Cue for Isolation/Accessory Lifts: Carry, Don't Throw

A common challenge I see for lifters who are used to doing only the main barbell lifts, and are now transitioning to programs that utilize more isolation and accessories, be it for hypertrophy focus, an off-season, or any other reason, is that they don’t really understand the difference between performing these two different kinds of lifts.

For these people, or anyone who’s been doing isolation and accessory work without much success, a useful cue is: “Carry, don’t throw.”

When doing a squat, you typically don’t worry about how fast or slow to go. Sure there are tempo squats or speed squats, but those are exceptions; when doing a regular squat of any kind, you just go at a normal pace, and sufficiently heavy weight eventually slows you down anyway, so you can’t go “too fast.” Aside from extremes like dive-bombing into the hole, you don’t really worry about going too fast, you just do the lift at a controlled but normal pace.

When it comes to the big lifts, the point of the movement is to complete the movement with repeatable and sound form, not to think about any one area or body-part. By completing the movement correctly, all the muscles, tendons, bones, ligaments and everything else involved in the movement will, without you thinking about them, get their anatomically correct portion of the work, and consequently get their part of stress -> recovery -> adaptation cycle.

When doing these lifts, you focus on doing the movement as a whole, not any one area or part; you focus on doing it consistently the same way every time, as Captain Kirk taught us below, and all the right adaptations then follow automatically.

In contrast, when doing isolation work, you DO specifically want to focus on an area or body part. The main purpose of lateral raises isn’t usually to heave up as much weight as possible but to stimulate to lateral head of the deltoids. The purpose of a knee extension isn’t to max out the stack by swinging back and forth and bouncing it at the bottom, but to isolate and stimulate the quadriceps. And so on. This is where the cue of “Carry, don’t throw” comes in handy. While second-nature to most bodybuilders, this idea may be foreign to those who have only thus far done basic strength training. The idea is, don’t throw the weight to get it to the end point as fast as possible. Carry the weight the whole way, keeping tension on and making the target muscle/area work through the whole ROM.

The goal here is to isolate and stimulate the quads, not to lift the weight any way you can

With a light enough weight, the kind often used for isolation or accessory work, you could produce a rapid explosion of force at the start of the movement that would carry it most or all of the way to completion, without any work or tension along the rest of the path. The momentum of that one explosive moment will do the work and carry it up. Resist this temptation and instead “carry” it the whole way, keeping tension on the area or body part that you’re supposed to be targeting. Make that body part work the whole time by carrying the weight back and forth, up and down, instead of “throwing” it at the beginning of the movement and “catching” it at the end. This will better accomplish the goal of isolating and stimulating the area you want to hit.

But it can take some getting used to, if all you’ve done so far is squat, bench, deadlift, press, chin, barbell row, and maybe clean. Think: “Carry, don’t throw” when doing your accessories and isolation work, to get the most out of that aspect of your training.