Whole body workouts vs. Split workouts

Hmm.. ive never really thought of GPP before, just did some googleing and it sounded pretty interresting. Maybe its something i should start when i decide to cut (i heard it was good for getting rid of some extra body fat..?)
Anyways, sorry to be kind of offtopic here, but if anyone has any links to articles or something where i can learn more about GPP, i would appritiate it if you would post them :)
 
This dosen't prove anything.
1 - you cant trust a study involving only 22 people

2 - we are talking about full body workouts with set/rep systems of 10-2sets of 3-10 reps. not 30 reps.

3 - we are talking about well trained experianced weight trainers training 6 days a week, not random guys.
 
3 sets of ten is 30 reps and this was just one eg there are many more.
i am not saying you should train everyday but it is possible,you just need to lower the volume ie instead of doing 10 sets 3x a wk just do 2 sets a day its still 10 sets.
 
TrainerTy and Hawk:

Good posts. I really appreciate the time you took and I think this is the kind of posts this site needs to improve. We need some detailed convos to stimulate thought above and beyond the basic recommendations you see over and over again.

I am not sure if you may have read me wrong. If you go back through my old posts on this forum, you will NEVER see me recommend body part splits or isolation exercises. Also, I don't think anyone here really recommends isolation exercises. The majority of the time full body regiments are the basis of everyone's recommendations. That should please you if you have not noticed it in the past.

Personally, I have found that as I go on, upper/lower splits with 2 on and 1 off are what work best for me. Why? I am not sure, you both seem pretty adamant about training 6 times per week full body as "the way to train," but I don't believe there is one way to train, as I am sure the both of you will agree. You have to find the method of training that will give you, personally, the most effective and efficient results, and the only way to find that is through experimentation. I believe the aforementioned split works well for me because it best takes advantage of the protein synthesis wave of degradation and supercompensation, which I feel is most important and relevant variable when hypertrophy is primary concern for the natural athlete.

Training each body part everyday does not give your body the time to recover from the training stress and its consequent degradation in my opinion and from my own results from past experiences. I would love o hear PMDilly's thoughts on this subject too. Good debate!!
 
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stroutman81 said:
TrainerTy and Hawk:

Good posts. I really appreciate the time you took and I think this is the kind of posts this site needs to improve. We need some detailed convos to stimulate thought above and beyond the basic recommendations you see over and over again.
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Thanks, I agree.

I am not sure if you may have read me wrong. If you go back through my old posts on this forum, you will NEVER see me recommend body part splits or isolation exercises. Also, I don't think anyone here really recommends isolation exercises. The majority of the time full body regiments are the basis of everyone's recommendations. That should please you if you have not noticed it in the past.

Personally, I have found that as I go on, upper/lower splits with 2 on and 1 off are what work best for me. Why? I am not sure, you both seem pretty adamant about training 6 times per week full body as "the way to train," but I don't believe there is one way to train, as I am sure the both of you will agree. You have to find the method of training that will give you, personally, the most effective and efficient results, and the only way to find that is through experimentation. I believe the aforementioned split works well for me because it best takes advantage of the protein synthesis wave of degradation and supercompensation, which I feel is most important and relevant variable when hypertrophy is primary concern for the natural athlete.
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To a large extent, I agree. We have to realize that everyone has different goals, and that their bodies have a history which differs from the next. A body used to abuse functions a little off from a consistently healthy one. A body underfeuled does as well. Many people find they would rather, for instance, do splits rather than train everything all at once, because of the cardio involved. Others often like to feel a "pump" rather than "burn", etc. As we cans see, a style can be adapted for almost everyone.

My personal preference for anything I do in my life is to understand my full range of options and only accept the best there is. I am a "quality" over "price" guy. When I know I can choose to look good, or be strong, I choose to be strong. When I see the benefits of doing different methods, the quality of health AND strength benefit of a full body non-split, 6 day a week program seems to be the complete package. Therefore, that is the one I promote most. But, again, everyone has a different position in life.

Training each body part everyday does not give your body the time to recover from the training stress and its consequent degradation in my opinion and from my own results from past experiences. I would love o hear PMDilly's thoughts on this subject too. Good debate!!
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One the surface of bodily function as labs have studied, I agree. As I have raised in the past, though, we need to take the whole functioning into account and not merely look at labwork studies which do not look at the whole picture. What we see in this thread starts to touch on that. A prime example of the same type of thing is the immune system/cancer type of discussion. Cancer is a healing rate gone extreme, while the most implemented cure drags down the system and kills the cancer. Basic, right?

What happens when stem cells are introduced? -The body's way of sending in more reserve troops to set up healing. The point here is that there is not a direct 2-Dimensional linear way that the body approaches recovery. It may SEEM like it because of "studies" or labwork, or simple cause-and-effect. Yet, we need to always be aware of context and parameters of all things we accept as fact. This thread starts to question that, which is why I replied to it. I am more inclined to take a hungry man and teach him how to fish, rather than throw him a fish. I appreciate this thread for the fact it starts to get people thinking and researching with open fact-oriented mindsets.
 
Hawk said:
Well said.

I too train people full body 6 days per week.

It isn't anything new. In fact, similar to what as you have said, studying the body's natural capacity to move and how it reacts to overload shows us that this method is the best.

Old time strongmen knew this.

Why do thier feats, which were officially recorded, stand as "impossible" today? Why do people think they need the roids? Full body training is the answer, strengthwise.

The funny thing I keep seeing on this site is that people reference the "t-nation" site, yet don't seem to see the info regarding full body training and how it works.

Hasn't anyone researched how and why modern strongman training methods are employed? Is anyone aware that these guys don't isolate? Is anyone aware that a significant portion of them work and rework the same muscle groups daily? If injury or overwork were an issue, they would clearly be weaker, smaller, and more injury prone than the rest of us. -Yet that doesn't happen. And, generally, you then get the usual excuse that it is "genetics".

Full body daily workouts are the great equalizer.

I like to point to my 63 year old dad who does this same style of routine. He is 5'7 and throws around 50 lb dumbbells after a day of ac/htg work. Weekends, he throws around 100lb rounds splitting firewood.

At 63, by modern belief, doing this sort of thing he should be dead, weak, or injured. -At least shrinking muscletone wise. In 6 months, he has gained 1 shirt size, 1 pants size, and stayed the same weight. Fat loss, no prob.

He is the healthiest and strongest he has ever been in his life.

Hmmmm.......
:)
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T-Nation has coaches like John Berardi, Charles Staley, Chad Waterbury (who recently wrote a decent article about full body)
 
R.Lewis said:
Yeah this is the same sort of style as in new rules.

How long were you training before you started doing 6 days per week?
Do you ever get to too sore to train at 100%.
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I had 2+years of quality consistent training (before that I was off and on).

Absolutely, I remember going out with a few friends to get a few (6+) drinks. I hit the gym that saturday feeling like crap and pretty achy. The only time I couldn't get through it is when something was off in my recovery habits.
What made me a believer was watching the numbers escalate every week (not by much but progression was definitely being made).
 
There is a lot to be said for high frequency in training. The problem is, it doesn't mesh well with how most people train. Tell one of the kids here he can train 6 days a week, and he'll be out doing 20 sets of bench and 30 sets of curls every day, taking each set to failure.

You have to get away from that mentality for high-frequency stuff.

On the other hand, I see a major case being raised for limiting things to 2x/week, once every 5 days for trying to gain muscle mass.
 
PMDilly said:
There is a lot to be said for high frequency in training. The problem is, it doesn't mesh well with how most people train.
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So maybe a good discussion for the thread would be training frequently vs training with a lot of volume and combining both for optimal training.
 
evolution said:
So maybe a good discussion for the thread would be training frequently vs training with a lot of volume and combining both for optimal training.
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well if you increase the frequency you must decrease the volume..ie..if you do a 1 bodypart a week split and do this for chest
4 sets 10 bench-press
4 sets 10 dips
4 sets 10 incline-bench
now you want to go to fullbody 3 x a wk so you increase the frequency but lower volume like this.
mon 4 sets 10 bench-press
wed 4 sets 10 dips
fri 4 sets 10 incline-bench
you are still doing the same amount of sets over 7 days but you are taking more advantage of the anobolic windows
 
trainerty said:
T-Nation has coaches like John Berardi, Charles Staley, Chad Waterbury (who recently wrote a decent article about full body)
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Scouring through the Waterbury posts, 'The Anti-Bodybuilding Hypertrophy Program: Break the "Rules" and Gain Real Muscle!' seems to come conceptually close to my type of programs in basic format. I think people ought to look at this to re-examine what it is they do and why.

I find it interesting how he is taking old time principles and putting "modern" data with it. In my opinion, (and I belive my opinion is simply fact, but we all seem to think that way), he is learning as time goes on that the modern methodology and thinking simply has to be dropped, the more he examines "real life" training. He mentions in later articles how much he is learning by watching gymnasts, farmers, etc.

My thinking is that if you give him 2-3 more years, he will be training old time ONLY like I do, and it would end up taking him 4 degrees and 7 years of studying everyday people to figure it out. If that is what it takes for us to realize that mainstream methodology is wrong, how much propaganda has been swallowed? Personally, I would like to see more people looking at his articles and considering his perspective.
 
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