The foundation in bodybuilding: why is it important to do?

Author: Vladimir Karanin - gym instructor.
2016-02-28

In this article, I decided to clarify why it is so important to do the so-called "foundation" in strength sports. This article is intended for people who have recently started going to the gym. This topic is most relevant for athletes who wish to increase their strength and muscle indicators at the initial stage, as well as at the intermediate and professional levels because everyone builds their foundation.

So, where do we start when we come to the gym? Some people don’t plan their actions, while others do, which is the right approach. Everyone needs to create a training program individually, and there are many different methods for that. To begin, you should determine your goal. This could be:

• weight loss
• muscle gain
• developing your endurance

Based on this, you will build your program.

We will focus on muscle gain, as it is closely related to the concept of "foundation" because the foundation helps us maximize our ability to build muscle mass!!!

Examples, or why the "foundation" is needed

What do we envision when we hear the word "foundation"? First of all, it is:

These are all the exercises that involve multiple joints in your body. So why do we need to perform such exercises? It's simple!

Basic exercises are very stressful for our bodies, which means they provide the greatest response in terms of hormone release in the body, such as the critically important hormone testosterone, which is primarily responsible for the development of your musculature!

Testosterone is the male sex hormone, without which muscle development is not possible; basic exercises are the main and primary factor in stimulating it.

Let's take chest exercises…

If we go to the gym and only work on machines (and machines are NOT BASIC exercises), we won’t get far with such exercises since there won't be enough stress for the body. Therefore, after warming up, we should always start with complex "basic exercises."

First and foremost, these are exercises with free weights, such as bench press (this exercise involves not only the chest but also the triceps, shoulders, and back). Therefore, it is considered more complex than, for example, isolation (in contrast to the foundation, which works one muscle (no more), i.e., involves one joint) exercise. For example:

Or, if we take legs…

For them, the foundation will be considered squats with a barbell on the shoulders, because it develops several muscle groups at once - the glutes, quadriceps, hamstrings, calves, and abdominal muscles.

Meanwhile, an isolation exercise for the legs, such as:

So, the foundation engages many areas of our body, while isolation focuses only on one muscle group, involving only one joint.

If we only do isolation exercises, it is very detrimental to our muscle mass! I'm not saying that isolation is bad; the thing is that all people are different, and everyone's goals are different!

As I mentioned earlier, a person might simply want to lose weight, and many athletes effectively use isolation exercises for that, or an athlete with large muscle volumes uses isolation for additional work (definition) of the muscles.

But let's not dwell on isolation exercises; the main thing is to understand that everything has its own goals. I provided examples for the chest and legs; the same situation applies to the other muscle groups.

Basic Exercises

Now I will list all muscle groups and the most important basic exercises for them. The main ones are not the only ones but those that will be the most effective for your volume. We divide our body into several muscle groups:

1. LEGS (Quadriceps, Hamstrings, Calves, Glutes). Exercises:

2. ARMS (Biceps, Triceps, Forearms). Exercises:

3. BACK (Latissimus dorsi, Erector spinae, Trapezius). Exercises:

4. CHEST (Upper, Middle, Lower chest). Exercises:

5. SHOULDERS (Anterior, Middle, Posterior deltoids). Exercises:

You must perform all of the above exercises for successful development of your physique, or perform similar multi-joint, high-stress exercises; they are primary, and only after that can you add isolation exercises (for warm-up or targeting) on machines or with dumbbells!

Exercises... Too many or too few?

In general, based on my experience, if you do not use various hormonal drugs, it is more than enough to perform only basic exercises, and it is not at all necessary to perform additional isolation exercises.

Suppose you do 3-4 exercises for a muscle group; this is quite a significant stress for the body, and any stress requires time for recovery. (This is like any injury; for example, if you break a finger, you cannot put stress on that finger until it heals.)

Thus, an athlete who does not take anabolic steroids (in other words, synthetic testosterone) will not have enough of their own hormones for recovery. Therefore, if you do see progress, it will soon halt, leading to only overtraining and disappointment.

The conclusion is that if you do not take performance-enhancing drugs, then one or at most two exercises per group in your training program are more than sufficient. If you do take steroids (and it depends on what and how much you take), you can and should do more exercises, as recovery will happen quite quickly.

Personally, in the early stages of my training, I trained a lot and very often. Over time, I realized what a gross mistake that was. I lost a year and a half of hard training just to understand that in this sport… more does not mean better!!!

If you go to the gym or are just planning to go, before spending your time and effort on numerous exercises, think about whether it will be beneficial for you?! After all, often, much less time and exercises are needed for more effective muscle training. So why waste your most valuable resource - time? And what conclusion can we draw from all this?

Conclusion

The "foundation" is the core for building muscle mass; we must do this for the successful development of our bodies. Based on our goals and specifics, we can add and adjust various isolation exercises to meet our needs. This is one of the most important things that anyone practicing in the wonderful sport of bodybuilding should know and understand.