Full body or Muscle groups?

vladpatrick04
vladpatrick04 Posts: 52 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
As the title says this will be a place for discussion on what is better and why.

Full body (programs or sports including full body activation and engaging the whole body)

Single muscle groups (doing exercises that focus mainly on one muscle group, isolation exercises, typical bodybuilding)

So what is the best one and why do you think so?


From my experience full body workout is perfect if you want to achieve a great control and overall strength with your body as one element. But if you want to focus on having (for example) big strong legs the single group exercises are better (IMO).
I personally train single muscle groups at a time (Monday Chest; Tuesday Back; Wednesday Legs; Thursday Arms; Friday Delts and Traps) and i think this one is the best working for me atm.
I'd like to try full body workouts in the future, like those from disciplines as Calisthenics, when i will have a higher strength level and i will be able to get the technique right.

So what is your opinion about the it? Do you prefer full body or single group of muscle and why?

Let us all know so we can learn together. ^^

Cheers,
Patrick <3

Replies

  • usmcmp
    usmcmp Posts: 21,219 Member
    I've used HST, which is a full body hypertrophy routine. It was good and I made some progress on it. I used it as a break from my traditional bodybuilding split. I prefer an upper/lower split. I've never done a program where I only did delts or only did arms in a day. I feel those are better worked when combined with back or chest. If I need a shoulder day for growth reasons it's usually shoulders with arms in addition to a back with shoulder day and chest with arms day during the week.
  • jemhh
    jemhh Posts: 14,261 Member
    I've done upper/lower splits and full body and like them fairly equally. For now I've gone back to full body. Bret Contreras is a proponent of full body 4 times a week for women and I'm using his template. (Right now my workouts are very similar to the first setup he has in this post.) I respect Contreras as a trainer and researcher and have had good results with his programming in the past.

    In the end, though, I don't think there is a "best" for everybody. Different people respond well to different stimuli.
  • vladpatrick04
    vladpatrick04 Posts: 52 Member
    usmcmp wrote: »
    I've used HST, which is a full body hypertrophy routine. It was good and I made some progress on it. I used it as a break from my traditional bodybuilding split. I prefer an upper/lower split. I've never done a program where I only did delts or only did arms in a day. I feel those are better worked when combined with back or chest. If I need a shoulder day for growth reasons it's usually shoulders with arms in addition to a back with shoulder day and chest with arms day during the week.

    I usually do delts and traps togheter and add abs in but my general split is for growth atm, i did it in the past and it worked pretty good so i decided to do it again with some changes in the current future. As for the split back and biceps or chest and triceps i know its pretty popular but usually for me doesnt work that good, i realized i can get the most out of both worlds when doing them on separate days. ^^
  • BekahC1980
    BekahC1980 Posts: 474 Member
    I prefer to wear out my whole body than to cripple a single part lol
  • hill8570
    hill8570 Posts: 1,466 Member
    Kind of depends on goals. Full body is an efficient use of time (and something I recommend to all beginners, since they tend to be both weak and untrained all over). After the newbie period, a bodybuilder is going to have to do quite a bit of iso work get get the perfect aesthetic look, someone looking to train for sport will be doing sport-specific work, someone training for powerlifting is going to do mostly full-body with accessory work as need be, someone training for strongman is going to be working with a lot of heavy, odd-shaped objects. And so on.
  • cgvet37
    cgvet37 Posts: 1,189 Member
    My opinion, it depends on your goals and time. In my younger days, I was stuck on doing splits. As I have gotten older, my goals have changed. I don't stick to one program or routine for very long. Six weeks at the most.
  • wilsoncl6
    wilsoncl6 Posts: 1,280 Member
    My best results have come from doing single muscle groups. I tend to hit them harder than doing compound movements and doing compound or full body routines, stronger muscle groups tend to compensate for weaker ones. Isolation exercises are pretty much what I do now except for the tried and true lifts (bench press, deadlift, squats, barbell curls).
  • cgvet37
    cgvet37 Posts: 1,189 Member
    wilsoncl6 wrote: »
    My best results have come from doing single muscle groups. I tend to hit them harder than doing compound movements and doing compound or full body routines, stronger muscle groups tend to compensate for weaker ones. Isolation exercises are pretty much what I do now except for the tried and true lifts (bench press, deadlift, squats, barbell curls).

    I'm with you. I respond better to focusing on one muscle group per day. I'll do my compound lifts first, then isolation work.
  • SonyaCele
    SonyaCele Posts: 2,841 Member
    my program has me do a heavy full body compound movement, followed by several different isolated muscle exercises . So i do both. split into two upper days, and two lower days.
  • lizzelspark
    lizzelspark Posts: 178 Member
    I feel when you workout everyday for me I have liked split body workouts it's gives my muscles a break before i work them again and I love the burn and pump I get from working it hard
  • itsbasschick
    itsbasschick Posts: 1,584 Member
    i did splits at one point when i was lifting seriously and wanted to give muscles time to recover while still going to the gym and lifting 5 to 6 days per week. i was lifting super heavy, so some recovery time for each body part was called for.

    these days, i'm in much worse condition, so i do an entire body workout and take the next day off. it works pretty well for me at this point.
  • Cyriatan
    Cyriatan Posts: 23 Member
    I think it depends mainly on time available and then goals. I think they are not opposite, in the sense that when doing compound movements you end up hitting all major muscles. I personally "mix" them both, I have one leg/lower and one back/upper day that are the core of my routine and are as said compound/full body focused (from basic lifts to plyos, etc.) and thus create kind of a "full body" routine or at least very broad upper/lower split. Then I have two glute days where I try to really isolate my glutes (isolating glutes is easier said than done...) and finally one day for my shoulders and another for chest/biceps which I tend to mix and do on the same day or even incorporate on back/upper body day, depends on the week and how tired I am. So I lift anything between 4-6x/week, depends on life :smile:

    This way I train mainly compound-focused but then I complement with isolation focused days so I can play with the volume and intensity, for example I really get exhausted working my glutes but then I try to maintain a low volume of muscle mass in my upper body so my chest/biceps and shoulder days are enough for my goal but comparatively a lot lighter and very certain-areas-focused (I don't train biceps as much as shoulders, for example).

    For me having this mix-and-match is a big help for...getting cardio! I just CAN'T go to the gym just to do cardio and being a female I don't have as many calories to eat when cutting and you should also train your heart ;) I think the approach more than "method-focused" (should I do splits or full body?) should be more linked to optimizing work, spending the less time possible in the gym (since life happens and having and adaptative plan is GOLD) and still focusing on your problematic areas and goals. For me it would have no sense having a very detailed upper-body split, for example, even if I have a split routine. For a beginner keeping things simple so you can progressively create the habit without feeling "overloaded" is important.

    Isolation has specific use so just use where needed! If done correctly everything works, just tailor it to YOU = being consistent = successs.

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