Weightlifting spilts vs full body

Splits vs full body.

I get this question a lot. How should I train in order to gain muscle and become stronger, should I do a full body workout or should I do a split routine? What’s really important is that you know what you are training for. Is it really just to become stronger, fitter or do you want to increase in size?

What is a split routine actually. With this training method you actually split it all up, to explain in the most literal sense. You work one or two muscle groups a day and make sure you have covered them all by the end of the week. It’s a very popular way to train like this when you’re into bodybuilding. I guess a full body routine speaks more for itself. You work the full body every time you hit the gym.

Advantages of a split routine:

• It allows you to work a specific muscle group harder.

• It gives the muscle more time to recover and thus grow and become stronger.

• Gives more variety to your workouts.

• Shorter gym sessions.

Advantages of a full body routine:

• Great for fat loss.

• Great for cardio.

• Keeps things simple.

• Easier to combine with practising other sports.

Split training routine:

In my opinion the body split training routine is definitely best for any bodybuilding type of training. If you are looking to build serious mass, this is the way to go. It will give you a much more focused approach to working each individual muscle group. It will show you right away in which parts you’re lacking and since you can give that part the rest of the week off, you will be able to work that part harder so it keeps up with the rest.

In my experience about four exercises for the smaller muscle groups and five for the larger ones, like the back and legs, should give you the desired result. Of course this is a bit personal and will just take you some experimentation to get right. If you like to do more sets of a certain exercise for example, you might want to limit the amount of total exercises to prevent overtraining.

My favorite body split:

Monday: Back

Tuesday: Chest

Wednesday: Shoulders

Thursday: Legs

Friday: Arms (biceps, triceps)

Full body routine:

Doing a full body routine is great if you just want to improve your strength and up your cardio. If you’re looking to get massive, don’t do this. I think it’s really good to train this way next to a different sport you practise but it’s not great to gain muscle mass. It’s usually just too much of a cardio workout and you can’t do five exercises per muscle group per workout because that would mean you’re going to be in the gym for way too long. For me this always worked best when I did three sessions a week, one exercise a muscle group, every session a different exercise for that muscle group. So for example on Monday you do squats, Wednesday will be leg press and Friday leg extensions. This way you do hit the muscle in different ways every session. Doing only three sessions a week will give you plenty of time and energy to focus on developing the skill of the sport you’re actually focused on as well.

Conclusion:

If you are looking to gain mass, become a bodybuilder, or just get huge...the way to go is definitely the split routine. If you are looking to either supplement the other sports you’re practicing with some weightlifting, the full body approach is the best way in my opinion. It will make you stronger, gives you more cardio and doesn’t make you much heavier. So no worries that you will get sluggish or be bumped up a weight class and have to face giants now.

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