Pretty much everytime I’m in the gym, people come up to me and ask “So what’re you working on today?”
I smile and say “Everything” and they look at me like I’m crazy.
This whole split day workout routine has been drilled into us. Mainly by friends and magazines. It’s a pop culture fad that has infested our gyms.
I’ll admit, I fell victim for a long time as well.
In this post, I’ll discuss the pros and cons to doing full body workouts vs. split day workouts.
Split Day Workouts
I did these for a long time and was able to see moderate results. I was only able to see isolate results and they took a while to come by.
The main reason for this was because when you do a split day, say, arms and legs, you don’t get the maximum hormonal benefit from these.
Your body releases amounts of muscle building hormones based on the amount of damage it has to repair. So the more muscle you damage, the more GH and Testosterone it realeases for instance.
So splits like abs and arms, are pretty bad because you don’t get a lot of hormone release to repair these muscles. This in turn can lead to overtraining because most likely, you’ll get anxious and hit the gym again to workout these muscles before they’ve repaired themselves all the way.
Split routines also tend to focus on doing multiple exercises per muscle. This can quickly lead to overtraining because from experience and research, you only need to overload a muscle ONCE in order for it to grow.
Once you do that, you can move on to another muscle because you’ve already started the repair process for that muscle.
If you continue, you’ll start dipping into other energy reserves that you’ll need for other workouts.
The good thing about split workouts is that they don’t take a lot out of you in terms of hormonal system, or central nervous system completion, so these systems repair quicker. These systems also take longer to repair, generally, than your muscles.
By cutting the recovery time down, you may come close to matching your muscles. But again, this depends on your individual physique and experience.
The other good things about splits is that they tend to be shorter workouts – thus as I stated before, less stress on your nervous system.
In my opinion, you should do splits that incorporate large muscles along with smaller muscles – back and chest for instance. This will release more hormones for you to repair with.
Another good idea is to do lower body and then upper body using compound exercises. Again, for the hormone benefit because you’ll be working larger groups of muscles.
Splits are also a good idea for intermediate to advanced trainers – which is probably why they’ve become so popular with beginners. They want to lift like the “big boys”. Different strokes for different folks.
I’ve been doing full body workouts for about 2 months now and I can’t say I’ve been disappointed. I’ve been following Vince’s NoNonsense Muscle Building plan.
You can tell by his blog and youtube channel that he’s a fan of compound exercises, so it’s no wonder I find them in his plan.
Combined with a killer nutrition plan, I’m able to see steady growth and gains, and I’m back to an all time weight high for myself.
I see more all around and even muscle growth which is great to see (my girl love it too). I’m also able to make gains faster – I haven’t plateaued yet!
The best part about full body workouts is that your get the maximum hormonal release possible each time you workout. That means ALL your muscles, from large to small, reap an enormous benefit.
All while doing one exercise per body part.
The other good thing is that you don’t have to be in the gym as often. I workout 3 days a week now doing full body. Before, I was on a 4 day split. I shaved an entire day off my workout and I’m getting better results.
This allows you to build muscle faster and more effectively.
The downside to full body is that it takes a while to do (even doing one exercise per muscle) and you’re hella tired at the end. Your nervous system is shot.
However, once you build a tolerance up to this, you can recover faster.
Full body workouts are great for beginners because you can combine raw muscle building potential with huge hormone releases.
Ok, let me quit because this post is getting crazy long. Well needless to say, I’m a fan of full body workouts.
I’ll experiment with split workouts again sometime later, but only after I’ve reached my goals by doing full body workouts.
You too can follow the same plan I’ve been using to get great personal results by following Vince’s Plan.
Get Big, Get Ripped, Get Fit With Mitch.
Filed under Body Building Tips, Weight Training Routines by on Jan 25th, 2010. 1 Comment. 
