Training more than 3 days a week?
 

I've seen a few posts in the archives here and in the goal forum, where people say they did cardio and weights (both) 5 or more days a week.

If I wanted to do something like that, how would I go about setting up my weight training workouts? I assume it's a body part split, but I haven't been able to find an example in any search so far. If someone could share their experience or point me in the right direction, I'd appreciate it.

I'd just like to compare it to what I'm doing now and see if it would fit my schedule. I've basically got 3 mornings a week (not including my day off) where I would like to put some type of morning workout in, and I like the lifting, so if I could do it more often by doing split routines or whatever, I'd like that.

Thanks for any help.

I do a five-day split and it's traditionally been: back, chest, legs, shoulders, and arms (not always in a certain order, just so that shoulders and chest aren't on consecutive days). Abs three days a week. But right now I'm doing two leg days per week, so I'm doing upper body M-W-Th and Legs Heavy on Tuesday and Legs Lite on Friday. My gym is insanely crowded on weekends, so I try not to lift then (only do cardio).

I like lifting too much to only do it three days a week too. :)

Yeah, I'm a fan of exercising every day of the week, maybe only lifting 4 or 5 days, but at least some swimming, jogging or a long walk every day, some pushups every day, but I try to do mostly lower body one day and upper body the next, but basically whatever I feel like doing on whatever day without overdoing any particular muscle group too much. But I definitely like lifting weights too much to only do it 3 days a week. Sometimes I just focus on different exercises from one day to the next, depending on if I'm sore in a certain muscle group or not.

I do a five day split also- chest, abs-balance-legs lite, shoulders, back, legs heavy. I do cardio 5 days- not on the legs heavy day. I rarely do any arm specific exercises because pullups, pushups and other big multijoint exercises work my arms plenty.

Mel

Count me in on the 3-4-5 day split depending on how busy I am that week... Usually it's chest/triceps, back/biceps, legs/shoulcers/abs...I too will do a second leg workout time permitting, during the week.... I usually don't run on leg days so I work around my running schedule....I don't run far, just 5k or 45 minutes or so...

The split was exactly what I needed help with, plus just hearing that I wasn't imagining things. I think I will like 5 days better, so I will give it a try.
Thanks, everyone! :carrot:

Cheryl, the nice thing about splits is that it intensifies your workouts and get better results :yay:

Sweet! More buffness is good! Thanks, Ilene.

Body part splits are not necessarily more intense than full body workouts. Intensity is determined by percentage of max. Splits of all kinds may be extremely intense of very "unintense" depending upon what you decide you are trying to accomplish that day and what set/rep/weight scheme you use. What body part splits do allow for is to get more volume for the muscle group/groups being worked in that particular workout. However, over the course of the week or longer,over the course of a program, there may be no difference at all. If I do 12 sets of chest on Monday in my body part split and I do 4 sets for chest on M-W-F, I still do 12 sets for chest over the course of a week.


Better results is 100% tied to goals. I'm sure I could get better cut calves following a bodybuilding type split, but I'm equally as sure that I will get better relative strength numbers on my bench, squat, and deadlift following a max effort/dynamic effort/repetitive effort type program.

Body part splits, Full body workouts, upper/body workouts, push-pull splits, push-pull-legs splits all have their pros and cons depending on an individuals goals, needs, and enjoyments.

Alwyn Cosgrove, Chad Waterbury, and Christian Thibadeau debated this topic a few years back on T-Nation.

Part I
http://www.t-nation.com/readArticle.do?id=1333967

Part II
http://www.t-nation.com/readArticle.do?id=1335480

Now, Cheryl appears to really enjoy lifting, so the challenge is to come up with a split that allows her to train 4 or 5 days per week like she wants to do. Wheter that is a 5 day body part split, a 4 day upper lower split, a push-pull-legs split using an A-B-C-A 4 day set up, or something else entirely depends on her other goals, the other components of her total training program, and her nutrition.

Good articles...

Thanks for the links, Depalma. Interesting debate, for sure.

It will take me some time to hash out a tentative plan, but I wanted to see what options there were. I'm going to do some schedule crunching and see what looks doable.

Here's an article I read an article today discussing total body workouts versus splits: TBT vs. Splits: An Analysis Rather than arguing for one or the other, it tries to lay out the pros and cons so we can decide for ourselves. :)

(as always with T-Mag, ignore the photos!)

I swear---I'm just reading it for the articles!!!

(what a cliche, but it is ironic when one means it!)

Thanks, Meg! I will go to a split routine when we get our Y membership. (At home, I don't have enough equipment to really do justice to a split routine.) I'm still trying to figure out a schedule that will work with my skating nights, which unfortunately are not flexible, and the running. (hard to figure where to put a heavy leg day, LOL)

I've been doing weights only three days a week, but that's because I still don't feel secure enough with my lifting ability to do anything without my trainer. He's still correcting my posture at every appointment (I'm apparently a bit slow to learn). The rest of the week I go in and do cardio. That's pretty hard to screw up. I'm planning on switching to a split routine once I have my posture and everything else down.