Maggie's Farm

Sorry (not really) to disagree, but people tend to overemphasize the "pushing" muscles and neglect the "pulling" muscles - as well as upper body vs lower body.

I will agree that an argument can be made that people overemphasize the muscles that are seen from the front (which includes biceps vs triceps). However, the gross overemphasis on the "pecs" vs the back muscles results in relative neglect of the biceps.

I'm firmly in the camp that believes one should do twice the amount of pulling than pushing. From a functional (useful) standpoint, curls are not really needed as they get plenty of work doing chin and row variations. That said, from a bodybuilder standpoint, curl variations are needed for looks. I will make the same argument for triceps - they get enough work with pressing movements. There's only so much time and energy to expend and I thinks it's better to work really, really hard on those movements that give me the most bang for the buck rather than "wasting" time/energy on other movements which by necessity detract from my primary exercises.

"Isolation exercises are good if you have a little spare time..."

The problem - as I see it - is that we all have a tendency to fall into the trap of "if a little is good, more is better." Given that there is an optimal amount of work you can do and that below this optimum, the stimulus for improvement is sub maximal, and above this optimum, recovery is impaired, it follows that if you add a few sets of curls, you really need to remove something else. Everybody wants to add the few sets of curls (or whatever), but we are all reluctant - even if we know better - to remove the something else.