[quote]Sentoguy wrote:
Mr. Strong wrote:
Squats, Dips and Chins leaves nothing untouched, you can hit everything with maximum intensity every workout, you don’t need isolation movements. You can do more exercises in each session if you wanted to.
Oh boy, here we go again…
First, unless you are just an absolute freak and every single muscle in your body grows at the exact same rate, then yes, you DO need isolation movements. Even beginner programs like “Starting Strength” incorporate isolation movements.
Second, squats, dips and chins leave out quite a few muscles. There is no upper or middle trap involvement (unless you are pulling down to behind your head, then there is some middle trap involvement), there is no calf work to speak of, there is very little if any hip abductor/adductor work. No brachioradialis (if you do “chins” specifically) work.
And even if you could hit everything doing compounds, there is gonna come a point in time when you aren’t going to be able to keep up with the demands of doing all of your big compound lifts in one session. Yeah, you can probably cope with a 135 bench, 200 squat, and 250 deadlift session fairly well. But try doing a 400 bench, 500 squat and 600 deadlift for reps, all in the same session week in and week out. You couldn’t, you’d burn yourself out in no time flat, and also most likely find it impossible to improve on those lifts.
Most BB’ing trainers (heck most athletic trainers), and the vast vast majority of athletes (BB’ing or otherwise) have long since realized this and as a result favor split routines. Westside is a split, DC is a split, Poliquin uses splits with his athletes (even though I think the guy is a couple grapes short of a fruit salad he still knows what he’s doing), 95% of all Olympia competitors use splits, and the list goes on.
Don’t you think there might be a reason for that?
Like some of us have said in this thread (and countless times in the past) for beginners TBT is fine, probably a good choice. JSBrook brought up the issues of time constraints and other extenuating factors which could also make TBT a better choice in certain circumstances. But once you pass that beginner stage, and assuming your goal is to build as much muscle as possible in the shortest time frame (your goal is BB’ing), then splits are far and away the better choice for the huge majority of people.[/quote]
Agreed. But I would add that full-body training does not preclude isolation movements. I always do direct shoulder, chest, and armwork whenever I do use full-body training. Still, it can be hard to ensure optimal growth of all muscle groups on a full-body program. For example, my chest lags and needs a lot of attention to grow optimally. Sometimes, I’ll train it 2x a week even on a split. And it requires heavy cable work and various other techniques in addition to compound work to optimally grow. It’s very hard to do this after an intense fullbody workout.