I commonly hear that compound exercises are the best mass builders, but I just can not understand why. Yes, they can save time by doing more at the same time. I also realize that they involve stabilizing muscles, which can be useful for building basic strength for newbies and they are also much less likely to get you disproportionaly strong in one muscle group, but all of that has very little to do with being great specifically for building mass.

The common argument is that they let you lift much heavier, but if you disperse the load among all the muscles involved, you will likely end up with similar loads per muscle group as in an isolation exercise. Actually I would tend to believe that doing more groups at once will probably result in a much less controlled movement, and the secondary muscle groups involved could be a limiting factor in squeezing the most out of your targeted group.

If we take chin ups as an example, you would not be taking your lats nor your biceps to the limit at all. Would it not be better to do curls and a seated rowing machine instead?

For me it is not just a question of exercising the hell out of the muscle I want, but a question of leaving that muscle to rest for a while, and no matter how I try to structure my workouts, having compound exercises will always overlap and the muscles that should be resting will be getting punished unintentionally on a different muscle group day.

Maybe I am completely missing something, but by this logic I just can't see how compounds are that great for mass. I would appreciate if someone could explain.