[quote]steven alex wrote:
Most of the top coaches on here seem to advocate a full body approach to training but after doing this for a few months I feel that I am unable to hit all the muscle groups with sufficient intensity as I near the latter stages of my workout.
Half way through my routine I dont feel as though I am giving justice to the remaining exercises. I think I need to split up my workout atleast into two parts though my beef with splits in the past has been insufficient rest between workouts.
What would you guys suggest as a good split or should I stick to full body. My goals are hypertrophy specific.[/quote]
Hi Steven,
Can I ask how long you’ve been doing your current TBT workout? Also, on average, how many exercises are you performing per workout session? Finally, are you performing the lower body exercises first in your workouts?
Whether you should switch to splits or not, really is an individual thing. Also, how you choose to split, if you do choose to go with splits, is also an individual thing. Some guys thrive on higher frequency, others lower frequency.
Some get good results from higher volume training, others lower volume training. It’s really all a matter of trial and error to see what you respond best to.
If you feel like your can’t give all of your muscle groups the attention they need doing full body workouts, then that might be an indicator that you should switch to a split. If you know from the past that recovery is an issue, that may suggest that you don’t do well on high frequency (in which case splits would probably once again be a better choice).
I might suggest trying a “Push/Pull/Lower” split. In this split you’ll do one workout for your upper body pushing muscles (chest, shoulders, triceps), one for your upper body pulling muscles (back, biceps, forearms), and one for your lower body (quads, hams, glutes, calves).
This will give you a whole week for each muscle group to recover, so you can pretty much go as hard as you want, and still be able to recover for the next workout.
If you find that you still can’t hit all of your muscles with enough intensity, you can split things up even more. You could also split up the lower body workout into a “hip dominant” workout, and a “quad dominant” workout. Then the workout might look something like:
Mon. Push
Tues. Lower body (hip dominant)
Thurs. Pull
Fri. Lower body (quad dominant)
There are really so many variations of splits out there, so you really just need to experiment. What really matters though is that you are eating enough and hitting the weights hard and consistently. If those two elements are in place, then the training split is just fine tuning.
Good training,
Sentoguy