My Take on Full Body Training

Training Bodybuilding
81

you do what fucking works the best. not what ‘builds some muscle’. I can squeeze my dick for two hours a day and that will ‘build some muscle’. there are NO impressively developed bodybuilders nowadays that use or have used predominantly tbt.

It’s funny how these tbt nut-huggers pull up examples of men from 50 years ago to try and defend their shitty training methodologies. THIS JUST IN: bodybuilding has evolved. You want to show me a handful of examples from last century when this sport was only JUST being born and men were only just experimenting about what is the right way to train? Well i will tell you to LOOK THE FUCK AROUND and see what people who are big and strong do?

Oh wait… but these guys are popping buckets of steroids up their asses and have incredible genetics? And whats that I hear… your genetics aren’t as good? well if your genetics suck so much that you can’t use a toned down version that has allowed thousands of people to gain large amounts of muscle… then find a new fucking hobby.

82

[quote]austin_bicep wrote:
RiVaL6 wrote:
austin_bicep wrote:
RiVaL6 wrote:
Wilba wrote:
It wasn’t all at once. It was a long period of stagnation. Also complicated by a couple of injuries. I did increase my calories by 400 + 40g protein. I also hadn’t changed things up in a long time. I was wondering if anyone had any experience with a setup like this or opinion. I am not saying splits are bad.

Seems like I may not have been clear enough that I’ve always done splits (for years), made much progress over the years. I just tried this a few weeks ago and have had good results so far. So don’t think I’m a full body guy, I have never been. Just trying something new for a little while so don’t be a dick.

everyone underestimates TBT for gaining mass.
when you’re working in only 1 - 3 sets per body part a day, that leaves u with enough energy to push in 1 - 3 more sets, 2 or 3 more times a week. whereas a split routine leaves you only one day to severely punish one muscle group.

i also find tbt to be muchhhh more entertaining than split routines…

ever try super setting deadlifts into pull ups? fucking sexy

-That’s the point, but you have it backwards, 1-3 sets per boypart a day 2-3 times a week is much less volume and taxing than when I hit 12-16 sets on chest. I like to kill my muscle in order to make it adapt, I’m usually sore for days after a workout and it lets me know I’m growing. I don’t think I’d feel the effects of TBT like that. Plus, I couldn’t heavy bench 3 days a week or even do any heavy variations of the bench press three times a week. I’d have to use relatively light weight every time I trained or I’d have a torn pec in weeks. Plus when doing a ton of other movements for my entire body I could never hit each muscle as hard as I could.

i agree. more volume is needed to demand growth from the muscle.

btw, i highly doubt you’d tear a pec from benching 3 sets a day, 3 days a week.

With tbt, you can hit the muscles, multiple times a week, and with greater intensity.
im gonna revert to the whole I,Bodybuilder philosophy because its whats familiar. its not necessarily the amount of weight your able to move, but the “intended exertion” that fully stimulates the muscle fibers. with 12+ sets, you can only strain your CNS so much. By the 12th set, the body and the mind are drained. when both are not in sync, you lose the efficacy of the lift… or rather the muscle building effect.

“so you’re saying tbt is superior to split training for bodybuilding?”

no motherfucker, im saying that there are possibilities
i wouldnt suggest a new lifter take part in a bodybuilders split routine. the volume would be way too much stress on the joints and extensors. And thisss is where you would tear a pec or develop a tight piriformis and get yo posture all fucked up.
And lastly, it’s obvious that SPLIT training is superior to tbt for bodyubuilding, for now.
I couldn’t name you one successful bodybuilder who won championships with tbt.

Not that I’m the benching king, cause some dudes shit on me here, but doing 350+ x 3 on flat bench 3 times a week with 1 day rest between session is going to cause an injury for me even if it’s only 3 sets.

As far as being able to hit each muscle more intensly, How so? Intensity on a split is giving your all devoted to one muscle group or two and TBT is trying to give your all to your entire body which in return is harder to do and thus leaves me to conclude I can train more intensly with a split.

I know you’re not saying TBT is better for bodybuilding…

To drive the point home further, something I don;t think that is mentioned often is this.

When we lift, not every muscle fiber is being stimulated during the movement. The more we fatigue the muscle, the more fibers get recruited to help out as the primary fibers are being weakened. With this being said 3 sets is not enough fatigue to activate as many fiber as me doing 12 sets on a bodypart.

Plus I’ve been hitting each muscle directly once a week for almost a year now and have never seen better strength gains as well as size. The past month alone I’ve put 10 pounds on every lift in the same rep range, I have 1.25 pound plates I’ve been adding to the bar each week. I’ve also put 20 pounds on my deadlift and squat in the same rep range as well. I think I’ll stick with split training.[/quote]

so you believe performing a 350 bench for 12 - 16 sets in one day, would be a shoulder saver compared to splitting it up over 3 days? im sure you switch up exercises on chest day but just elaborate for me.

you bring up a good point. if you fatigue your muscles enough, your body has no choice but to recruit every single muscle fiber in the region youre working in to complete the movement. however, i also think thats what CT was trying to explain with his I, Bodybuilder program. Use the CNS to fully stimulate muscles without fatiguing them. At least that’s what I think it is, as I myself am a advocate of utilizing the CNS for lifting.

83

[quote]destroyedquads wrote:
you do what fucking works the best. not what ‘builds some muscle’. I can squeeze my dick for two hours a day and that will ‘build some muscle’. there are NO impressively developed bodybuilders nowadays that use or have used predominantly tbt.

It’s funny how these tbt nut-huggers pull up examples of men from 50 years ago to try and defend their shitty training methodologies. THIS JUST IN: bodybuilding has evolved. You want to show me a handful of examples from last century when this sport was only JUST being born and men were only just experimenting about what is the right way to train? Well i will tell you to LOOK THE FUCK AROUND and see what people who are big and strong do?

Oh wait… but these guys are popping buckets of steroids up their asses and have incredible genetics? And whats that I hear… your genetics aren’t as good? well if your genetics suck so much that you can’t use a toned down version that has allowed thousands of people to gain large amounts of muscle… then find a new fucking hobby.[/quote]

Someone who is good at song parodies really ought to do a Hardgainer song.

Or there should be a South Park hardgainer episode.

84

[quote]RiVaL6 wrote:
I myself am a advocate of utilizing the CNS for lifting.

[/quote]

LOL…

I’m fucking cracking up in my cube right now.

85

for people who love to look at those old time bodybuilders and then marvel at their lack of splits, realize that they are not insanely big. they are just very well muscled men. ive never seen Prof X unless he was in a NJ grocery store and has a caribbean accent, but judging from the pics ive seen PX is far bigger than john grimek, or larry scott, and especially frank zane. PX is huge, austin bicep is big, MODOK is huge.

and like dankid said, they’re a clique. why is this so? not because they love touchin each others striated glutes. no its because they are all huge and are gettin huge the same way. I dont train like em, hence im not big like em. i actively try train with the end goal somewhere near grimek, cause i think Olympic lifts, muscle control, and feats of strength at a lower bodyweight are cool, and im a history major so i like history.

if you also like having fun with weights look into the people that did it that way but if you wanna be a bodybuilder, you gotta lift like a bodybuilder.

a split isnt arms one day for the fun of it, chest another, its maximizing the volume a muscle group is exposed too. the amount of volume is intrinsically linked to how much growth occurs. more stimulation/volume=more growth

86

I personally have done alot of both the split and tbt. In my opinion feel that they actually complement each other very well. When i feel its time for a change i will switch to one or the other and continue to make improvements. The longer i lift the more i am convinced that the workout you are doing isnt really all that important compared to consistency and the intensity you bring to the gym. they both have their advantages and disadvantages and when it comes to “building the most muscle humanly possible” intensity is the determining factor.

87

You know, if the TBT crowd would actually look into Arthur Jones more closely back when he was actually training bodybuilders, they’d find that while his staple protocol was training the entire body, he absolutely did have days of intensely specializing in given bodyparts.

If he is their God and they want to do TBT overall, they would do well to do as he did and also have periods where training days are very largely given over to highly intensive specialization of a given bodypart.

88

arthur jones is the TBT guru? since when? i always assumed he was more about a split with intensity. there was talk of leg days with sergio, arm days with arnold and franco (though those were just guest appearences), and with casey it was a total body workout that actually hit all the muscles. nothin like “i chest press and stimulate my triceps” it was “chest press and isolate tricep, shoulder press and lateral raises, chinups and curls”

89

If you are lifting to target a specific muscle there is no way you can do your entire body in 1 session unless you lift really light weights. Somewhere between a 2 and 4 way split is probably best for most people to progress and grow on. Maybe really advanced guys can do 5-6 way splits, but for normal guys who are intermediate and beginners 2, 3 and 4 ways splits are the way to go.

It’s not rocket science if your weight is stalling and you aren’t getting stronger, try taking more days off to get better recovery. If that doesn’t work eat more and swap out exercises. Find a few exercises you can progress a lot on that target the intended body part and train with the intensity of a Raging bull everytime you hit the gym, go eat, rest and repeat and over time you can gain a lot of muscle. Simple process, but in no way is this easy shit to do.

90

[quote]Kanada wrote:
arthur jones is the TBT guru? since when? i always assumed he was more about a split with intensity. there was talk of leg days with sergio, arm days with arnold and franco (though those were just guest appearences), and with casey it was a total body workout that actually hit all the muscles. nothin like “i chest press and stimulate my triceps” it was “chest press and isolate tricep, shoulder press and lateral raises, chinups and curls”[/quote]

I didn’t say he was the guru to all of them, but he is a guru to a lot of them and generally those of them that fall into the HIT camp (which many TBT’ers do) owe a lot to him whether a given one of them knows it or not.

The TBT movement was given enormous sustenance through the 70s and 80s, and even 90s, by first Jones and then his apostle (I am not saying that to be insulting) Dr Ellington Darden. Even though both themselves absolutely understood and employed bodypart specialization.

You are absolutely right about the leg and arms days you refer to. That kind of thing is what I was talking about. Even though Jones’ general approach was TBT, he knew that having days of specific targeting gave better results than always dividing the workout across the entire body. The current TBT’ers would do well to learn from that.

91

[quote]countingbeans wrote:
RiVaL6 wrote:
I myself am a advocate of utilizing the CNS for lifting.

LOL…

I’m fucking cracking up in my cube right now.

[/quote]

Exactly. Dumbest shit I’ve read all day…and they really think that using that term as incorrectly as they are makes them sound smart.

92

[quote]RiVaL6 wrote:
At least that’s what I think it is, as I myself am a advocate of utilizing the CNS for lifting.

[/quote]

I like to use my muscles for lifting.

93

[quote]That One Guy wrote:
Bill Roberts wrote:
To give a general philosophical view which probably as usual will go up the flagpole with no one saluting:

In all these things, one should not put broad theory first.

For example, what I’m doing right now some people would classify as “push/pull” and then might declaim that push/pull is not best for bb’ing, or whatever.

But first, I am not arranging what I am doing out of a push/pull theory. I couldn’t give a flip whether I am pulling or pushing on each exercise.

And second, for example I am doing biceps on the same day as chest and shoulders, and calf raises (which are push) on the same day as back work.

And further, this is for only 3 weeks, and what may be best for a person at a given point in time for a few weeks may not be the same as what is best for him as the most usual staple.

But my point here is not on that specific, but on the general principle.

I am doing what I am doing because I am aiming to train given muscles with given emphasis and amounts of rest days, and being cognizant of whether there are conflicts in how I have the exercises arranged.

Regardless of whether I have a 5-way split or a 3-way split or a 2-way or whatever I’m doing – and also with regard to what you are doing in your current “mixed-up split” program – the reason is not because of conforming to a broad theory such as TBT or push-pull or “using Dorian’s split,” but because of having the above purposes and considerations in mind.

I think too many fall into the error of putting the theory first.

Exactly, the terms “TBT” and “Splits” are just terms used by people to categorize training splits. IMO the first organizational training thought should be to have a certain desired frequency in mind and to base training day design on balancing recovery and volume/intensity.[/quote]

I personally hate that these labels even exist. It used to be that you looked at the FUCKING GOALS of the person and then created a routine based on those goals. This new attempt to immediately throw every single beginner into a TBT routine as if someone besides the guys selling this crap ever insisted that this is now THE way to start training, is retarded.

FACT: There is no way in hell you are able to train with the same intensity that I do or anyone else at an advanced level if you are doing these major lifts three fucking times a week. You may feel exhausted after the workout, but if you think you are putting the same focus and attention into every muscle group as someone who truly understands how to set up a decent workout schedule, you are lying to yourself.

If I am pressing 540lbs in an HS wide grip for 8 reps (AFTER doing 3 previous sets ramping up to that weight and then following all of this with at least 2 other exercises), does anyone really believe that I can do this 3 fucking times a week without risking injury?

If you do, just start wearing a helmet to class.

I get the feeling most of these guys have never even seen someone with arms over 18" up close, let alone trained like one.

94

[quote]Professor X wrote:
countingbeans wrote:
RiVaL6 wrote:
I myself am a advocate of utilizing the CNS for lifting.

LOL…

I’m fucking cracking up in my cube right now.

Exactly. Dumbest shit I’ve read all day…and they really think that using that term as incorrectly as they are makes them sound smart.
[/quote]

Hey, I learned from that post!

I had for all this time been trying to use the autonomic nervous system for lifting.

95

[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
Professor X wrote:
countingbeans wrote:
RiVaL6 wrote:
I myself am a advocate of utilizing the CNS for lifting.

LOL…

I’m fucking cracking up in my cube right now.

Exactly. Dumbest shit I’ve read all day…and they really think that using that term as incorrectly as they are makes them sound smart.

Hey, I learned from that post!

I had for all this time been trying to use the autonomic nervous system for lifting.[/quote]

I once tried farting with my sympathetic nervous system. Let me tell you, never again, buddy.

Never again.

96

At the end of the day it comes down the progressive overload. As long as you are progressing, whether you do TBT or splits, you are fine. The problem for TBT is that you are likely to hit the wall once you get past the beginner or even intermediate stage. This is why TBT is inferior to splits long term. If all you did were compound lifts, it is inevitable that you are going to have some muscular imbalances. Whether it is weak triceps for pressing movements or weak upper back in pulling movements, something is going to be the weak link. The fact that TBT focuses so much on big movements and less so on accessory/corrective exercises makes it difficult to overcome this. I still think TBT can be useful for beginners to learn movements and make early strength gains at a faster pace (I’m talking less than 1 year) and as a supplemental conditioning tool. But overall, I’ve never questioned that splits are the way to go for bodybuilding.

97

[quote]iwong wrote:
At the end of the day it comes down the progressive overload. As long as you are progressing, whether you do TBT or splits, you are fine. The problem for TBT is that you are likely to hit the wall once you get past the beginner or even intermediate stage. This is why TBT is inferior to splits long term. If all you did were compound lifts, it is inevitable that you are going to have some muscular imbalances. Whether it is weak triceps for pressing movements or weak upper back in pulling movements, something is going to be the weak link. The fact that TBT focuses so much on big movements and less so on accessory/corrective exercises makes it difficult to overcome this. I still think TBT can be useful for beginners to learn movements and make early strength gains at a faster pace (I’m talking less than 1 year) and as a supplemental conditioning tool. But overall, I’ve never questioned that splits are the way to go for bodybuilding.
[/quote]

The whole reason split training came about was as a function of progressive overload.

It didn’t take people all that long to realize they could lift more weight and make more progress if they weren’t trying to do everything all at once.

It’s no different than any other sport. You don’t train every aspect of football or soccer or martial arts in every single training session.

98

All trolling aside, I see it as this.

Yes, if you are advantaced and are benching 400+ and squatting 600+, then doing TBT as in 3 sessions per week (squatting/deadlifting, benching, and back work) HEAVY then you aren’t going to be able to handle this. Your tendons/ligaments are going be destroyed; regardless of steroids or not. But even for someone this strong 3x per week TBT can work very well. Tons of powerlifters do it.

It really would come down to choice and when you are that strong, it probably would make more sense to go to an upper/lower or split. But that is not to say ANY of these methods are better.

I agree that the frequency of hitting each muscle is the primary factor, and as someone above mentioned even with a 5 day split, you are hitting most muscles 2x per week, because triceps are used on shoulder days and shoulders are used on chest day, etc.

If you view things as TRAINING MUSCLES vs. TRAINING MOVEMENTS then you are going to take the split approach, because its less confusing. And i know all the “advanced” members are going to try to claim that they know for a fact that TBT or training movements is inferior, but they dont.

Its really simple. You train the different lifts, get strong at them and eat a lot and your muscles get bigger. You should train them about 2x per week, or once every 5 days for maximal growth. You may want to use a split so you can have a a whole day where you can work shoulders from every different angle with many exercises (press, side raise, rear raise, front raise etc.) But this DEFINATELY isn’t necessary; especially if you’ll never be on stage. And I know the “advanced” members think they are doing justice by recommending that splits are better, but this is not an absolute fact. And they are doing just as much injustice as someone saying that splits are inferior, because there are just as many people if not more, that can get just as good if not better results with a simpler TBT type routine (Pressing with a side raise maybe).

The point is there are individual differences between people and it is going to be physically impossible to ever claim that one thing is better. And the whole argument about how no high level bodybuilders train TBT is completely flawed. First off, most are on drugs or have superior genetics. Second, they are probably likely to use splits, not because its the most effective for them, but because that is what everyone else is doing. Its the chicken and the egg, and you cant claim they are better because thats what people use.

And yes, 50 years ago steroids were not the norm. And this is a big reason why splits were not the norm. It doesn’t have anything to do with us knowning more now. If anything, we know less as far as physique training goes. Nothing has changed. It still is, lift heavy, get strong, eat a lot, get big.

But lets let the guys with the most posts and the loudest voice dictate what is fact around here.

99

[quote]dankid wrote:
All trolling aside, I see it as this.

Yes, if you are advantaced and are benching 400+ and squatting 600+, then doing TBT as in 3 sessions per week (squatting/deadlifting, benching, and back work) HEAVY then you aren’t going to be able to handle this. Your tendons/ligaments are going be destroyed; regardless of steroids or not. But even for someone this strong 3x per week TBT can work very well. Tons of powerlifters do it.[/quote]

Gee, I used a split routine from day one and that is WHY I can now press as much as I do.

[quote]
And yes, 50 years ago steroids were not the norm. And this is a big reason why splits were not the norm. It doesn’t have anything to do with us knowning more now. If anything, we know less as far as physique training goes. Nothing has changed. It still is, lift heavy, get strong, eat a lot, get big.

But lets let the guys with the most posts and the loudest voice dictate what is fact around here.[/quote]

Bullshit. You just basically accused everyone who grew to an impressive level using a split routine of steroid use. That is beyond retarded.

100

just left the gym. There was only 3 people in the gym. There was this 135lbs dood wearing a skin tight Under Armor shirt (just trying to paint a picture here), performing (from what i saw) db curls, ez bar curls, concentration curls, hammer curls, rope extensions, kickbacks and a fuct-up version of skullcrushers (All the while texting on his cellphone every few minutes). Clearly this guy likes doing ‘arm’ day on monday.

this guy could be doing a TBT, split, tantric yoga, inverted pilates… whatever but i guarantee you he will always be a little bitch.