Dr. John: Muscle “Isolation?”
Having come from the fitness industry, one of the things I’m asked about a lot is “muscle isolation.” It’s big in bodybuilding and in the personal training circles and many of our patients ask about it in regards to their own rehab. But, anatomically, it’s just not possible to isolate one muscle in the human body and fire that muscle and only that muscle.
Here’s a great way to test this out: place your left hand on the top of your right forearm just below your elbow and curl the arm like you are performing a bicep curl; really fire those bicep muscles. Do you feel something pushing against your left hand? That muscle is called the brachioradialis. Like the bicep muscles, it flexes the elbow. Try to perform the same exercise without firing that muscle. It’s difficult to do and, dare I say, impossible.
To say that one exercise “isolates” one particular muscle is a misnomer. Our muscles are made to work together. Every muscle in the human body has a job and many of them involve assisting other muscles with work. Our bodies were made to work as a unit. Think about it; you can’t move your muscles without your brain sending the signals and you can’t move the body without muscles pulling on the bones. The human body is an amazingly elaborate machine. When you exercise, either for fitness goals or for rehabilitation, focus on muscle integration not isolation. There are about 640 muscles in the human body, don’t let any of them go to waste.