When it comes to body building, many people erroneously assume that all one needs to do is haphazardly do any type of exercises without any rhyme, reason or logic. This is not a wise move because there are very specific purposes for body building exercises designed to provide two goals of either increased mass or increased definition. By understanding that there are differences between mass building exercises and those exercises that are designed for more definition the ability to arrive at ones goals will be greater facilitated. After all, if you are exercising then you have a certain set of goals in mind and you will want the proper exercises that will be required to reach those goals.

Building Mass

The most common body building exercises people perform are compound exercises. When you are performing compound body building exercises you are primarily working on mass. That is, compound exercises mean that more than one body part is used to lift the weight. Bench presses, while generally considered chest exercises, also provide secondary stress to the biceps, triceps and shoulders. So, these other muscles grow as well as the chest although not to the same degree. Other common body building exercises that perform compound exercises include squats and military presses. Now, these exercises are not necessarily designed to make the persons muscle mass huge (although they certainly can be used for this purpose) these exercises can be used in a lesser capacity so as not to massively pack on muscle.

Sculpting Definition

The second type of body building exercises that are employed are those exercises that are isolation exercises. These exercises do not involve more than one muscle group and are designed to specially develop the muscles of a particular area. These exercises can be employed with high repetitions to burn fat and usually follow a cycle of mass building so as to create the definition that mass requires for aesthetic looks. Please note, contrary to popular belief these exercises cannot spot reduce fat in a particular area. Yes, fat will be burned, but it will be burned evenly throughout the body as opposed to any specific or particular area.

Of course, there are other areas that need to be taken into consideration as well such as diet, cardio etc, but the areas of mass building and definition generally cover the basics that one would need in order to achieve a baseline level of success and to reach his or her goals.