“There is never an absolute answer to everything, except of course that you have to do your squats”
Mark Rippetoe -an American strength training coach and author.
To achieve our health and fitness goals, we have to balance training, recovery, nutrition and supplementation with everything else we have in our lives. That is why we will look into the best training method for you to use to achieve your goals of fat loss, strength, and some muscle development whilst also being easy to use, productive, and time-efficient.
The ‘full body’ training split is simply a way of planning your training to hit the whole of the body, which is simple enough to understand, but now we will look into why it is an excellent way of training and explain it in further detail.
What is a Training Split?
A training split is simply how you structure your training sessions, so the ‘full body’ training split is merely a way of planning your training, so it hits the whole body (all major muscle groups). One of the first things people ask is how to plan their training to hit all muscle groups with a balance over their 1, 2 or 3 training sessions per week.
The training split is also determined by training status (how advanced you are), how often you can train (frequency) and how much you are training (volume). You can also consider how well you recover, but the full-body split covers all these variables.
Why is the Full Body Split Great for Beginners?
Managing Training with Life:
The majority of people who want to lose fat and build some muscle will have to manage those goals along with daily life, work, family and so on; therefore, you need to be realistic with how much time you spend in the gym. Almost everyone can train at least 1 or 2 times per week, and many can make 3 sessions per week which is a great frequency. Full body training can be done 1-3 times per week; this flexibility allows you to tailor training to your daily life or weekly schedule.
Got a busy week? Just get 1 or 2 sessions in. Got a less busy week? Try to get 2-3 sessions in!
Mastering the Basics:
The full body split covers the major muscle groups and main basic exercises, which is what a new lifter or novice needs. If you are starting or still new to training, you need to build the foundation and get your body used to lift the weight by training the most important exercises frequently and with moderate intensity and volume. This means you can practice and learn fundamental exercises and provide an excellent stimulus for the muscle(s) to adapt.
Practising the basics multiple times per week will help you learn and improve quickly; we are not all experience lifters and therefore practising lifting form is a key part of the process.
Consistent Progress:
With the full-body split, you typically train the same exercises and movements in each session; this way, you can see consistent progress with the exercises in that session due to frequent practice. If you were to do a different session every time, you wouldn’t know if you are adapting and getting better or improving.
Practical Application:
As mentioned, we aim for 1-3 sessions per week depending on your lifestyle and job, but make sure that you don’t train on consecutive days; this allows you to rest and recover, of which the importance is covered in this article.
The Session:
Now for what the training session itself looks like. Firstly, we need to maximise the return on investment and time efficiency of the session, so we only perform exercises that will tick those 2 boxes. The best exercises use large muscle groups, involve more than one joint action (termed ‘compound’ lifts) and move the most weight. We also make sure that this is evenly distributed across the body, so we are not ignoring any muscles.
The sample program below shows that the lower body is covered in the first half of the session with 2 great exercises; 3 exercises for the upper body, then follow this. Also, note how we use an exercise to cover both the anterior and posterior sides of the upper and lower body; this contributes to balance.
You’ll notice there is no cardiovascular work in this program; this is because, in the gym, we want to maximise the use of weights that have the most significant effect on strength, body composition and more! Any cardiovascular work could be done at another time, but when we have access to weights, we will get everything from them.
Give this article a read here to understand more about the specifics of weight training programs and their benefits.
A. Back Squat, Barbell, Heels Elevated, 5 sets, 10-12 reps, 4:0:1:0 tempo, 120s rest
B. 45% Back Extension, DB Held Against Chest, 3 sets, 10-12 reps, 2:0:1:2 tempo, 120s rest
C1. Behind the Neck Press, Seated, Barbell, 5 sets, 6-8 reps, 4:0:1:0 tempo, 90s rest
C2. Chin-up**, Neutral Grip, 5 sets, 1-3 reps, 4:0:1:0 tempo, 90s rest
D. Seated-Row-to-Neck, Thumbs Up Grip, 3 sets, 10-12 reps, 3:0:1:2 tempo, 100s
** Perform Lat Pulldowns with a neutral grip if you cannot perform a chin-up. 5 sets, 10-12 reps, 3:0:1:0 tempo, 90s rest
A 2-day training split could be: Train on Tuesday/Thursday
A 3-day training split would look like this: Train on Monday/Wednesday/Friday
Conclusion:
As we advance in training, we can increase the time we spend on certain body parts or specific exercises, and this makes sense because we will have built a foundation first. This means a progression from the full-body split would be ‘upper/lower’, for example, which will be covered in a later article.
For now, get started on the full-body training, improve with increasing the bar’s weight or adding a rep, and, of course, keep a log of your weights and reps completed.
If you need further advice or programming, then get in touch.
Consultations
We’re always here to help. If you have any questions or would like advice on nutrition, supplements or training, please book in for a consultation.
Further reading
- Weight Training (Even at Home)
- Training Lower and Upper Body Split
- Pre- Workout Supplementation – Designs For Health Pre-Train NRG
- 20 Tips to improve your health and performance
Disclaimer
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