is it okay to NOT feel sore after lifting?

Why can't you work out every body part 3 times a week? Because you wouldn't be getting in very good workouts and you wouldn't be allowing your muscles time to recover by hitting the same muscle groups every other day. We *are* talking beginners here, not professionals.

I'm a little confused by your second point. I think you mean mitigated? Sounds like you're fighting bro science with bro science.

Also, just because full body (may) have been used more often prior to the introduction of steroids in body building doesn't make it the better method and certainly doesn't mean that you need to be on steroids to get results with a 3 day split. You're drawing some wild conclusions from circumstantial evidence.

Why can't you work out every body part 3 times a week? Because you wouldn't be getting in very good workouts and you wouldn't be allowing your muscles time to recover by hitting the same muscle groups every other day. We *are* talking beginners here, not professionals.

You're ignoring the fast that the primary adaptation at the beginner stage is neural (not muscular). Since they aren't lifting as much weight, beginners require less recovery time between workouts. Once the loads get heavy enough, a split may be in order - but even then a push-pull or upper/lower split will offer much better adaptation than 1x/week/bodypart.

I'm a little confused by your second point. I think you mean mitigated? Sounds like you're fighting bro science with bro science.

Not at all. Consuming carbs during your workout will keep glycogen stores replenished and can aid in recovery.

Also, just because full body (may) have been used more often prior to the introduction of steroids in body building doesn't make it the better method and certainly doesn't mean that you need to be on steroids to get results with a 3 day split. You're drawing some wild conclusions from circumstantial evidence.

Quite hilarious given your explanation.

I read through the article you posted before and it very closely matches my entire explanation of weight lifting. It says that full body workouts cause the later exercises to suffer, especially for beginners.

Additionally there's some stuff about hitting each muscle group once a week being bad, which I definitely did *not* recommend. I recommended a common split of 2 upper body and 1 lower body workouts per week. Which is almost exactly the same thing that the guy who wrote that article recommended.

Literally the only difference in his program is that instead of doing 2 upper body and 1 lower body each week, you alternate every other week with 2 lower body and 1 upper body. He just phrases it a little differently, doing 2 workouts every 5 days versus my recommendation of 3 workouts every 7 days, which is almos the same frequency.

Also, consuming carbohydrates during exercises does little to replenish glycogen stores in any sort of immediate way. Plus, most people who go to the gym and work out for 30 minutes don't need to worry much about glycogen replenishment.

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Training Frequency

Training frequency refers, rather simply, to how many days per week a given type of training is performed. As you might guess, this impacts on a number of different things relevant to beginners. Research on the topic suggests that, contrary to more advanced individuals (who seem to get the best strength gains with an average training frequency of 2X/week per muscle group), beginners get better strength gains with a frequency of three times per week.

Research has also found that lifting twice per week for beginners will provide approximately 80% of the strength gains of lifting three times per week (I’d note very tangentially that cardiovascular training needs to be done three times per week to generate adaptations). I can’t recall seeing anything to suggest that lifting more often than 3X/week is better for beginners in terms of gains in strength.

From the standpoint of motor learning, a higher frequency is probably better; the more often a trainee can practice something, the faster that they’re going to learn it (again, assuming that practice is occurring under non-fatigued conditions). I’d mention here that the most common approach to training beginners is to use the same full body workout (e.g. the entire body is trained at once) at each of the three weekly workouts.

Of course there are exceptions (Mark Rippetoes Starting Strength alternates two basic full-body workouts so that each workout gets done 3 times every 2 weeks) and, again from a learning standpoint, I think there is much merit to this approach. Performing the same basic set of exercises at each workout gives beginning trainees the most practice on them, this is key to proper motor learning.

For the most part, I don’t like split routines (where the body is split into various parts) for beginners for a number of reasons although they can be appropriate under the right conditions.. A basic upper/lower split type of routine can be made to work but trainees have to keep the volume and intensity well under control in the beginning stages or they will get themselves into problems. As well, split routines do reduce the opportunity to learn the movements with frequent practice. This may be outweighed by other potential benefits.

I would never use a typical bodybuilding split (where only one or two muscle groups is hit at each workout) with a beginner. NEVER. Of course, I’d almost never use them with anybody but for beginners they accomplish nothing relevant to beginner goals. They allow volume to be far higher than necessary and they don’t give the trainee sufficient practice since each exercise is being done perhaps once every 7 days.

Drawbacks to training three times per week are scheduling, especially when a full body routine is being used. That generally necessitates training on alternate days per week (e.g. Monday/Wednesday/Friday or Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday) and for some trainees that causes problems. Moving to twice per week avoids this as more training flexibility is allowed. A basic split routine can also avoid these problems since they tend to allow a little more flexibility in terms of what days can and cannot be trained on.

I’d also note that training frequency is probably a place where differences may be seen depending on the ultimate goals of the weight room. Someone only looking for general strength health/fitness may be more than served by only lifting weights twice/week with no need nor desire to move past that. Other days are then freed up for cardiovascular conditioning or other types of exercise. The gains obtained by adding that third day of weight training may be more than outweighed by the time requirement/scheduling or what have you.

Athletes using the weight room to improve performance may also be well suited by only lifting twice/week although this depends massively on the demands of their sport and what else they have to do each week. If nothing else, they may simply lack the time to get into the weight room more often than that, even in the beginning stages. Once again, this depends on what else is being done in training.

For those aspiring to either the physique sports or powerlifting/strongman or what have you down the road, getting into the weight room three times per week is probably mandatory. Since lifting makes up the primary training in those types of activities, developing good technique/work capacity/etc. in the weight room is going to be relatively more important. And unless trainees get used to training three times per week in the early stages, they’ll have trouble adding a fourth or fifth day later down the road.[/b]

You have this exactly backward. Prior to the steroid era, full body was the predominant method.
Bodypart splits didn't come along until the advent of drugs.

You have this exactly backward. Prior to the steroid era, full body was the predominant method.
Bodypart splits didn't come along until the advent of drugs.

I don't want to get a full blow arguement because this thread is already de-railed. First, the pre-steroid era was also during the era of the Soviet Union. Since the Soviet Union has fallen and information is available regarding Russian training methods, that information has very much changed the way we look at training nowadays. It's not so much the steroid era, steroids were around long before. Russian Olympic athletes were widely regarded as some of the best in the world. Many good training philosophies have come from it, Westside adopted the Russian Conjugate method, and we're also aware of Sheiko just to name two. So looking at early 20th century training methods is not even relevant in today's standards and available information. Maximal strength training combined with some hypertrophy training is more optimal in various splits being Upper / Lower or by body part.

Is there some value to full-body training, sure but it's short-lived. Google information on negatives/shortcomings of full-body training and one of the most common issues is quick plateau's in strength. Now various methods do some modified full-body training but not full blown hit every body part.

You have this exactly backward. Prior to the steroid era, full body was the predominant method.
Bodypart splits didn't come along until the advent of drugs.

I don't want to get a full blow arguement because this thread is already de-railed. First, the pre-steroid era was also during the era of the Soviet Union. Since the Soviet Union has fallen and information is available regarding Russian training methods, that information has very much changed the way we look at training nowadays. It's not so much the steroid era, steroids were around long before. Russian Olympic athletes were widely regarded as some of the best in the world. Many good training philosophies have come from it, Westside adopted the Russian Conjugate method, and we're also aware of Sheiko just to name two. So looking at early 20th century training methods is not even relevant in today's standards and available information. Maximal strength training combined with some hypertrophy training is more optimal in various splits being Upper / Lower or by body part.

Is there some value to full-body training, sure but it's short-lived. Google information on negatives/shortcomings of full-body training and one of the most common issues is quick plateau's in strength. Now various methods do some modified full-body training but not full blown hit every body part.

No argument there. But the topic at hand is regarding novice trainees. The methodology you're referring to is more applicable to intermediate/advanced trainees. And none of them advocate 1x/week/bodypart.