I’m not telling bodybuilders what they should or shouldn’t do. I haven’t told any of you what to do, for that matter. I advised OP to do full body 3x/week, but he’s not a bodybuilder, and after he told me he has his heart set of Physique competitions, I told him a split would be fine so long as he’s getting enough frequency.
I haven’t told any of you what to do because I don’t know what’s best for you, individually. In fact I said for you advanced guys specifically, splits are probably better because it’s easier on your body, it’s sufficient for muscle retention, and it allows for more specialized recovery. Besides that, you guys likely know your own bodies enough at this point that it’s no longer necessary to stimulate every muscle group every training session to know where your weaknesses will develop, because you’ll already know where your weaknesses are.
I’m a powerlifter. Maybe that immediately discredits me to some in this thread, but outside of competition prep, I don’t think natural bodybuilders and natural powerlifters are all that different, nor do they need to train all that differently in the off season.
I don’t say this in ignorance, but from what I’ve seen, they train quite differently, aside from a few cases. I did observe that Ed Coan and Kirk Karwoski train quite like bodybuilders for most of the year.
They do train very differently. My brother in law is a very accomplished powerlifter and strongman competitor, and we’ve gone to the gym together many times over the years. He even jokes about how if he trains like a bodybuilder, I just bury him with my approach compared to what he usually does.
I actually see a huge backlash against the surge in chasing numbers that was all the rage amongst natty wanna be bodybuilders on social media the last 5 years or so. I don’t dislike Layne Norton, but he competes (fairly well) in both sports, and you can’t view his doing two different types of training as the best route to excel in one arena. Too many youngsters and newbs got caught up in the “gotta be strong to look strong” approach, which isn’t the case more often than not with top competitors.
Brian Whitacre was always keen to point out how relatively weak he was in the gym (and he won the Wnbf worlds and the Ifpa Yorton Cup). Cordova told me when I started out that he stopped doing deadlifts (Gasp! The "king of back exercises!) when he started focusing on actually improving his physique for bodybuilding.
I moved considerably more weight training the way I used to (hanging with power lifters) and looked like crap than I did when I started focusing on improving my physique, and actually growing my muscles as big as possible for bodybuilding competition.
I think powerlifters should train more like bodybuilders when they’re not prepping for a meet (That is to say, lower intensity, higher volume). I think powerlifters who train low volume with intensities north of 85% in the “offseason” are making a mistake and grinding their gears for nothing.
I actually agree with this. Too many people think big weights = big gains, full stop. More often than not, though, you can get more hypertrophy from cutting back the weight and getting extra work in. A bigger muscle is, all else being equal, a stronger muscle, so whether you’re a strength athlete or a bodybuilder I think prioritizing muscular development is the best approach.
Think what you want. That’s fine. Like I said, what you think of splits has nothing to do with the success (high levels of success in many cases) of those who use them. I’d like to see you take some guy with lagging body parts who wants to step onstage and have you improve him. How’s this for a test then. A guy comes to youbwhis been a gymrat for sometime who has used upper lower programs. His upper pecs need work. Hamstrings are good but overpowered by quads. Also needs more lower lats and more of a cap on his side delts. All of these freaking problems were actually caused by his high frequency programming. That had little isolation work. What do you advise?
In that case, this person is likely already close to his genetic limit in terms of total muscle growth on his body. This person can afford a low-volume split-training approach, and in fact it would probably be better so he can focus most of his time on his lagging body parts without constantly draining his body’s capacity for recovery.
For this person, I’d be more focused on building up weak points and mitigating lean-mass loss during his cutting phase than packing on raw pounds.
I am seriously not trying to test or humiliate you because I am not that sort of person who does that to people. But with all due respect, I will say you provided absolutely no detail on how you would have him train his pecs, back, shoulders, and hams or where you would place them in the routine. No indication of sets, reps, sort of exercises to be done, exercise order, nothing.
I actually gave you pretty much exactly what sort of issues I was facing before this long prep of mine and they were rectified–though not fully–with a moderate to high volume split with appropriate pre-exhaust and exercise sequencing.
I think the BEST thing about this tread is that the OP got some advice, chose a path, and got to work rather than reading all of this. Good for him. I hope he starts up a thread for his training/journey, like he said he would.
As a point of curiosity, if a bodybuilder, who had never once competed in a powerlifting meet, laid out a plan for how a powerlifter should train to compete in powerlifting, and that plan was supported by various scientific studies but was also vocally opposed by many successful powerlifters, would you follow that plan?
You look like a casual lifter. I hope you didn’t intend to impress with those pictures. It had the opposite effect on me.
OP, if you haven’t figured it out already, Ryuu is in the definitive minority on this one, and has achieved far less than the other posters who have chimed in. You can do whatever you want, but I also land in the ‘split camp’, Full body programming is not the right answer here. Literally no high level physique competitor or bodybuilder relies on this style of training, and most who used it at all moved away from it very early in their lifting career.
One last thing: I love how Ryuu dismissed Robstein’s progress as ‘a genetic gift’. Man, I’ve seen Robstein on here for years. Hopefully Robstein doesn’t take this the wrong way (I doubt he will), but he is NOT genetically gifted. lol sorry buddy. He’s put in so much work. I’ve followed his logs, read his posts for years. And seen his pictures over time. Ryuu, your argument basically suggests that if someone achieves anything in lifting by not doing the things you’re suggesting, they used drugs or are genetically elite. Which is absolute nonsense.
I’m actually kind of curious as well, but who am I to call out a powerlifter? It’s not my bag.
I have seen plenty of gym rats who don’t achieve impressive size or conditioning call themselves powerlifters solely as an excuse despite their never having stepped foot on a platform or having anywhere near impressive lifts.
My old lifts were “impressive for a bodybuilder”, but I would never disrespect actual PLers by calling myself one.
After listening to thread, to a certain point, I made the decision to follow @BrickHead recommendations, no disrespect to @RyuuKyuzo, just following people who have done what I am trying to do. I started a log as well to discuss more over there, its linked somewhere in this thread. @flipcollar