Isolate or keep muscle groups togethers.

[Magnum]

This is what I am wondering, in regards to strength training.
I mean strength for the kicks, not strength for the splits.
Do you isolate the muscles, like quads and glutes.
Or you train them all together, as in squats?

[Kit]

squats would be better. You can do both legs at once or single leg squats. When you kick, all muscles work together, so it is better to tain your strength that way. training in isolation is more for people who aim to build particular muscles over others, or those who may have an injury or some problem where they need to focus on particular muscles over others.

plyometric exercises will also help to build the explosive power in your kicks

[rinpoche]

Isolating muscles is actually pretty difficult, even curls work the triceps in the eccentric phase.

Some isolation is good, but I feel like overuse of isolation exercises can lead to muscle imbalance. Muscle imbalance may make you prone to injury.

There is also the principle of specificity of training. To increase performance in any sport or activity, you want to train in ways that most replicate what you'll actually be doing. All sports (except maybe arm-wrestling) use multiple sets of muscles simultaneously.

[lazur]

Strength and flexilbility are skills -and- tissue qualities. Compound movements train the skill, with the side-benefit of developing whatever muscles are involved. Isolation, can be thought of more as therapy for any muscles that seem to be holding back progresss in the compound movements. There's nothing essentially wrong with the bodybulding aspect either: If you can do pull-ups all day long, but still wish your biceps were bigger, isolating exercises for the biceps are no sin, even though they probably won't improve your pull-ups,(then again, they might). A good workout of 'heavy' compound movements takes so little time to complete. Why not flesh it out with some single joint work?(By the way, arm-wrestling uses a -lot- of muscles.)

[Florish]

All together. I would not do isolation for the legs anyway. I never read that leg curls or leg extensions help the kicks. Maybe the do, just not something I heard.

[lazur]

Vasili Alexeev, still considered by most to be the greatest weightlifter in history, left his coach early in his career, to train himself. His own regime was unlike any Russian before him: Instead of just practicing the lifts themselves, he added isolation moves to bring the 'weak links' up in strength. Worked pretty well, I'd say. Bill Kazmier, noted for being the first of the super-heavy power men to have a well-proportioned physique, trained as much like a bodybuilder as a powerlifter. It definitely didn't interfere with his power work. Bruce Lee,(a good kicker), is known for his use of isometrics. Although they can be used for multi-joint exercises, they tend to be for isolation. No muscle should be left behind, just because it isn't used for a particular activity. Leaving a muscle underdeveloped is a disaster waiting to happen, when the need for that muscle -does- come up.

[lazur]

I've found that many people simply aren't fully aware of certain muscles invovled in multi-joint movement. (This can be as mundane as not walking as efficiently as possible: Some people push off with too much force from their heel, rather than using the large muscles of the legs and buttocks. Doing odd types of walking with some of the usual movements disengaged, (Walking on the back edge of the heels, with the legs locked at the knee is one example. Try it.), can call attention to functions the person is unaware of, and contribute to a better multi-joint movement than multi-joint practice itself . Isolation is not just for bodybuilding, (but there's nothing wrong with bodybuilding either).