Isolation vs. compound workouts.. please help me!

[victor8881]

I'm new to working out thing and I figure if I'm going to do something I might as well educate myself on the matter and do it correctly. So, with this being said, I'm looking at workout that say "compound workouts only" or "isolation workouts" Is it ok to mix and match muscle routines together when building a workout program? If I'm going to do a chest and tricep day, is it ok to either go all compound or iso, or mix them up is basically what I'm saying?

[Scrutiny]

It is normal to mix compound and isolation exercises in the same workout.

Compounds are the big, multi joint exercises that can help with the biggest increases with muscle and strength. It would make sense to have a good amount of them in a workout.
Compound exercises also work the stabilizer muscles, which cannot be worked directly through isolation exercises.

Having an " all " isolation workout would be silly, you would only limit your potential to progress with overall muscle and strength.

However, mixing and matching written workouts can sometimes lead to problems, reduced opportunity for rest/recovery etc.

A good thing to do is keep a good portion of the exercises compounds.
I always use a 2:1 or a 3:1 ratio of Compound to Isolation exercises.
This way 2 or 3 of the exercises for a muscle group would be a big, multi-joint compound exercise, while maybe 1-2 other exercises for the muscle can be an isolation movement to specifically target an area.
E.g. dumbell flyes targetting and isolating the outer chest.

Take a look at the workouts on this site, you will see most workouts will offer a good combination of compound / isolation exercises for maximum effectiveness.

Hope that helps.