Now as we said before, we would be posting about the article pitting two of the most popular methods of training against one another. Total body training, training major muscle groups each day versus Split routines, dividing your workouts into a couple body parts a day, rather than the whole body. These two methodologies have been hotly contested lately and for good reason. Both have been proven to have incredible benefits in muscle development, but which training program is the cream of the crop? Lets find out!
We’ll start with Total Body. Total Body training is something that has recently grown in popularity as feats of strength have become increasingly captivating to some of us mere mortals. Seeing Power Lifting juggernauts such as Brian Shaw and Mountain deadlifting over a thousand pounds is something just about anyone can admire with awe, but how can they achieve such incredible power? Well, outside of their natural skills and freakish mutant gifts, their training programs require massive amounts of weights and repetitions of your major lifting movements. The age old principal in lifting is the more you perform and master a movement, the better you will become as well as seeing your strength gains sky rocket! By riding out the total body routine, you’ll be able to increase the frequency of your big 5 lifting movements; the squat, deadlift, bench, rows and overhead press. These movements are the foundation of strength development because the amount of muscles they recruit in order to perform the movement. The squat alone is going to activating muscles in the double digit range.
As the study in the article which we posted on our Instagram stated, Total Body training routines have shown to increase the one rep max of the bench and squat at a much more rapid rate than Split routines. Programming for the Total Body routines is a bit more straight forward as well. Efficiency becomes the most important thing and if you can be one thing, be efficient. Therefore selecting the exercises that recruit the most muscles is gonna give you the most bang for your buck. While this method of training does have a lot of great benefits, there are some things that will come at the Total Body routines detriment. For example, because of the amount of volume you’ll need to do of this primary movements, you’ll be missing out on more of your accessory that is very common in the aesthetically driven principals of the Split Routine, which we will go into further now.
Split Routines have been popularized since the glorious days of bodybuilding’s golden age, back in the 70’s when Arnold was roaming the west coast, making Gold’s Gym a household name. Now much like the training methods of the powerlifters in the Total Body routine, most bodybuilders are genetic anomalies who live in the gym. In the midst of all the macho and bravado, the split routine was born. Split routines grew in popularity because the aesthetically pleasing benefits they have on the individualized muscles that you are able to focus on during each workout. So instead of performing both squats and bench on the same day like you would during a Total Body routine, you’d be hitting chest and tri’s which require you to do not only bench, but incline bench, dumbbell bench, close grip tricep bench and every other benching movement you can think of. Basically, the mentality was to blast the major muscle group you were training that day, in this case it’s chest, then you’d burn out the accessory body parts that you’d be recruiting to assist in that movement. So for chest day, you’d be hitting triceps, as it assists in your pushing movements (Don’t believe me? Go push a door open and feel your chest and your tricep, you’ll feel those bad boys feeling HARD. Plus I just gave your permission to feel yourself up, you’re welcome.)
Now the big benefit in the Split routine is the muscular growth is far superior. In the study by the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, the benefits of Split routines were vastly superior in the realm of muscle growth because of the ability to work the muscles to greater fatigue, therefor stimulating greater muscle growth. Now Split routines aren’t without their flaws as a split routine is much harder to stick to if you are busy or may miss days. Your schedule becomes much stricter because missing workouts for certain body parts can cause over development, imbalances and can actually impair muscle growth.
So which is best? Ultimately, whichever routine fits your goals better is going to be what’s best for you. Total Body routines will get you a much stronger, more athletic and functional physique, while a Split routine while focus on more aesthetically pleasing and symmetrical body. Is one greater than the other? No, not necessarily as they both have benefits that the other doesn’t. If neither stands out to you, give them both a three week trial run and see which best fits into your goals and schedule! We have found that the Total Body routine has worked best for us, but that doesn’t mean that a Spilt routine won’t work best for you! At the end of the day, what’s best for you is what matters most!
Happy Lifting,
Erin and Brady