no such thing as spot training?

Why is it i hear that there is no such thing as spot training on this site? Are you saying that if you ate very healthy, did your cardio, and worked out your arms ONLY, you wouldnt get big arms? Or if you had small shoulders, so you workout your shoulders only. Not that i do that, i am just trying to understand this. Thanks.
 
ate very healthy, did your cardio

Spot training doesn't work because if you had fat arms, only working out your arms will NOT make you lose fat there.

Spot training refers to losing fat or getting so big that you can suddenly see definition WITHOUT losing fat via diet and cardio.
 
I think they refering more towards losing fat, that is, no matter what part of your body you train, fat will not disapear locally - so if you wanted to lose fat on your arms and therefore attempted biceps curls, you would see fat going away on the arms, it would occur over the whole body.

Same principle is similar to building muscle, you cant just pick out a muscle and work it. The muscles in the body are high interconnected and surrounded by fascia.
 
actually, if you only work your arms, they probobly wouldnt get that big. Thing is, the biceps is kind of "made" to work with the upper back in pulling movements, the body wont let one muscle group grow really big if the others arent, because that would leave you vounerable to injury, and your body wants to prevent that. So working the entire body will give maximum results!
 
what i said is true, and the posture thing is also true. But the reason you wont get as strong and big is because your body wont let you be prone to injury, which includes posture problems.
 
First half is not entirely true, ill go grap the article when i have time :D

So if i eat correct, calorie surpluss, doing something like:

Squats
Bench
Row
then add inn calf rises.. my calfs wont grow? Or did you mean like i said, that doing only isolation exersices for one muscle group will get you pretty much nowhere?
 
Let's not confuse the kid, shall we?

I'll concede that the lats are probably activated during something like preacher curls...If that's what you're trying to get at.
 
Anatomically speaking you cant isolate muscle groups in the first place. All the muscles are enclosed in a touch connective tissue called fascia. And since fascia attaches to bone and other muscle, it creates "functional" relationships between seemingly seperate muscle groups.

Theres no doubt that you can emphasize, just dont confuse targeting with isolating. Seperating your workout or body parts is illogical, your not seperating anything.

Karky - of course the calfs would grow but if you think only the calf themselves would grow your kidding yourself.

for example the bent over row is essentially a back exercise, but because of the interconnections between muscles and connective tissues of the hips and backs, your glutes and hamstrings are contracted for the entire exercise.

So i hope your not confused...oldman ;)
 
ofcource, your holding the bottom of an RDL, so it will work the same muscles as an RDL. and were talking about isolating muscle, not isolating muscle as you put it with the scientific ****, sorry, but you know the question was regarding if you could work one muscle group and experience growth.

I dident say only my calfs will grow, i was simply saying that you CAN isolate muscles to get more growth, aslong as you work other parts of the body aswell, atleast it will give the best results, like my example with adding calf isolation to make the calfs grow more. Please dont pretend IM stupid, stuff like that annoys me.

If the question was "spot adding" like in adding mass to one specific area (the oposite of spot reduction) then ofcource you cant do that by working one area more than the other, mass will be gained all over if you eat a calorie surpluss. Though if you eat a calorie surpluss, do only bench pressing, you will add mass overall, but probobly add some muscle to your chest, until your posture gets so screwed your body says "stop!" and wont let you gain more until you start working the body evenly.
 
I dident say only my calfs will grow, i was simply saying that you CAN isolate muscles to get more growth, aslong as you work other parts of the body aswell, atleast it will give the best results, like my example with adding calf isolation to make the calfs grow more. Please dont pretend IM stupid, stuff like that annoys me.

sorry, but the calf muscle is actually more than one muscle. And ill say it again, you cant isolate a muscle. By this i mean theres no exercise that will only perform work on the gastrocnemius, by all means you can target that muscle, but this doesnt mean other muscles arn't working as well - even though not at the same extent. Im not saying your stupid, no one in here knows everything, but its a good place for discussion.
 
Your being a nitpicker, Yes if you want to get technical you can not "isolate" a single muscle, as you say more "targeting" the muscle/muscle group.
example,
the muscle which will reap the most reward from doing bicep curls is the bicep because the majority of the movement is being powered by the Bicep. Yes some other muscles are coming into play and if one wanted to get extremely technical like you are trying to do then sure you could say there is no such thing as 100% Isolation so maybe as you say "targeting" would be a better word perhaps.
 
sorry, but the calf muscle is actually more than one muscle. And ill say it again, you cant isolate a muscle. By this i mean theres no exercise that will only perform work on the gastrocnemius, by all means you can target that muscle, but this doesnt mean other muscles arn't working as well - even though not at the same extent. Im not saying your stupid, no one in here knows everything, but its a good place for discussion.

of course you cannot isolate one single muscle. when you do a seated calf raise, your foot muscles move and work too. when you grab a dumbel to do a curl, you used your fingers' muscles to grab the bar and to hold it as you curl along with your forearms. its pretty obvious that you cannot isolate one single muscle
 
sorry, but the calf muscle is actually more than one muscle. And ill say it again, you cant isolate a muscle. By this i mean theres no exercise that will only perform work on the gastrocnemius, by all means you can target that muscle, but this doesnt mean other muscles arn't working as well - even though not at the same extent. Im not saying your stupid, no one in here knows everything, but its a good place for discussion.

For the love of god, dont you think i know that? im pretty sure we were talking about isolation exersices(atleast thats what i meant. Like if you do a compound only, balanced workout, eating a surpluss, and start adding biceps curls, your biceps could start gaining a bit more muscle. Im not saying biceps curls works the biceps branchi alone, other muscles are involved too.) This reminds me of the guy who said there was no such thing as a pushing exercise because no muscles can push, only pull.
I was trying to answer the guys question, im pretty sure he meant to ask if it was possible to gain mass if you only train one muscle group (or maybe i should say one exercise, since you're being a niptick about this?) And i say its not a good idea to only work with one exercise, as i cant really think of one that wont bring posture problems/injury on the individual if its done alone.

Im sure we both really understand eacother. So lets just put this silly argument behind us.
 
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For the love of god, dont you think i know that? im pretty sure we were talking about isolation exersices(atleast thats what i meant. Like if you do a compound only, balanced workout, eating a surpluss, and start adding biceps curls, your biceps could start gaining a bit more muscle. Im not saying biceps curls works the biceps branchi alone, other muscles are involved too.) This reminds me of the guy who said there was no such thing as a pushing exercise because no muscles can push, only pull.
I was trying to answer the guys question, im pretty sure he meant to ask if it was possible to gain mass if you only train one muscle group (or maybe i should say one exercise, since you're being a niptick about this?) And i say its not a good idea to only work with one exercise, as i cant really think of one that wont bring posture problems/injury on the individual if its done alone.

Im sure we both really understand eacother. So lets just put this silly argument behind us.

yess truee. i was mainly responding to something someone else wrote, but anyway i think this thread is past its used by date. :)
 
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