Hi! I read back in the archives I believe it was from Mrs. Jim that you should NOT do a total body workout but split it up. Just was curious why? I am currently doing total body 3x per week (I am not following the BFL though). What is the benefit of split days and how many reps and sets should I do??? Can you give me some examples??? I thought if I do total body I would get results faster??? So sorry about all the questions

Hi Schwartzie-

Glad you've delurked. Even if you are not doing BFL, a full body workout 3X per week is not a great idea if you are lifting intensely- to your maximum capabilities or in the 75-85% of your max range. Different muscles need different recovery times- basically, the larger the muscle group (legs, back, chest), the longer they need to recover. The soonest you should rework a muscle group is 4 days, legs usually 5-6 days. That's assuming you are lifting what's heavy for you, and progressing to higher weights if it gets easy to do 3 or 4 sets of 10 reps with perfect form. If you are lifting light weights for many sets, you're getting very little of the benefits of weight lifting, a and lot of over use of your joints.

If you want to lift 3 days a week, try splitting it up into parts that keep the blood in one area of your body, for example:
Day 1: Chest, biceps, triceps
Day 2: Shoulders, Back and Abs
Day 3: Quads, Hams abd calves

There are zillions of other splits, too.
Good lifting,

mel

Thanks Meliris! I am kind of confused now. So, if I wanted to do weights 3x per week, how should I set up my schedule. Example: Every Monday do Chest, biceps, triceps, Wednesday do Shoulders, Back and Abs, and Fridays do Quads, Hamstrings and Calves??? Repeat the same every week? I am sorry I sound so stupid here but can you give me say a two week schedule as an example. Thanks!!

Hi Schwartzie-

Yes you can do it that way with a day of cardio inbetween... and
WELCOME to our wonderfuly confusing world of weights....

Lana...

ugh
hmm i'm a little confused....
i've read that upper body can be done...or maybe should be done....3x's a week.....but that doesn't give anywhere near 4 days of recovery time.....
and i've been doing upper body 3x's a week since november, usually lower body 2x's a week since it kind of wrecks me for anything else lol.....

but anyway, i have noticed that i haven't been gaining strength as quickly in my back and chest as i have in shoulders and biceps and triceps.
could this be why?

my upper body is looking pretty darn good after three months of this but since the strength gains are really not there as they should be for back and chest maybe i should
a. do chest and back 2x's per week? and work shoulders and arms 3x's a week still....

b. do all upper body only 2x's per week?

obviously i would only want to do what is best, but i did read i think in dolfzine that arms recover faster and so could be worked more but now i'm confused

You can work arms every 3 days, but why? You won't get better results, just tired arms. I think you're absolutely right about your lack of strength gains: it's during the recovery time that muscle rebuilds (bigger, stronger, leaps tall buildings) not during your workout. No rest = no recovery.

My suggestion is to either try the classis BFL split:
Week 1: Upper body, Lower Body, Upper Body
Week 2: Lower, Upper, Lower
Do cardio on days 2,4,and 6, rest on day 7
Repeat 2 week cycle.

or

Do the split I suggested in the above post, each week with cardio on days 2,4,6, and rest on day 7.

I don't know what condition you are in, your age, how long you've been lifting, etc to make any more specific recommendations Personally, I like a 4 day split, and have occassionally done a 5 day split- but you have to really love the gym to do that.
Hope this helps,
mel

As Mel said if you do whole body workouts you don't get enough rest and you exhaust your body too much. It's counter-productive to building muscle. The BFL split is fool-proof as well (not that I am calling you a fool ) but it's straight forward and easy to follow. I wouldn't design your own splits until you understand what you are doing with weights when you use them etc. I am with Mel - I prefer the 4 day split the best and find that it produces the best results.

Ebe: the four day recovery works on muscle groups. If you work the entire upper body then yes it doesn't add up but if you work back & bis on one day and the shoulders and tris on the other (for example) then the 4 day recovery rule can apply. The days are between bodyparts NOT workouts. Yes it could be why you aren't gaining strength especially if you aren't getting enough rest. I would go with the 2nd suggestion - upper body only 2 days per week. Try and get at least 48 hrs rest between the workouts though so Monday and wed or thursday.

Think of it like this - the lifting breaks the muscle and rest repairs it. If you don't get sufficient rest then you go and break the muscle before it is fully repaired. If you continue like this the muscle doesn't grow because it is never fully repaired - you just keep breaking it all the time. That's basically why you need to rest. IF you get sufficient rest then your muscle builds itself tighter, stronger and firmer each time and soon they start to look amazing! Each time it rebuilds the tissue gets denser and thicker to fight your next breakage with more zeal and since muscle is an active tissue it burns calories to repair this tissue. Also the more muscle tissue you have the more calories you burn whilst sitting on your bottom! Whereas fat is an inactive tissue.

HTH

JC

what seemed so easy in the beginning is soooooooooooo much more complicated!
i knew muscles needed to rest but i thought only one day *shrug*
lazy muscles! jk of course....i am in complete awe of what has happened just from my completely ignorant blundering around the weight room for three months. its just exciting and fun so i guess the beginner mistake is to think more is better

seriously, thanks for the advice, i neeeed it! my poor boyfriend is sick to death of hearing my ruminations on work outs.

i'm gonna have to work out some kinda split soon because as i've been progressing i would add some more exercises in and now doing a whole upper body workout in one day leaves me pretty wiped out...one split that makes sense to my way of thinking would be...
1 - shoulders/chest/triceps
2- back/biceps
3- lower body/abs
and then pour in some cardio....

i guess there are a hundred different things to do, i've found the more i've read the more i don't know....its really overwhelming kind of.
ugh and now that i think about it i don't know if the split i just said makes that much sense because i was wondering if you do anterior delts.....would that be on a shoulder day or a back day....common sense would say shoulder day....
ok i have to stop thinking about it rofl.....this is why i haven't split up my upper body workout yet!
*must remember not to overthink things*

Ebe....

It's great that you are a thinker and asker it's the only way you will learn...I still ask, because there is always new technologies, techniques... I've been doing it for 20 years and still get confused...... It's so very interesting to read up on it and listen to other people, I love it...

Anyways , just my .02....

My two cents here...

Ya know there are so many ways to do this thing. So many splits.

I generally don't recommend a full-body workout because first off who wants to be in the gym for three hours?? I believe that if you do a 3-, 4- or 5-day split, you not only give each muscle group a chance to recover, but you can FOCUS on each individual group more effectively. I think that doing a full body workout tends to give short shrift to certain groups (like for me, that would be the back - I think it's because I can't SEE it in the mirror!)

If you need ideas for splits or workout routines, there are sooo many places you can check. For example Krista's website has a page titled "Krista's Kompleat Kompendium of Workout Routines" at her website (the page itself can be located at http://www.stumptuous.com/program.html

The Dave Draper books "Your Body Revival" and "Brother Iron, Sister Steel" also have some nice splits listed...even Arnold's Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding has some!

Hey, one thing I've learnt about this bodybuilding thing is...you NEVER stop learning stuff! There's always something new to try and that's what makes it fun!

WOW! I learned sooooo much from this thread! I thought that if I did total body 3x per week I would see faster results - was I wrong!!! I also thought that all you needed was 48 hours rest I didn't realize it took longer than that to fully recover and rest. Very interesting as well that what I was probably doing was just ripping my muscles every time and they never had a chance to ever recover I just kept ripping them. Thank you guys so much I think what I will do is do upper body 2x a week and lower body 1x a week and then do lower body the next week 2x and upper 1x. Does that sound ok???

PERFECT!!

my biggest jumps in strength gains were the times that i took 3 or 4 days off due to an illness. i went back into the gym and was able to lift those weights like there was no tomorrow.

it's good also to give the body ADDED rest once in awhile. i did it by mistake then, and now i'm building it into each 4 week period....... that's how much it benefited me.

good luck.

adriana