Body-Part Training is Dead

[Cmsmallzz]

Taken from an article in the August 04 issue of Men's Fitness entitled "Body Part Training is Dead" Any thoughts on this one?

You don't have to sport a permed mullet and baggy muscle pants to look like an outdated bodybuilder. For most guys, all it requires is a trip to the gym. Why? Because the average lifter still organizes his workouts by body part, designating a separate day to chest, shoulders, arms, and so on. It's a popular appraoch that was popularized in the 80's by every muscle mag on the planet. Plenty of muscleheads swear by it. But it is antiquated. Think about it: Everything else has evolved and improved in the last 20 yrs - shouldn't your workout?

Faulty Grounds

The foundation of bodypart training is shaky because of one simple and often ignored fact: You can't isolate muscles. Whether your doing a bench press for your chest or an arm curl for your biceps, there are always other muscle at work. These muscles either assist the "target" muscle or contract to stabalize your joints as you perform the exercise. So when you prepare to lift a weight, your brain sends a nerve impulse to all the muscles needed to initiate the movement, causing them to fire as a single unit. The bottom line - you brain recognizes movement patterns, not individual muscles, so that's the way you should orgainze your training sessions. Yet few lifters or trainers think in those terms, and that the problem because body-part routines don't allow for balanced workouts, ideal recovery, or efficient training For example, here's a common workout plan: chest on Monday, back on Tuesday, legs on Wed, shoulders on Thursday, and arms on Friday. Now here is why it's flawed:

1. The muscles of the lower body, the quadriceps, hamstrings, and calves, are worked on the same day, yet the chest, back, shoulders, and arms are trained separately. There is nothing wrong with training your legs once a week, but devoting another 4 days to your upper body is poor logic.

2. Having a dedicated "arm" day is overkill. When you train your chest, back or shoulders the smaller assisting muscles - triceps and biceps - fatigue faster than the larger target muscles. So by doing compound moves, such as bench presses, shoulder presses, chinups, and rows your working your arm muscles maximally, even if you never do a bicep curl or tricep extension.

3. The arm workout is performed the day after the shoulder workout, even though shoulder presses engage the tricps fully. This results in inadequate recovery time for growth.

4. Since your only working one bodypart per day, you have to perform straight sets, resting between each. That means that there's limited opportunity to speed your workout with supersets or alternating sets.

[Timma]

Never listen to anything they say in these magazines. The writers are retarded and prolly weigh a buck 50.

[JACKAL]

id take many of these articles with a grain of salt; it's not necessarily true.
the truth is you need to find what your body is going to respond to, then use that.

[mastakillah]

thats gotta be the gayest thing i've ever read. that sounds like something a mentally retarded person who doesn't have a thought process, would say. hahaha

all trying to break it down. "heres why it doesn't work"
uh, no sorry, that logic makes absolutely no fucking since.........besides the arm thing. hehe

[ZHowitzer!]

Actually the guy's complaint is correct. But all that was posted was his objection to the "problem". What is missing is the remedy.

There are numerous different ways to train...and the funny thing is that they all tend to work. If I posted the workout that I am currently on you guys would pull something deep laughing. But If I posted my methodoligy along with it some of you would fall asleep and face plant your keyboard--or for a few of you suffer from uncontrolable brain leakage from the nose.

I love this site...but it always makes me laugh at the posture of alot of the members...If I do know one thing to be an absolute it is this: The more you LEARN the more you figure out you dont know.

I do agree that magizines serve their primary purpose well...to sell more magizines...PHASE ONE blablabla...now Next month we will explain Phase II then phase 96...or by intentionaly printing workouts that encourage a plateu...but hey...car ads sell cars...that's just what there purpose is as well.

The fact is that your body adapts...that's what it is built to do...I use an old example...how many mechanics do you know with forarms like popeye? wanna know how he got them? turning a wrentch through a partial range of motion about 1,000 times a day...EVERYDAY! Now dosent that sound like overtraining?

Anyway...to end my rant ... I am not advocating doing 1,000 reps of everyexercise with minimal wt everday...I hope that is clear. But I do encourage everyone to use your own thought process before you declare that someone else is void of one (remember these guys that write this crap had to have a pretty impressive resume to get where they are today)

Although I have been guilty of splitting my sides at a couple of "Muscle and Fiction's" articles from time to time...much less it's skin and bones little brother "Mens Freshness"

[MuGGsy]

1. The muscles of the lower body, the quadriceps, hamstrings, and calves, are worked on the same day, yet the chest, back, shoulders, and arms are trained separately. There is nothing wrong with training your legs once a week, but devoting another 4 days to your upper body is poor logic.

2. Having a dedicated "arm" day is overkill. When you train your chest, back or shoulders the smaller assisting muscles - triceps and biceps - fatigue faster than the larger target muscles. So by doing compound moves, such as bench presses, shoulder presses, chinups, and rows your working your arm muscles maximally, even if you never do a bicep curl or tricep extension.

3. The arm workout is performed the day after the shoulder workout, even though shoulder presses engage the tricps fully. This results in inadequate recovery time for growth.

4. Since your only working one bodypart per day, you have to perform straight sets, resting between each. That means that there's limited opportunity to speed your workout with supersets or alternating sets. [/b][/quote]

if you are eating correct and resting correct this entire statement is pretty much bogus -- and as far as limitted opportunity to speed your workouts dropsets alone do the trick for me..

[Cmsmallzz]

Originally posted by ZHowitzer!
Actually the guy's complaint is correct. But all that was posted was his objection to the "problem". What is missing is the remedy.

Actually he does suggest a remedy. He recommends a 4-day split...horizontal pushing and pulling(rowing, bench press), vertical pushing and pulling(pullups, dips, etc.), hip dominant(dead lifts etc), and quad dominant exercises(squats). I'm not saying I am buying this guys article just posted because I knew it would cause some debate.

[MDAM21]

besides the fact that this guy is probably a skinny little weinie, look at how he sit his workout up. i would nevr do chest and then back the next day. its always a major muscle group, then its opposing smaller muscle group the next day. my routine is mon. chest, tues. bi's, wed. legs, thurs. tri's, fri. back, and sat. sh. i mean, anyone can say "working out 2 muscle groups at a time is bad" and then set up a shitty workout and talk about how bad it is. basically this article is to sell magazines.

[Cmsmallzz]

Originally posted by MDAM21
besides the fact that this guy is probably a skinny little weinie, look at how he sit his workout up. i would nevr do chest and then back the next day. its always a major muscle group, then its opposing smaller muscle group the next day. my routine is mon. chest, tues. bi's, wed. legs, thurs. tri's, fri. back, and sat. sh. i mean, anyone can say "working out 2 muscle groups at a time is bad" and then set up a shitty workout and talk about how bad it is. basically this article is to sell magazines.

Bro regardless of how you set your workout up...say for example you do chest on Mon. and then bi's on Tues...your body only has so much ability to recover. There is something called system recovery. Basically if your chest is sore on Tues but you think because your working arms it's fine...your wrong because nuerologically and physiologically you are not even close to recovering. Not to mention how do you do a shoulder workout when you hopefully blasted you tris the day before. Bro this article isn't to sell magazines...Why would it be. They could sell just as many magaizines by writing an article called Body-Part Training is the only Way. If that workout above is getting you gains...then great...but that's not to say you couldn't be getting even better gains.

[Cmsmallzz]

Also if you look at your workout your devoting more tahn 80% of yiour time to only 50% of your body.

[MDAM21]

not true. thats my weight lifting regime. i run, play basketball, bicycle and kickbox, all in the same week. sooooooo i dont want to overkill my legs. plus i do calves twice a week not on my leg day. and i dont do sh. after tri's. i do back after tris and sh. after back,, scroll up and read again. i agree about the recovery, i do push it harder than most people, and i agree that what works for me may not work for someone else. im not even sayin liftin 2 muscles 3 days a week is bad, i do it sometimes, all im sayin is,the statement "body part training is dead", is a stupid statement when i got results to prove it wrong. furthermore i garuntee u there is a magazine that says "Body-Part Training is the only Way". and its to sell magazines. thats the point of magazines...yeah they may try to help u and all that,but purpose number one is to get sponsers. and u do that by selling mags. c'mon son! i aint a fool

[hlcn8]

I'm still experimenting and figuring out what works best for me, so I won't weight in on one side or the other. But to reiterate what someone else said in a different manner, the author offers no valid remedy. He states that the flaw of bodypart splits is that other muscle groups are worked as well, it being impossible to isolate the muscle groups. the solution? a workout that uses multiple muscle groups... if a = b, and b = c, then a will equal c. attempting to isolate the individual muscle groups is perhaps not perfectly attainable, but will maximum gains be neglected when using multiple muscle groups thus concentrating focus on the muscles that are most dominantly used anyways? If i did nothing but pullups for biceps my lats would be huge and I'd have no biceps. a biceps curl might not be a huge fat burning and mass building exercise, but it helps me build my biceps which have always been a weak point...
How bout this;
if it isn't broken, don't fix it.
If it's broken and not working for you, fix it.

[Cmsmallzz]

Originally posted by MDAM21
not true. thats my weight lifting regime. i run, play basketball, bicycle and kickbox, all in the same week. sooooooo i dont want to overkill my legs. plus i do calves twice a week not on my leg day. and i dont do sh. after tri's. i do back after tris and sh. after back,, scroll up and read again. i agree about the recovery, i do push it harder than most people, and i agree that what works for me may not work for someone else. im not even sayin liftin 2 muscles 3 days a week is bad, i do it sometimes, all im sayin is,the statement "body part training is dead", is a stupid statement when i got results to prove it wrong. furthermore i garuntee u there is a magazine that says "Body-Part Training is the only Way". and its to sell magazines. thats the point of magazines...yeah they may try to help u and all that,but purpose number one is to get sponsers. and u do that by selling mags. c'mon son! i aint a fool

First of all Bro...At least I'd appreciate it if you left the ghetto slang off the board. Second of all I never said that body-part trainging won't get you results...Scroll UP and read again. But how can you say that you may not have gotten better gains from a different routine. Nor did I say that I agreed 100% with the author's view on the subject. Scroll up and read again.

I'm not saying I am buying this guys article just posted because I knew it would cause some debate.

In all seriousness Bro, your routine is laughable. Why not take the extra day and train forearms while your at it. You rest one day a week and think your gaining maximum size. Is a separate day for biceps and triceps really necessary? I mean the least you could do is make this a five day a week routine and combine those into one day.

Bro you are not going to convince me that training more than four days a week is not a mistake when the goal is maximum size. I train no more than 4 days even on a heavy cycle. Maybe your routine works for your goals. Maybe your goal is to be a real fit and not massive. If this is the case then I'm sorry for the criticism, correct me if I'm wrong. Every time you lift, you dip into your body's energy reserves to fuel your muscles. Unfortunately, those are the same reserves used to build muscle after your workout. The more often you lift, the fewer raw materials you leave to create new muscle. Since your muscles grow when your resting I need less work and more rest. Not the other way around. Honestly Bro, I won't lie I started training with a routine like yours when I started lifting 8 years ago and I got gains from it as well. But nothing like the gains I've gotten since then.
Ah-ight B, don't be buggin...keep it real yo

[MDAM21]

i never said i couldnt get better results from training less. i said i prefer my program. you can laugh at my program all you want, im strong, i look good and i'm gaining size. i dont want to be massive, i am 191 and i want to weigh 200lbs at my same body fat. this board isnt called "training to be massive" its called training,period. and it's in the fitness section, so it isnt that strange that i train to be fit huh? and quite honestly im not trying to convince you my training program is right. i dont give a rats ass if you like it or not. all im sayin is i dont agree with that article. you asked what we thought about it, so dont get all P.M.S. 'y about my response yo. and i will keep it real, you stay up too playboy