larger weight with your legs. But the thing when you're doing one of these combo exercises is that you need to choose your weight according to the weaker muscle group okay. 
Because if you were to pick the weights that your legs can do well most likely your biceps are not going to come anywhere near being able to curl that amount of weight. And this is where those combo exercises become super sub optimal as far as building [00:08:00] muscle goes, so imagine that you're doing this reverse lunge with the bicep curl.
You can bicep curl five pounds. So you've got a five pound weight in each of your hands and you do your reverse lunge and you're basically doing a reverse lunge with 10 pounds. And then when you stand back up you're doing your bicep curl with five pound weights. Well, your biceps might get a workout from this.
Of course there's the momentum that happens when you're coming back up from the reverse lunge. Which also helps you with the bicep curls so it's not as clean of an exercise as if you were just standing there doing bicep curls, but at least your biceps get some work, but your legs aren't really getting that kind of strength training stimulus that they need to grow your leg [00:09:00] muscles. 
So I think you I think you know where I'm going with this. It's that ditch the combo exercises okay. So instead of doing a combo exercise where you're doing a reverse lunge and then bicep curls separate them,
do reverse lunges. Pick a weight for yourself where reverse lunges are challenging with that weight where you're really having to work your leg muscles and then pick a separate weight which is the correct weight for your biceps for you to do the bicep curls and you can do those two exercises.
You can pair them up in the sense that do your reverse lunges with their weight do a set of them. Then while you're taking a break for your legs you can do your bicep curls and do them with the appropriate amount of weight and [00:10:00] then go back to doing your legs, and then your biceps and your lunges and your biceps and then you're all set.
And that is going to be so, so, so much more effective for you than if you do the combo exercise.
Okay, so to summarize if you are actually interested in building muscle ditch the combo exercises and instead start using compound lifts and isolation exercises where you are picking the weight that is appropriate for that particular exercise.
That way you'll be able to keep pushing your muscles to grow and you will get stronger and you will build muscle much much much faster.
 I really think that the reason that these combo [00:11:00] exercises have gotten so popular is that they're just kind of fun and because we women have really been indoctrinated like since we were 20 if you're a Gen X er like me it's always been about burning calories, raising your heart rate, and that's going to happen a lot more with the combo exercises because you're doing a lot more wiggling around and all that. 
Yes you're going to be more out of breath. You're going to burn more calories doing that. When you're strength training or when you're trying to build muscle, you are interested in a whole different thing 
you are interested in doing things to challenge your muscles, not to challenge your cardiovascular capacity or your balance for that matter. You just want to focus on challenging your muscles. 
And by the way just as an aside It is being shown more and more [00:12:00] now that even weight training where I mean, it is really super calm when you weight train you do improve your cardiovascular capacity.
And I have to say for sure that when I'm doing heavy sets, especially with legs, that I notice a spike in my heart rate. No it's not going into the red but spikes in my heart rate and I do, it does take me some time to recover just breathing wise especially now that I've been sick. 
So I hope this was helpful to you and if you can't envision what a combo exercise is, I had one reel where I talked about this very topic and I will link that in the show notes. So take a look at that reel and it really shows you a combo exercise and then how you can split those movements.
Uh separate them in order to more effectively train your muscles than combining them [00:13:00] into one exercise and using and being kind of stuck using just that one weight.
 And by the way shameless plug all of my programs are using these muscle stimulating exercises you will never encounter a combo exercise in any of my programming and I think that's something that really sets me apart from other menopause fitness coaches out there a lot of them are using combo exercises and I get it because women want the entertainment they want the higher. You know, calorie burn and all that, 
but it comes at the sacrifice of actually being effective. 
So if you want to build muscle and every single one of you should want to build muscle and maintain your muscle then please start strength training for real instead of doing those. Silly [00:14:00] combo exercises.
All right so my prejudice has come out really, really strongly here. 
So anyway, with that, I leave you until next week and wish you happy training.