What split is better?

There are a few factors to consider:
1) What are your goals?
2) How quickly are you recovering from the work?
3) How much time do you have available to lift?

I've found full body workouts are good for people who want to build strength and not as good for bodybuilding. Full body workouts can be done two to three times per week depending on your recovery. A solid full body lifting session will take around an hour, so adding warmup and stretching after would mean 90 minutes in the gym. If you can't dedicate that much time, a split (lower body/upper body) would shorten the time in the gym, but you would still want to do each split twice per month.

Also, if you're doing squats, deadlifts, standing overhead presses, pullups, and other compound movements, you might not need an abs day.

If you are a beginner, body part splits are pretty suboptimal (legs only once a week?). Especially since you are lifting 3 days per week, I would focus on a full body routine for best results which will give you adequate frequency and volume.

motivatekait wrote: »

Currently I do upperbody on Monday, abs on Wednesday, and lower body on Friday with cardio on Tuesday/Thursday. Would it be more beneficial to just do a fullbody workout three days a week rather than split up upper/abs/lower body to reduce the rest time between muscles or is it more beneficial to really isolate specific locations with high volume?

Lots of good answers already, but without knowing what sort of "cardio" you're doing, it's hard to judge.

Additionally, following a quality program will get you further faster.

It looks like you're going for GPP(General Physical preparedness)/fitness rather than any particular goal. In that case, a 5 day program that works the whole body and includes an aerobic/cardio program may be more appropriate.

IOW, identify the goal, and program towards that goal, either with a canned program, or a custom one designed for you.

erickirb wrote: »

motivatekait wrote: »

Currently I do upperbody on Monday, abs on Wednesday, and lower body on Friday with cardio on Tuesday/Thursday. Would it be more beneficial to just do a fullbody workout three days a week rather than split up upper/abs/lower body to reduce the rest time between muscles or is it more beneficial to really isolate specific locations with high volume?

I can't think of one scenario where a split as you suggested would be more beneficial than a 3x per week full body workout. body part splits do have their place (in a surplus, after you have a great base of strength, and have almost maxed out on you potential doing the full body workouts, or are on steroids), but even in those cases, the split you are doing, would not be the split breakdown of choice.

I agree with all the above. An upper/ lower split can be great if you do each 2x a week, not once.

Davidsdottir wrote: »

erickirb wrote: »

motivatekait wrote: »

Currently I do upperbody on Monday, abs on Wednesday, and lower body on Friday with cardio on Tuesday/Thursday. Would it be more beneficial to just do a fullbody workout three days a week rather than split up upper/abs/lower body to reduce the rest time between muscles or is it more beneficial to really isolate specific locations with high volume?

I can't think of one scenario where a split as you suggested would be more beneficial than a 3x per week full body workout. body part splits do have their place (in a surplus, after you have a great base of strength, and have almost maxed out on you potential doing the full body workouts, or are on steroids), but even in those cases, the split you are doing, would not be the split breakdown of choice.

I agree with all the above. An upper/ lower split can be great if you do each 2x a week, not once.

Agreed, a push/pull 2x each a week (4 days total) is good too

.

motivatekait wrote: »

To clarify, I don't have any solidified goals other than to just get stronger/increase health and fitness levels. I just really enjoy it and I love trying new workouts so I've just been playing around with different splits to see which ones I enjoy.
I've done the fulbody split 3x a week with cardio in between before and I had success with it, so I'll definitely go back to it. I was just trying to isolate different parts because I like completely burning out a particular area and I was curious if that had any benefits, but I can obviously see now that working out a body part only one day a week is not ideal haha. As far as cardio goes, I do 20 min LISS and 10 min HIIT on the spine bike T/TH, and about 10-15 min LISS after training on M/W/F.

Thanks for the help, everyone!

"burning out a particular area" is only a good idea for advanced lifters in a surplus or on steroids