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i was reading something the other day which said that you can do a 3 day split and do a full body workout on each day and it gives you good results, anyone else heard of this ?? it even gives a list of exercises to do to cover all the muscle groups
i currently do 3 day split and train each muscle group seperatly. im thinking of switching it around
With what purpose in mind?
Are you referring to... H.S.T hypertrophy specific training....
When you lift weights, you cause damage to your muscles. This is often referred to as "microtrauma". Microtrauma involves the tearing and shearing of delicate protein structures within your muscle cells. This may sound bad but in reality it is necessary for the initiation of growth after your workout.
This microtrauma may be expected to require you to postpone your next workout until your muscles are back to normal. It is this logic that your average personal trainer will use when he/she tells you to wait, sometimes a full week, before training the same body part again. Recent research however is showing us that putting off your next workout until your muscles have "fully recovered" may not be necessary or even desirable! In a study performed at the University of Alabama4, two groups of subjects performed the same periodized resistance training routine either once per week or three times per week. The results showed that muscle mass increases were greater in the three workout per week group, compared to the one workout per week group. In addition, the strength increases in this group were on average 40% greater! So what does this mean to you? It means the fear of overtraining, which sometimes verges on paranoia, may be preventing you from getting the most gains you can in the gym.
So science is telling us that training a muscle group approximately every 48 hours may be more effective than training it once or twice per week. If you train your whole body three times per week with your current workout routine it might take several hours to complete. I doubt many of us would have time for that. Does this mean you can't reap the benefits of more frequent training? Once again, new research provides us with some answers.
In a study performed at Montclair State University5 researchers investigated the effect of a single set vs. a multiple set routine on increasing upper body strength. They had the subjects perform either one set or three sets of bench press, incline dumbbell press and flat dumbbell flies using ten reps, three times per week for 12 weeks. This kind of study has been done before but this one is particularly valuable because it involved previously "trained" subjects. This is significant because untrained subjects will usually respond positively to virtually any training routine. Just because a training strategy works for beginners doesn't mean it will work for experienced lifters. These researchers found that doing a single set of each exercise was equally effective as doing three sets of the same movements in increasing the subjects one repetition maximum (1RM) on bench press. The take home message is that you needn't do more than a single work set to achieve the same relative gains of doing multiple sets. This makes incorporating a whole body workout into your schedule much more feasible.
A sample whole body workout might look like this:
10-15 minute warmup on bike or treadmill
Squats, 1-2 warm up sets and 1 work set of 6-8 reps
Leg curls, 1 work set of 6-8 reps
Bench press, 1 warm up and 1 work set of 6-8 reps
Chins or pull ups, 1 work set 6-8 reps. (Add weight as necessary)
Dips, 1 work set of 6-8 reps. (Add weight as necessary)
Seated rows, 1 work set of 6-8 reps
Lying tricep extensions, 1 work set of 6-8 reps
Preacher curls, 1 work set of 6-8 reps
You will notice that this type of training relies heavily on compound exercises. This is necessary to keep the number of exercises down. Don't worry about this however compound exercises should be the foundation of any muscle/strength building program.
This is just some of the research used to create Hypertrophy Specific Training. The message here is that by reducing the volume of sets per exercise, and by increasing the frequency that you train each muscle group,
thats exactly what i was on about, the thing i read was in an ebook by mick hart (i think thats his name)
i'm gonna experiment on my next cycle and do 3 full body workouts a week (i have 2 examples) and maybe change them every 3 weeks to keep my body guessing
Its called DC training, the idea is that instead of doing lets say 14 sets of chest in one workout, splitting that up over the 3 days. Its theory is that u wanna break down the muscle, let it repair, then break it down immediatly, so u grow faster, n get stronger faster. If u do 14 sets of chest how productive could the last few sets be??? the diet they reccomend is REDICULOUS, something like 400 grams of protein. Search posts about DC training theres a very long articel on here that explains it all bye dogcrap