Paul’s article “Isolation is dead” reveals a great technical explanation of what science and research has shown and proven in recent years about conditioning the body. It describes brilliantly what great minds have discovered in a very specialized area; movement. I will attempt to convert this information into a more practical format to allow a clearer appreciation of a very important component of movement; integration.

Why do we do what we do?

This is a question that is the foundation much of what Anthony Robbins, the great motivational speaker, talks about. He reasons that when you find the why, the right answers come much more easily. This article is not about motivation, but about resistance training, but the question is very pertinent – Why do we train the way we train? If you look in any gym or health club today, you will see people using all sorts of machines to train with and doing a huge variety of isolation exercises in order to stimulate the muscles to become bigger, stronger and more functional.

Fitness Instructors and Personal Trainers the world over continue to write training programs for clients that break the body into various body parts and even individual muscles or muscle groups – they talk about chest, back, biceps, triceps, shoulders, glutes, quads, hamstrings and calves. My point is – do the advances in science support such programs?

The pervading paradigm amongst serious athletes, recreational athletes and the general population of fitness enthusiasts appears to be that the more they train, the better they will perform. However, performance and results depends not only on a high level of commitment; but it relies on a carefully designed program where training is complemented by appropriate recovery.