If someone is trying to gain strength what is better?

I know that each muscle grows and gets bigger for a total of 48 hours (men's health magazine). So theorically if you wanted to stimulate as much muscle as possible, you would work full body workouts every other day. You would take one day to work, and the next day to let your body rest.

Another possible solution would be a split workout of upper body on one day, then the next day lower body, and do that every single day. But then your muscles would not grow because you'd be using your body's nutrients and energy to fuel your lower body workout while your upper body is recovering, and you would not heal as fast and as big.

I've been doing the split workout, but i want to know what other people think.

any way you slice it, you cannot work a muscle more than 3x a week. the more volume you give the muscle in a single session, the lower the frequency.

on an upper/lower split, you should only hit each muscle twice a week.

Well Alwyn Cosgrove says splits for strength training and he is pretty much a god so I'd stick with that.

However if you do any isolation work it wont do you any good.
Alwyn says never to do more than 4 exercises in any 1 workout.

why is that?

When has Alwyn ever recommended a bodypart split for anything?

New rules of lifting. Everything is split work.

an e.g. strength training part 3...

workout a
squat
quater squat
seated good morning
swiss-ball cruch

workout b
Bench press
bent over row
Push press
woodchop

workout c
deadlift
rack deadlift
deadlift off box
hanging leg raise

workout d
close grip pull up
shoulder press
cable seated row
reverse woodchop


The whole book is like this man.

That looks more like upper/lower than a bodypart split though.

I know Alwyn's rapidly against bodypart-based routines in everything else he's written, which is why I found it odd.

Does he always use so many supersets???

Its killing me. Really good tho. as soon as I picked it up a dropped all my current workouts and stuck with this 100%. Its working great, Lots of stuff I didnt have the know how to plan myself.

that books on my list, but I'm waiting til I get closer to a bulking cycle to start reading it and implementing it.

Alwyn Cosgrove is a smart guy, but this is where I would definitely disagree with this rule.

Saying that you need 48 hours to heal a certain body part.....is also very flawed.

People who train full body all the time are not overtraining.

I currently train athletes who do squats 3x a week and deadlifts and pushups. I put them up against most of split type trainees anytime of the week.

Think of it this way, can you wake up and say I will not work quads today so I better just let my upperbody do all my life's activities today.

It just doesn't work that way. You will see faster results in losing fat/ gaining mass and strength when you do FULL body sessions.

Not that this is anything that should sway you==> I personally train 6x a week fullbody. 3x it's pretty intense....and the other 3x I do GPP. I have no joint problems (besides nagging injuries from semi pro football days) and I'm not overtrained.

I think a few of y'all should not dismiss fullbody type training, because of something a strength coach or writer has stated. In fact, I'm pretty sure, Alwyn would agree with me....that he will train athletes fullbody everytime he trains them.

Average joe or jane should do fullbody as well....the volume and frequency may be changed due to certain factors (nutrition, sleep, dysfunctions etc.)

I love it. Its the best muscle book Ive ever read. ok so most of it we already know but its writen in a really helpful way.
I only really got it because I wanted to know what all the fuss was about. But After doing 2 weeks of the workouts it has become my new bible.

PMdilly - Are upper/lower workouts not considered splits? He does also use upperbody splits, usually chest/traps = lats shoulders.

I think Matt, PMDilly, was thinking that you were talking about body part splits earlier R. Lewis.

Please explain the science behind your statements. I am not calling you out, but I want to understand where you are coming from when you choose full body over upper/lower on all occasions? Is it simply b/c of the functionality/specificity issue that you mention regarding the fact that we never ONLY use our legs in the real world? If so, that is a weak argument in my opinion. Or is there more to your methods?

Thanks.

are we really gonna do this again. NOt too long ago there was a long thread about this same topic, where some research about FBW was posted, dont remember quite what it was though.

Sorry, I did not see it. Please don't assume I was trying to drudge up old news. I would love to the a link to the thread if you have it by chance.