Why you should probably train using full body sessions
Why Full Body Sessions are the best option for +90% of people
You
may have heard many people talk about their gym sessions and refer to
them as “leg day” etc where they dedicate one entire gym session to a
body part. For most people however, this is not the optimal way to
structure your weeks training or “training split”. Below we will look at
why:
Although some research shows little difference in results
from body part splits vs full body sessions, outside of a sports science
labs, real people have less than 100% adherence. When we look at real
world adherence levels, full body splits win. Due to other commitments
including work, family, sporting or social events, the average gym goer
manages 2-3 weight room sessions per week. Say you were doing 3 days,
Push, Pull & Legs, but you missed the same session 2 weeks in a row.
You have now not trained an entire part of your body in over 2 weeks.
Whereas if you covered the whole body each session 3x per week and
missed 2 sessions over 2 weeks, you would still have covered the whole
body in your other sessions yielding better overall results.
In
terms of effective repetitions over a week, due to in session fatigue on
a muscle group, the loads lifted by, for example, the 3rd push exercise
over a “push” session is likely to be lower than if the same exercises
were split over multiple sessions. This will allow for potentially more
tonnage to be lifted by each muscle group over the week on a full body
split leading to greater strength & muscle development.
For
athletes, single body part sessions could also cause greater muscle
group specific fatigue and D.O.M.S. (delayed onset muscle soreness)
which could diminish performance in sport specific sessions, this could
reduce sport progression and potentially cause sport coaches to see
strength training as negative instead of beneficial.
In conclusion, do body part splits work?
Yes,
however, context is key. Unless you can consistently get to the gym 4+
times per week to resistance train as a minimum, full body sessions are
probably going to yield superior results.