Couple Questions Regarding Training

[Vanchatron]

Just got a couple of quick questions:

- What's so wrong with Splits? I keep reading things about people saying Splits are a horrible way to train, and only started to arise in a POST Steroid Era, but now everybody's on them. Personally I've always used splits (3 day splits mainly such as Chest/Biceps, Legs/Shoulders, Back/Triceps etc) and seem to be gaining well, but this new reading of "oh splits are horrible" has me wondering whether I'm actually training optimally.

- I heard that one of the reasons split training (such as 3x PW like I showed above) is bad is because muscles grow better off being trained MORE than once a week, and with split training the muscle will be recovered in around 3-4 days, and then it's sitting there doing nothing for the next few days until you train it again. Surely if you train it HARD enough & with enough intensity, once a week will be enough won't it? I just can't see how you can actually train a certain muscle TWICE a week on a 3 day split, and a lot of people say training only 3x a week leads to bigger gains than training 4-5x a week because of the added rest. Lots of conflicting info about.

- Will I do any harm from training longer than an hour? My workouts tend to last around an hour & a half (including cardio) but I heard that Cortisol gets released at around the hour mark, which is detrimental to your gains.

Thanks.

 

[lockdownd7]

1) To start with, there's an argument about semantics. Personally, I use "split" in reference to whatever workout schedule you're following. If you're training full body 3x a week, I call that a full body split. But to address your question, I'll assume you're talking about body part splits. It all just comes down to your motivations/goals. To quickly generalize, if you're more interested in bodybuilding/appearance, a body part split can work fine; if you're an athlete/interested in performance, they are far less recommended.

2) Strength responds better to increased frequency. Considering that strength and hypertrophy do have some correlation, training more frequently can lead to better size gains, especially if strength is something that's really lacking. However, as any bodybuilder will tell you, muscle doesn't grow when you work out, it grows when you rest, so at other times it's more productive for hypertrophy to work with less frequency.

3) Don' worry about it. The validity of that is debatable, and even accepting it as true, the impact is going to be very little.

 

[SaiBoT]

1) To start with, there's an argument about semantics. Personally, I use "split" in reference to whatever workout schedule you're following. If you're training full body 3x a week, I call that a full body split. But to address your question, I'll assume you're talking about body part splits. It all just comes down to your motivations/goals. To quickly generalize, if you're more interested in bodybuilding/appearance, a body part split can work fine; if you're an athlete/interested in performance, they are far less recommended.

2) Strength responds better to increased frequency. Considering that strength and hypertrophy do have some correlation, training more frequently can lead to better size gains, especially if strength is something that's really lacking. However, as any bodybuilder will tell you, muscle doesn't grow when you work out, it grows when you rest, so at other times it's more productive for hypertrophy to work with less frequency.

3) Don' worry about it. The validity of that is debatable, and even accepting it as true, the impact is going to be very little.

Good stuff ^^^ I agree with this!

 

[Vanchatron]

Thanks a lot for that info, that's great. The way I train at the moment is by doing a 6 week cycle of 5x5 (squat/bench/row etc 3x per week) for size/strength gains followed by a 6 week cycle of a program with more volume which I use 3x10 for & add isolations in (which the 5x5 doesn't include). I then take a week off. I like the 5x5 part, I'm just not sure about the 3x10 program because of what I've read numerous times about bodypart splits being crap.

What do you think?

 

[SaiBoT]

Thanks a lot for that info, that's great. The way I train at the moment is by doing a 6 week cycle of 5x5 (squat/bench/row etc 3x per week) for size/strength gains followed by a 6 week cycle of a program with more volume which I use 3x10 for & add isolations in (which the 5x5 doesn't include). I then take a week off. I like the 5x5 part, I'm just not sure about the 3x10 program because of what I've read numerous times about bodypart splits being crap.

What do you think?

Try 5x8 instead of 3x10

 

[ExtraMile]

Just got a couple of quick questions:

- What's so wrong with Splits? I keep reading things about people saying Splits are a horrible way to train, and only started to arise in a POST Steroid Era, but now everybody's on them. Personally I've always used splits (3 day splits mainly such as Chest/Biceps, Legs/Shoulders, Back/Triceps etc) and seem to be gaining well, but this new reading of "oh splits are horrible" has me wondering whether I'm actually training optimally.

- I heard that one of the reasons split training (such as 3x PW like I showed above) is bad is because muscles grow better off being trained MORE than once a week, and with split training the muscle will be recovered in around 3-4 days, and then it's sitting there doing nothing for the next few days until you train it again. Surely if you train it HARD enough & with enough intensity, once a week will be enough won't it? I just can't see how you can actually train a certain muscle TWICE a week on a 3 day split, and a lot of people say training only 3x a week leads to bigger gains than training 4-5x a week because of the added rest. Lots of conflicting info about.

- Will I do any harm from training longer than an hour? My workouts tend to last around an hour & a half (including cardio) but I heard that Cortisol gets released at around the hour mark, which is detrimental to your gains.

Thanks.

Just thought Id add. To train muscles more than twice a week on a three day split you could do somthing like this:

Workout A:
Squats
Deads
Dips
Chins

Workout B:
Bench
Pullover
BB Row
Military

Week 1:
Monday:A
Wednesday:B
Friday:A

Week 2:
Monday:B
Wednesday:A
Friday:B

Week 3:
Monday:A
Wednesday:B
Friday:A

etc