Full Body Workout vs. One/Two Parts a Day?

B

brendazzzz

Cathlete
I've been reading here about working on building muscle to tone the body and it being suggested that you should only work one to two body parts per day... Can you not achieve the same results by doing full body workouts? I would like to tone a little more and lose a couple of pounds so thought I'd alternate days between full body and cardio. Will I not achieve any toning this way? Thanks for your help!
 
This response is by no means scientific, it's based on my results. I used to do almost exclusively full body workouts and I loved them. But I didn't see the strength gains or muscle gains I wanted. So I started rotating the pyramids and CTX upper body and L&G and I really started seeing results. I have no wt to loose but wanted to continue to challenge myself with heavier wts and make muscle gains. This rotation started that. Then I got the HCs and stuck with a Gym style rotation and continued to see results. Now I am mixing it up- I will throw in a total body once every week or two. My only problem is fitting in my cardio esp if I do a 3 day split- I tend to only get 2 cardios per week when I do that. I think you should play with it a little to see what works best for you. That's kind of what I did.

HTH
Catherine
 
Look at the basics. Compare the time taken to do the 2 gym styles for upper body or the upper body weight work for S&H with the amount of time dedicated to upper body on ME or PH or MM. It isn't the same.

Doing one or two body parts a day lets you spend more time with the one group of muscles (and supporting muscles) and overload them with multiple sets, something which there isn't time to do on a total body workout. I can complete all the total body workouts fine, but I never really reach complete fatigue and muscle failure as I do when doing 25-30 minutes of work on just triceps or just chest.

So, just from this basic anaylsis you can see that, no, the results will not be the same from total body workouts as from a more extended series such as GS or S&H.

Your plan will indeed get you "toning," odd term really, but not great strength gains, not anywhere near your maximum potential strength gains.

Howevr, if you are still relatively new to lifting, or lack the time right now to spend more time with each body part per week, then what you have planned is good and will still produce results. it is a natural progression from there to drop the frequency of training to 1 or 2 body parts per day, hitting each body part either once or twice per week, and increasing the intensity and work load by overloading sets.

Clare
 
This may depend on the indidivdual. Personally, I like to work the upper body hard twice per week, and the lower body at least once, since the lower body gets worked hard also in things like Low max, CTX Power Circuit and Circuit Max.

What you may like to do is work each body part once with GS, going as heavy as possible, put in a few days of cardio and working lower body, then do something like PUB to work the upper body again, but more efficiently.

I am an ecto, small and skinny on top, and I have had to work very hard to gain any upper body muscle. Working S&H twice per week helped get me there, after which working it once per week with PUB thrown in helps keep me there.

There is, alas, no one recipe that will fit all. YOu have to play with it for a while to see what results it gives you and then add more if you want to later on. This is what I did and do.

Clare
 
well that is what i was thinking 1 GS and 1 PUB which is 1 of my favs but gets a little dull more then once per week I am going to do the whole GS upper body in 1 day as it seems to work better for me to just get started and just do the whole thing time is not an issue for me during the week as I work the weekends and i agree i do hill biking and incline treadmill walking and running which works the lower body alot I have no clue what body type I am but I am going to try this
Thanks Clare
Lisa
 
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