Whole body lifting or split up by days?

kassiebby1124
kassiebby1124 Posts: 927 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I've been following a 3 day split for my lifting routine in which I do upper body, lower body, upper body and then the next week I reverse it. I cap off my work out with a 20 minute HIIT session of kettlebells. Now, I have a question. Someone said it was better to do a total body work out 3x a week compared to what I do now because it yields better and "quicker" results. Which in YOUR personal opinion is better to do?

Replies

  • minijuggernaut
    minijuggernaut Posts: 98 Member
    In your first year, I would suggest a full body program to build a decent base. After that, a split will work.
  • kassiebby1124
    kassiebby1124 Posts: 927 Member
    Okay. I'll just mesh what I do on both days into one (: Thanks
  • ElliottTN
    ElliottTN Posts: 1,614 Member
    Oh damn, here comes 100 different people with 100 different routines, each backed by 100 different fitness models.

    Look man, it really all depends what your goals are along with your current body situation combined with how your body reacts during changes. In other words, you have to find what works best for you personally.

    For me, as an example:

    When I'm on a massive cut (like right now I'm cutting with only around 1200 daily calories) I do a 4 days split. Basically body part days when I'm hitting my muscles from all differet angles. It helps me maintain my strength for each whike on a drastic deficit.

    When I go into a maintenance mode then I switch to a push pull routine, hitting different muscle groups multiple times a week and getting decient strength gains.

    When I'm in bulk mode then I go heavy into the big compound lifts multiple times a week as fast as I can recover with a few isolation excercises thrown in there for my favorite body parts. Basically I tweak the hell out of my cns system with my lifts and my hormones really shoot through the roof. But then I also get fat and its time for cut time again.

    This is just what I found works eat for my body. It could be completely different for any other person, you just have to experiment.
  • ritchiedrama
    ritchiedrama Posts: 1,304 Member
    You want to lift heavy, low reps, high weight, compound lifts whether you're losing fat or trying to build muscle, same principles.

    http://rippedbody.jp/2011/09/22/training-the-guide/

    Have fun, that site can teach you all you need to know.
  • kassiebby1124
    kassiebby1124 Posts: 927 Member
    Thank you c: I'm trying to cut fat basically. I have 40+ bf and my goal is to be 18% one day
  • ndj1979
    ndj1979 Posts: 29,136 Member
    In your first year, I would suggest a full body program to build a decent base. After that, a split will work.

    this..with cardio mixed in off days if you want...once you get closer to body fat % goal you can go to split type routine ...
  • wolfchild59
    wolfchild59 Posts: 2,608 Member
    While I've been focused on race training for the last year and a half or so, I only have two lifting days built into my training schedule. So I do full body workouts on each of those days. But once I finish with my last planned race for awhile (coming up shortly), I plan on reducing my cardio and focusing more on lifting. So I'll probably do split workouts for upper and lower.
  • kassiebby1124
    kassiebby1124 Posts: 927 Member
    In your first year, I would suggest a full body program to build a decent base. After that, a split will work.

    this..with cardio mixed in off days if you want...once you get closer to body fat % goal you can go to split type routine ...
    I've starting running on my off days in preparation for a 5K I have in September c:

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