Concentration (isolation) movements and the “pump”

My good friend husam thought I should post something about this issue, so here it is:

Concentration (isolation) movements:

Usually, when someone is bulking, you’d hear the advice of “use compound movements, and don’t use any isolation exercises”. But when you’re cutting, you’d hear “use 1 or 2 compound movements, and isolation on the rest of the exercises”. You see, when you work out, you’re not only working your muscles. You’re also working your nervous system. There are things called neurotransmitters around your muscles, joints, and tendons. When you use compound exercises, you incorporate more neurotransmitters in those movements. Hence, you have a nervous system overload. With the extra calories you’re taking in, and the extra hours of rest, it’s easy to recover from that overload and build more muscle mass. When you’re in a caloric deficit, and you do more cardio, there’s already a lot of stress on your nervous system as it is. Incorporating less neurotransmitters in your workout would help in recovery, and help avoid overtraining, while getting a workout that will preserve muscle mass (remember, when you’re cutting, the objective is to preserve lean mass. Trying to build it while lowering fat mass is quite impossible without “chemical assistance”).

The “Pump”:

If you have enough carbs in your system before you workout (muscle glycogen stores are all replenished) you’re supposed to feel a tremendous blood rush to the muscle you are working after 3 or 4 working sets. The muscle should get larger in size and, if the pump is strong enough, it’ll hurt like f*** (especially lower back pumps, I hate those). Why should you be happy when this happens? More blood in the muscle = muscles expansion = fascia expansion = increased size due to more blood flow = more nutrients shuttled into the muscle due to the large volume of blood getting rushed in = MORE GROWTH!
Plain and simple. What helps in getting a kick ass pump? Carbohydrates, AAKG (Arginine alpha keto glutarate), and creatine.