No problem Stroutman,

I'm not going to try to out reference anyone here. There is probably a reference for any and every argument. I'll just say the majority of my research comes from Tudor Boumpa ("periodization for sports") and my own experience being an athlete and training them.
I won't be too lengthy with this....keeping it short as possible. The human body is hugely impacted by its ability to seek out the point of least resistance and use as many joints as possible to move itself and external loads. To limit the session (or attempt) to just one portion of the body, would be pretty inefficient and non functional. Also, it is impossible to truly isolate a muscle or muscle group. The best we can hope for is emphasizing a particular muscle for growth. Emphasis is not lost in a fullbody workout:
I.E.
If I am training a client who wishes to add muscle mass (emphasis in chest) and maintain or drop body fat, I can get him/her there faster by using hypertrophy volume on the entire body and simply add more rows/horizantol pushes.
So it would look something like this:
Decline Bench 6@6 80%max
Seated Row 6@6 80%max
Depth Plyo Pushups 4@6
Deadlift off blocks 4@6 80%max

day2
Front Squats 10@10 10rm
Wide Grip Pulls 10@5 5rm
Serratus Pushups 2@20

day3
Incline Db 3@10 10/9/8 rm
one arm db Rows 3@10 10/9/8 rm
Full Cleans 3@6 6rm
Clapping Pushups 3@10
Bear Walks 2@50 meters

in between (off days) this guy/gal will be doing GPP for trans and frontal planes

This persons body will be hit hard with frequency which is a HUGE key when it comes to the SAID principle. When you increase training to increase total mass with higher frequency, expect quicker results. If I gave you examples of the weight used. I guaranty this person would have lifted more total volume/intensity than a person who has split up his/her sessions. Lift more weight per session....you will get stronger....you will have more opportunity to put on more mass per session.

My idea (functional body must work with full body) is weak if you look at a person who doesn't do much with manual labor (i.e. typical cubicle joe/jane). However, if this person raised horses for a living or farmed for a living, the example would be quite valid. But here is another idea:

As I said before, I have people (athletes and average joe/jane) that are looking to gain mass or lose fat. Since, anatomy must adapt to a new higher level of living and training, would it be better if I split someones training to artificially cancel out or isolate a muscle (which opposes what the human body attempts to do) to get better results?
OR
Is it better to allow the many systems of the body to learn to adapt to a full body regiment (which it was designed to handle)? And would I indeed be adhering to the SAID principle (at a higher degree) to better prepare the athlete for the onslaught of his/her sport or average joe/jane for a more functional, beneficial, injury free lifestyle?

I'm going to stop writing and I hope I don't come across as a gimmicky clown trying to sell my new "step into the millenium" training dvds.

Hopefully you get my point here...

Well said.

I too train people full body 6 days per week.

It isn't anything new. In fact, similar to what as you have said, studying the body's natural capacity to move and how it reacts to overload shows us that this method is the best.

Old time strongmen knew this.

Why do thier feats, which were officially recorded, stand as "impossible" today? Why do people think they need the roids? Full body training is the answer, strengthwise.

The funny thing I keep seeing on this site is that people reference the "t-nation" site, yet don't seem to see the info regarding full body training and how it works.

Hasn't anyone researched how and why modern strongman training methods are employed? Is anyone aware that these guys don't isolate? Is anyone aware that a significant portion of them work and rework the same muscle groups daily? If injury or overwork were an issue, they would clearly be weaker, smaller, and more injury prone than the rest of us. -Yet that doesn't happen. And, generally, you then get the usual excuse that it is "genetics".

Full body daily workouts are the great equalizer.

I like to point to my 63 year old dad who does this same style of routine. He is 5'7 and throws around 50 lb dumbbells after a day of ac/htg work. Weekends, he throws around 100lb rounds splitting firewood.

At 63, by modern belief, doing this sort of thing he should be dead, weak, or injured. -At least shrinking muscletone wise. In 6 months, he has gained 1 shirt size, 1 pants size, and stayed the same weight. Fat loss, no prob.

He is the healthiest and strongest he has ever been in his life.

Hmmmm.......

Yeah this is the same sort of style as in new rules.

How long were you training before you started doing 6 days per week?
Do you ever get to too sore to train at 100%.

no problem.. dont have a link and cant really be bothered to look for it either, besides, it seems that different arguments are brought up in this post.

as trainerty says there is evidence we can train everyday.

Title: Effects of a 7-day eccentric training period on muscle damage and inflammation.

Researchers: Chen TC, Hsieh SS.

Institution: Department of Ball-Related Sports Science, Taipei Physical Education College, Taipei City, Taiwan.

Source: Medicine and Science Sports & Exercise 2001 Oct;33(10):1732-8

Purpose: This study examined the effects of a 7-day repeated maximal isokinetic eccentric training period on the indicators of muscle damage and inflammatory response.

Methods: Twenty-two college-age males were randomly assigned to eccentric training (ET) and control groups (CON). The initial exercise was 30 repetitions of maximal voluntary isokinetic eccentric contraction (ECC1) on non-dominant elbow flexors with Cybex 6000 at 60 degrees.s-1 angular velocity. The ET group performed the same exercise for the following 6 consecutive days (referred to as ECC2 to ECC7) after ECC1. Upper arm circumference (CIR), range of motion (ROM), and maximal isometric force (MIF) were measured before, immediately after, and every 24 h for 7 consecutive days after ECC1. Plasma creatine kinase (CK), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), glutamic oxaloacetate transaminase (GOT), leukocyte counts, and serum interleukin-1beta and -6 (IL-1beta, IL-6) levels were assessed before; at 2 h; and at 1, 3, 4, 6, and 7 d after ECC1. Muscle soreness was measured before and for 7 consecutive days after ECC1.

Results: The ECC1 produced significant changes in most of the measures for both groups, with the exception of leukocyte counts. No indicators of increased damage were found from the second consecutive day of eccentric training to the 7th day for the eccentric training group.

Conclusion: Continuous intensive isokinetic eccentric training performed with damaged muscles did not exacerbate muscle damage and inflammation after ECC1. In addition, a muscular "adaptation effect" may occur as early as 24 h after ECC1, as shown by the ET group's performance for 6 consecutive days after ECC1.

Hmm.. ive never really thought of GPP before, just did some googleing and it sounded pretty interresting. Maybe its something i should start when i decide to cut (i heard it was good for getting rid of some extra body fat..?)
Anyways, sorry to be kind of offtopic here, but if anyone has any links to articles or something where i can learn more about GPP, i would appritiate it if you would post them

here is the old thread

http://www.fitness.com/forum/weight-...its-16514.html

This dosen't prove anything.
1 - you cant trust a study involving only 22 people

2 - we are talking about full body workouts with set/rep systems of 10-2sets of 3-10 reps. not 30 reps.

3 - we are talking about well trained experianced weight trainers training 6 days a week, not random guys.

3 sets of ten is 30 reps and this was just one eg there are many more.
i am not saying you should train everyday but it is possible,you just need to lower the volume ie instead of doing 10 sets 3x a wk just do 2 sets a day its still 10 sets.

TrainerTy and Hawk:

Good posts. I really appreciate the time you took and I think this is the kind of posts this site needs to improve. We need some detailed convos to stimulate thought above and beyond the basic recommendations you see over and over again.

I am not sure if you may have read me wrong. If you go back through my old posts on this forum, you will NEVER see me recommend body part splits or isolation exercises. Also, I don't think anyone here really recommends isolation exercises. The majority of the time full body regiments are the basis of everyone's recommendations. That should please you if you have not noticed it in the past.

Personally, I have found that as I go on, upper/lower splits with 2 on and 1 off are what work best for me. Why? I am not sure, you both seem pretty adamant about training 6 times per week full body as "the way to train," but I don't believe there is one way to train, as I am sure the both of you will agree. You have to find the method of training that will give you, personally, the most effective and efficient results, and the only way to find that is through experimentation. I believe the aforementioned split works well for me because it best takes advantage of the protein synthesis wave of degradation and supercompensation, which I feel is most important and relevant variable when hypertrophy is primary concern for the natural athlete.

Training each body part everyday does not give your body the time to recover from the training stress and its consequent degradation in my opinion and from my own results from past experiences. I would love o hear PMDilly's thoughts on this subject too. Good debate!!

Thanks, I agree.

To a large extent, I agree. We have to realize that everyone has different goals, and that their bodies have a history which differs from the next. A body used to abuse functions a little off from a consistently healthy one. A body underfeuled does as well. Many people find they would rather, for instance, do splits rather than train everything all at once, because of the cardio involved. Others often like to feel a "pump" rather than "burn", etc. As we cans see, a style can be adapted for almost everyone.

My personal preference for anything I do in my life is to understand my full range of options and only accept the best there is. I am a "quality" over "price" guy. When I know I can choose to look good, or be strong, I choose to be strong. When I see the benefits of doing different methods, the quality of health AND strength benefit of a full body non-split, 6 day a week program seems to be the complete package. Therefore, that is the one I promote most. But, again, everyone has a different position in life.

One the surface of bodily function as labs have studied, I agree. As I have raised in the past, though, we need to take the whole functioning into account and not merely look at labwork studies which do not look at the whole picture. What we see in this thread starts to touch on that. A prime example of the same type of thing is the immune system/cancer type of discussion. Cancer is a healing rate gone extreme, while the most implemented cure drags down the system and kills the cancer. Basic, right?

What happens when stem cells are introduced? -The body's way of sending in more reserve troops to set up healing. The point here is that there is not a direct 2-Dimensional linear way that the body approaches recovery. It may SEEM like it because of "studies" or labwork, or simple cause-and-effect. Yet, we need to always be aware of context and parameters of all things we accept as fact. This thread starts to question that, which is why I replied to it. I am more inclined to take a hungry man and teach him how to fish, rather than throw him a fish. I appreciate this thread for the fact it starts to get people thinking and researching with open fact-oriented mindsets.

T-Nation has coaches like John Berardi, Charles Staley, Chad Waterbury (who recently wrote a decent article about full body)

I had 2+years of quality consistent training (before that I was off and on).

Absolutely, I remember going out with a few friends to get a few (6+) drinks. I hit the gym that saturday feeling like crap and pretty achy. The only time I couldn't get through it is when something was off in my recovery habits.
What made me a believer was watching the numbers escalate every week (not by much but progression was definitely being made).

There is a lot to be said for high frequency in training. The problem is, it doesn't mesh well with how most people train. Tell one of the kids here he can train 6 days a week, and he'll be out doing 20 sets of bench and 30 sets of curls every day, taking each set to failure.

You have to get away from that mentality for high-frequency stuff.

On the other hand, I see a major case being raised for limiting things to 2x/week, once every 5 days for trying to gain muscle mass.

So maybe a good discussion for the thread would be training frequently vs training with a lot of volume and combining both for optimal training.