I understand that it is good for beginners to do full body workouts.
But then people who are more advanced do split routines.
What are the main advantages of a split routine.
e.g.
If I was to do:
Monday: Chest + Triceps
Wednesday: Back + Biceps
Friday: Shoulders + Legs
rather than fullbody 3x a week.
Why? Because that would mean my chest, back etc would only get worked out once a week rather than 3 times if I did full body.
Can someone enlighten me?
The rationale for going to a split routine is based on intensity - at least in my opinion. Muscles have to be overloaded in order to be stimulated to grow. Now, since your muscles adapt to overload by growing stronger and bigger, if you want to see further and sustained improvements in strength and size you've got to increase the intensity of your workouts. And you can increase that intensity by adding exercises, adding weight - and / or both.
The reason most beginners are told to stick with a 3X a week full-body workout for 3- 6 months is that this represents a learning curve in terms of intensity. You're ' learning ' how to do the exercises properly without going too hard so you learn good form. But you're also learning how to get your central nervous system to recruit as many muscle fibers as possilbe each time you lift a weight. Evidence your central nervous system is clueing in to what is going on ( i.e it uses more and more muscle fibers ) is plainly seen by the fact that most newbies make thier biggest gains in the first 6 months to a year of stsrting training. Maxing out as many muscle fibers as you can means you can work out with greater intensity in my books. But as I said above, you can easily increase that intensity by adding exercises, adding weight - and / or both in a 3X a week workout. Trouble is, to do that with a 3X a week full-body workout means the workout may become longer and longer and longer and that you may have to maintain a increased level of intensity for a much longer time - which may not be possible ( i.e you'll be exhausted !
) And for me at least, I want to spend as little time in the gym as possible.....I want the
maximum gains in the
minimum amount of time. But, that's just me.
So, within this context of intensity, the basic reason ' splits ' are used is because you can add more overload by adding more exercises for each muscle group, and in turn, this means you can train at a higher intensity which means your workouts will ( more than likely ) become shorter. In essence your workouts don't become longer under splits - just harder. So even though you might train a muscle 3X a week as part of a full-body workout regimen, in a split regimen, it might only get the muscle trained 2X a week. But now, it is trained at a higher level of intensity and overload at 2X a week which means it also gets 2 days rest to recover under a split regimen- rather than the 1 day rest you get under a 3X a week regimen.
