[quote]Shadowzz4 wrote:
In my opinion there is two major flaws with full body training and bodypart splits like you have shown.
With full body training compound exercises and heavy weights are usually used, the exercises change, but the intensity usually doesnt change enough.
With bodypart splits, unless you have been in the game for a LONG time you are not going to be able to work yourself out effectively enough only working a muscle once every 7 or so days. It is not the best way to get stronger.
Here is an example of typical exercises done for chest during a body part split. These are the only chest exercises done this week and they are all done on one day.
Barbell Bench Press
Incline Dumbell Press
Machine Incline Press
Dumbell Flyes
Now here is an example of all the chest exercises done during a full body routine, there is one chest exercise done each of the three days.
Day1 Day2 Day3
Dips Barbell Bench Press Incline Dumbell Press
Usually these exercises are all done within a certain rep range, usually on the heavier side. Many people would do between 5-8rep sets for all of these exercises.
The problem is that while you are getting frequent stimulus you are not getting a different stimulus.
Thib has talked about this and I have had terrific results using a different exercise on each of the three days I work out, doing a constant tension exercise (flye) A semi constant tension short rest exercise (incline Dumbell Bench) and Heavy long rest exercise (barbell Bench press).
The fact that I only do one exercise for chest (I split it up slightly different for back) means I can give a tremendous amount of effort to each exercise and method, but over the course of the week I am getting the same volume in, with better quality.
The only drawback from a bodypart split IMO is that doing bodypart splits create some hypertrophy from the fact that you have to do so many exercise with the same muscle and building up the ability to get through these types of workouts probably results in hypertrophy seperate from the individual exercises. It may not be enough to outweigh the fact that you can do the exercises better, doing only one per day.
[/quote]
Shadowzz,
I think that you make a good argument for FB if comparing it to traditional body part splits. But, those are basically on opposite ends of the spectrum as well. I’m personally not telling people to go from A straight to Z. There are splits that fall in between those two extremes that are (at least IMO) more productive, especially for intermediate lifters (and honestly probably even for a lot of advanced trainees).
One thing to remember about building muscle is that it doesn’t occur when you’re in the gym (I realize you already know this), it occurs when you are resting. The more days that you have off during the week, the easier it becomes to put on weight (muscle). Of course there is a point of diminishing returns, as only lifting once a week period (think Mentzer) does allow for plenty of rest, but the growth stimulus is so infrequent, that it will probably not produce optimal results.
On the other hand, if you’re going to the gym with a very high frequency than you give your body less time to rest and grow. If on top of that you’re trying to overload the muscle on a high number of those days it’s once again probably going to lead to suboptimal growth. As once again, you are not allowing the body sufficient time to repair and build your muscles.
Splits like “Upper/Lower” or “Push/Pull” on the other hand tend to fall somewhere in between the extremes. With these programs you generally wind up doing each workout twice (either each week or every other week depending on how you’ve got it set up). This allows you to still have a fair amount of days outside of the gym for rest, but also a fairly frequent training stimulus.
Also, it’s not necessary to do a huge amount of volume or exercises for each body part. One exercise for say Chest, Shoulders, Triceps, quads and perhaps calves would be sufficient for a “Push” day. Sure, your shoulders might be a little tired after doing chest (especially if you chose similar exercises like incline and military). And sure, your triceps might be a little tired after doing both chest and shoulders (once again depending on how you organized things) but as long as you’re progressing, then who cares, they’ll still grow.
The other advantage to splits (at least for my preferences) over FB is that Full Body training pretty much forces you to tone things down. In other words, there is no way that you can truly push yourself to the limit while training a body part 3 times per week (unless you’re a beginner since they aren’t generally strong enough to make deep enough inroads into their recovery abilities to worry about overtraining/burnout). If you don’t care about this then fine. If not pushing yourself doesn’t bother you then more power to you.
But I personally feel that unless I’m pushing my body to the limit, how am I going to know that I’m actually putting a high enough demand on my muscles to force them to grow? Really pushing things also allows me to be much more efficient as I don’t have to perform umpteen number of sets while avoiding fatigue to eventually reach fatigue.
Now for beginners I feel that volume is important, both because they aren’t neurologically efficient enough at stimulating their larger MU’s/muscle fibers to recieve good results from low volume training, and because greater volume allows them more practice at performing the lifts. This is also one of the reasons why I like full body for beginners, more practice.
But once you are more advanced you can make great progress with far less volume, far more intensity, and lower frequency.
Good training,
Sentoguy