Which is Superior: Split-Body OR Full-Body Training Programs

Welcome to the Garage Gym Athlete Podcast with Jerred Moon and Joe Courtney! Today, we dive into a common question for gym-goers: should you follow a split body routine, focusing on specific muscle groups each day, or a full body routine that targets major muscle groups in every workout? Let’s explore the benefits of each and why full body training might be the best choice for most athletes.

Split Body Routines: The Traditional Approach

Split body routines are popular in bodybuilding and powerlifting. They involve dedicating each workout to a specific muscle group or body part, such as “leg day” or “push day.” By isolating muscle groups, split routines allow for a focused, high-volume workout, providing a powerful stimulus for muscle growth and strength. However, split routines have a significant drawback: if you miss a workout, you lose an entire day of volume for that specific muscle group, potentially impacting your progress.

Full Body Routines: Consistent and Balanced

Full body routines work every major muscle group in each session, which helps you stay balanced even if you miss a day. Recent research supports that full body and split body routines are equally effective for muscle growth and strength, provided that training volume and intensity are consistent. With a full body program, you can focus on a variety of movements, which can make workouts more engaging and help maintain focus throughout the session.

Why Full Body Might Be Superior for Busy Athletes

Full body training offers two major advantages:

1. Adaptability to Missed Days: When life gets busy, it’s easier to maintain balance in a full body program because you’re hitting each muscle group multiple times per week.
2. Enhanced Focus: Switching muscle groups during a full body workout can help maintain focus and energy, leading to better performance in each exercise.

Final Thoughts: Which Should You Choose?

While both full body and split body routines are effective, full body training might be a better fit for most athletes due to its adaptability and support for busy schedules. If you’re interested in trying a full body routine, check out our programming at Garage Gym Athlete, where we offer options for both full body and split body approaches.

Take a look at the study from today's podcast here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38595233/

GGA Workout of the Week

Podcast Transcript

Jerred: 

So what's better for overall strength and muscle growth. Is it going to be. The split body routine. Like where we're doing biceps and back. You know, one day or is it the full body routine where we are exercising, basically every single body part or every single major muscle group. Every single day that we train strength, which one is going to be better.

That's what we're talking about today. This is the garage gym athlete podcast. I'm Jared moon and welcome. Let's jump straight into it. So I know I have done a lot of split body programs over the years, and I'm sure that you have as well split body programs have been the king. Of strength training. W whether that's actually getting stronger or hypertrophy, which is muscle growth.

It's been the king in both areas for a long time. And as someone who's done a lot of body bodybuilding style programs over the years, and someone who's done a lot of power lifting over the years, that's how these split body routines, that's just like the standard. And so, you know, going back to how I kind of opened the podcast and just making sure that you have a clear. Definition of how this would work.

Split body routine is more the, what you're thinking about, like a leg day. Jess day, you know, a push day, a pull day, those kinds of things for bodybuilding are very popular. You focus a lot on one specific muscle group. You know, in an effort to tax it and then ultimately get enough volume for that muscle to grow. And then it's very similar in the strength training world.

If I wanted to get stronger legs. You know, I might have a squat day, so I'm going to start with squats really heavy. Then I'm going to do some additional accessory work, but all the accessory work is going to be lower body focused. To strengthen my legs. And that's how things have been forever, but now full, full body programs. Have been getting a lot more attention in recent years. And I want to talk about why there was also a study that came out, that looked at. 14 different studies.

So a study of studies and meta analysis, and what they found was that full body programs are actually just as effective. As a split body programs. So again, this analysis included 14 studies and it found no significant differences in hypertrophy or strength between the programming styles. And most studies were acquainted for volume load in proximity to failure with only the frequency differing between groups.

So if you're like, oh, well maybe this was different or that was different. They did a pretty good job. And so they wanted to really know which one was better and they found out, Hey, As long as you're getting enough volume, as long as you're lifting enough load, you are going to see results in either program. And so if either one's. Good or jus they're both as effective as one another.

Which one would you pick? Well, I'm leaning more towards full body these days. And I think that you should too, and let's talk about why. The problem was split body routines. Is what happens if you miss a day? You know what happens if you miss a day, if you are just. You know, busy, whatever you have a six day a week program or five day week program, something happens.

And then you miss Wednesday. And Wednesday was your leg day. And you can't make it up. Like you just don't have the time. Like you, you were too busy, which I know a lot of us are in that situation. So what if you're just too busy, you miss it. And you're like, ah, I missed leg day and you know, that's the cliche, right?

Skip leg day. A lot of people skip leg day because of how difficult it is and how heavy the weight can be. But you don't make that up. That volume is gone now. And that I think happens to a lot more people than people care to admit. Now I'm sure some of you out there are just absolute discipline monsters, and you're super militant about your training and you never miss a day and you never have to make up a training session, but if you do. Or if you miss and ultimately you miss that, you miss the volume, you're now getting behind in your gains, whether that's strength gains or muscle hypertrophy games.

So that's one reason that you might want to consider. Full body over. Split body also. Focus. This is something I think is often overlooked when we're talking about. You know, training. One of the most important things that you can do. And I don't care what your goal is, whether you're an endurance athlete, whether you're doing high intensity interval training, whether you're doing strength, training. You know, powerlifting, hypertrophy, muscle growth, whatever it is.

One of the most important elements in you executing the program is focus. Focus focus, focus. It's how you do the exercise, how you do the activity, because going through the motion is motions is good for sweating. It's good for burning calories. But it's not good. It's not the best solution for seeing results. So if I have a leg day today you know, say it's a bodybuilding style routine and I'm pretty focused during the squats.

They're heavy, but they were super taxing. Now we're moving on to the accessory movements. I'm already kind of tired. I'm fatigued. I'm not as focused in my workout and I just kind of phone it in, you know, I just kinda like, yeah, whatever I go through the motions, but really what would be ideal in that situation? Is if I focused really hard on the squats, then I really focus hard on the split squats, the lunges, all of the additional accessory movements.

So I know from training for over two decades now, and you probably know it's hard to maintain focus for that long on every exercise, but when we mix up the exercise, say it's squats first, and then we're doing bench press next, or we're doing push-ups next or whatever. It's just a completely different muscle group.

It's not as taxing. You're able to focus on it. A little bit more, you're able to put in more effort. So my argument is, I think for most people, full body might actually result in, in more results for most people because. Of your ability to focus. And then also if you start missing days, it's going to be okay because that's where full body programs come in. You can focus more. When you're doing a full body program.

So you're going to see more results out out of the interest set. Activity. So you're going to see more from the actual reps that you're doing in a single you know, training session. But at the same time, if you ever start missing days or you miss a day periodically, And say we have three full body days this week. It's okay.

You got two out of three. You still hit every muscle group on two days, but not that third day now I would recommend that in a solid program, you try not to miss days, but if you do you're okay. As opposed to the split body routine. If you miss a day and you can't make it up. Now you just missed your, your push day or your pool day or your lower body day.

And so I think with the reality of people being able to focus and the reality of people have busy schedules and sometimes you miss training sessions. With those two realities. I don't think that they're actually equal, even though the research says they are. I think they are superior. And we've done both at garage gym athlete.

We've programmed a full body and we've programmed. You know, singular modality. You know, split body routines with that strength or hypertrophy. But we're leaning more towards doing a lot more. Full body and that's been something that we've done for a long time, but now the research is starting to really back it up.

So unless you want to do a specific like four week bow of wanting to get stronger. Then I think you should go focus very specifically on, Hey, I want to get my legs stronger. I want to get back stronger, whatever it is you might, you might peel off and do four weeks of really focused strength work. But I think for a program that can just kind of. You know, Stand the test of time, full body is going to be superior. So this you really can't go wrong. You can do split body, nothing wrong with it. You can do full body, nothing wrong with it. Science is now backed up through a meta analysis of 14 different studies with everything equated that these programs are both effective, both styles.

So do whichever one you want. But if you are like me and you realize, Hey, there is a, there's a mental element to my focus, or there's a life element that I might actually miss some days here and there. And I don't want to have to try and make those days up, or I don't want to feel bad for missing them.

And I still want to see progress. If you feel like you're in either one of those camps, I highly suggest. That you work on a full body routine. We're going to be doing this. We We do have split body. We do have a full body. We do a little bit of everything, but if you want to see what it looks like for us, go to garage, gym, athlete.com, sign up for a free trial, and we would love to have you. But that's it for this one. Remember if you don't kill comfort, comfort will kill you.