Working Chest and Back on Same Day

Training Bodybuilding
101

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
Ronnie might be bigger if he switched to TB workouts?[/quote]

Maybe, if he trained with the same intensity and nutrition. How can you honestly say otherwise if he has never tried TBT? TBT doesn’t have to mean less intensity.

I’m saying that unless you compare apples, you can’t make an informed judgment. Keep nutrition constant, and measure someone’s gains under TBT vs. splits. That’s the only way to really know the effectiveness of training type.

My diet is definitely a factor, but if it were the only factor I wouldn’t have seen greater gains with TBT than with splits.

102

Hopefully this may clear some confusion up:

Splits seem to be for effective than “TBW” because that builds HUGE guys. You’re 160 lbs so if those numbers are true, then fine, you lift weight. That’s really irrelevant since relative strength or whatever really has no relevance for those who are trying to gain much more than average amount of muscle. People can lift for 50 years but if they still look average then that does not make them advanced bodybuilders. You have a huge (pun intended) amount of room to grow into so any program should do.

There is a reason why top bodybuilders do splits. What is “ideal” in this context is ability to gain MASSIVE (unusually so) amounts of muscle. I doubt you’re trying very hard to do just that if you’re 160. And if that’s not your goal, then fine. But then why would you be here?

103

[quote]forlife wrote:
DoubleDuce wrote:
Ronnie might be bigger if he switched to TB workouts?

Maybe, if he trained with the same intensity and nutrition. How can you honestly say otherwise if he has never tried TBT? TBT doesn’t have to mean less intensity.

What you are saying is that if you are nutritional depleted TBT might be better.

I’m saying that unless you compare apples, you can’t make an informed judgment. Keep nutrition constant, and measure someone’s gains under TBT vs. splits. That’s the only way to really know the effectiveness of training type.

Your diet is your limiting factor, not your training.

My diet is definitely a factor, but if it were the only factor I wouldn’t have seen greater gains with TBT than with splits.[/quote]

What the hell? Why would ANYONE looking to make the most progress keep their diet the SAME?

You aren’t even making sense. You admit that your primary focus is on abs yet when we say that is probably why you didn’t gain much using splits, you claim that is not the case.

You aren’t even making sense at this point.

104

[quote]forlife wrote:
DoubleDuce wrote:
Ronnie might be bigger if he switched to TB workouts?

Maybe, if he trained with the same intensity and nutrition. How can you honestly say otherwise if he has never tried TBT? TBT doesn’t have to mean less intensity.

What you are saying is that if you are nutritional depleted TBT might be better.

I’m saying that unless you compare apples, you can’t make an informed judgment. Keep nutrition constant, and measure someone’s gains under TBT vs. splits. That’s the only way to really know the effectiveness of training type.

Your diet is your limiting factor, not your training.

My diet is definitely a factor, but if it were the only factor I wouldn’t have seen greater gains with TBT than with splits.[/quote]

You haven’t every really tried to build as much muscle as possible, how could you know what was best.

If I don’t eat at all, I’ll retain more muscle sleeping than training, what does that prove? Nothing.

If you aren’t eating you aren’t programming your body to build. You don’t know what would happen if you ate big and lifted big on any routine.

Go put in good effort in your diet and training to build muscle, try both routines for a couple of years and report back.

105

[quote]Professor X wrote:
What the hell? Why would ANYONE looking to make the most progress keep their diet the SAME?[/quote]

I said that my nutrition was the same when I did splits vs. TBT.

I never said my primary focus is on abs. I said that I value both leanness and size/strength. What matters is not how much I gained under splits in a vacuum, but how that gain compares with my gains under TBT.

Unless you compare TBT with splits, under the same level of training intensity and nutrition, how can you logically conclude one is any more effective than the other?

You can’t just look at the big guys who are using splits and assume that splits are automatically superior. The big guys are probably eating a lot more and training with a lot greater intensity, and for all you know that is the primary reason for their size, rather than their particular routine.

106

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
Go put in good effort in your diet and training to build muscle, try both routines for a couple of years and report back.[/quote]

You’re absolutely right that under different nutrition, the benefits of TBT over splits could dissolve or even reverse. Statistically, there could be an interaction between the two variables rather than a simple cause/effect.

All I can say is that under my current nutrition, TBT has proven to be superior.

I don’t think anyone can say that splits are more effective than TBT when you eat more, unless they actually try both with the same training intensity and find that to be the case. The jury is still out on that.

107

[quote]forlife wrote:
Professor X wrote:
What the hell? Why would ANYONE looking to make the most progress keep their diet the SAME?

I said that my nutrition was the same when I did splits vs. TBT.

You aren’t even making sense. You admit that your primary focus is on abs yet when we say that is probably why you didn’t gain much using splits, you claim that is not the case.

I never said my primary focus is on abs. I said that I value both leanness and size/strength. What matters is not how much I gained under splits in a vacuum, but how that gain compares with my gains under TBT.

Unless you compare TBT with splits, under the same level of training intensity and nutrition, how can you logically conclude one is any more effective than the other?

You can’t just look at the big guys who are using splits and assume that splits are automatically superior. The big guys are probably eating a lot more and training with a lot greater intensity, and for all you know that is the primary reason for their size, rather than their particular routine.[/quote]

A few posts ago you said you increased your frequency and intensity when you changed to TBT. So you really can’t compare either…?

108

I don’t disagree that a lot of people use TBT to get lean/athletic looking. This is a BBing forum.

I myself trained TB fro my first 3/4 years and felt like I matured out of it lifting wise.

I still like to include more groups into a workout and actually train push/pull right now. But my goals are PLing right now.

However even training a push/pull the focus of the workouts switch in rotation. So you really generally end up splinting up your training in 4 different workouts. Like west sides DE/ME days.

I’ve really though about it a while and the bigger guys even in things like powerlifting generally end up with a 4/5 day split.

Something tells me that if you were putting up more weight you’d start having energy/recovery issues with TBT. I just got off a smolov cycle and was squatting 3 days a week. I did no other leg/posterior chain work during that time because I couldn’t recover.

109

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

I myself trained TB fro my first 3/4 years and felt like I matured out of it lifting wise.

[/quote]

Exactly. There is always going to be a cut-off point for total body training, because once you hit the heavy weights, recovery is going to become a serious issue.

Of course, you could argue that just reducing the frequency is going to give you adequate recovery time between sessions, but then you still have to address the fact that you are trying to hit the whole body in once session with extremely stressful loads.

As soon as you get to the point where you can handle considerable weight, you can’t just compensate by reducing frequency; sooner or later you are going to have to split bodyparts just to give your muscles a chance to recover.

At that point you are no longer doing TBT. If you get to this point and you refuse move to a split, you are either
a) in denial b)extremely stubborn, or c) deliberately limiting your progress because of either a or b.

In my opinion, total body sessions lack the flexiblity required to make the necessary progressions over the long term.

I don’t doubt that you can use them to make progress, but you will not become an advanced bodybuilder by todays standards.

There is not a pro bodybuilder in competition today that would credit their success to TBT. They would have left the TBT behind years before turning pro, for reasons I’ve already explained.

110

Dont understand this as a argument about tbt is better or anything(i actually train both ways), but i think if someone in the 50s did split routines everybody would say the guy is wrong because all the big BBers (Grimek, Reg Park, Reeves etc) did tbt.

If this guy stoped training as he liked and believed is better, he would feel really stupid 20 years later when everybody was using split routines.

My point is if someone has better results with tbt or splits (or alternating both)should stick with it. Maybe all the guys in the olympia of the year of 2059 will do tbt… :slight_smile:

111

TBT simply can’t target muscle groups to an extent of causing the reaction of significative hypertrophy. You may have results as a beginner, but for maximizing muscle size it’s necessary to focus on few muscle groups during a training session.

BTW, I can’t train chest and back 100% on the same day, again, these are two big muscle groups who need a lot of energy, strength and focus.

112

[quote]Sagat wrote:
all the big BBers (Grimek, Reg Park, Reeves etc) did tbt.

[/quote]

When was this?

113

[quote]Professor X wrote:
Sagat wrote:
all the big BBers (Grimek, Reg Park, Reeves etc) did tbt.

When was this?[/quote]

Sorry for the bad english, when i say “someone in the 50s” i mean someone training in the decade of 50… i hope the post makes sense now.

114

[quote]Sagat wrote:
Professor X wrote:
Sagat wrote:
all the big BBers (Grimek, Reg Park, Reeves etc) did tbt.

When was this?

Sorry for the bad english, when i say “someone in the 50s” i mean someone training in the decade of 50… i hope the post makes sense now.[/quote]

Nope. They didn’t call their training “TBT”. They were the pioneers. They were the ones making up the exercises we now know as regulars in the gym. That era is where “Scott curls” came from and tons of other concepts that no one even considered to give a brand name to until Weider came along and branded everything they came up with as “The Weider Principles”. So, when someone comes along and claims “they all trained TBT back then”, I have a real hard time with that.

They didn’t train “TBT”. They simply trained and modified…then trained and modified some more.

115

I see nothing wrong with switching gears every now and then, by coming off a 5 or 6 week split and go directly into TBT for a month or so. If anything, my strength and energy levels are actually better once I get back into a split routine.

The bulk of my training consists of splits throughout the year, but incorporating TBT and even push/pull splits from time to time has worked well for me.

116

[quote]Professor X wrote:
Sagat wrote:
Professor X wrote:
Sagat wrote:
all the big BBers (Grimek, Reg Park, Reeves etc) did tbt.

When was this?

Sorry for the bad english, when i say “someone in the 50s” i mean someone training in the decade of 50… i hope the post makes sense now.

Nope. They didn’t call their training “TBT”. They were the pioneers. They were the ones making up the exercises we now know as regulars in the gym.

That era is where “Scott curls” came from and tons of other concepts that no one even considered to give a brand name to until Weider came along and branded everything they came up with as “The Weider Principles”. So, when someone comes along and claims “they all trained TBT back then”, I have a real hard time with that.

They didn’t train “TBT”. They simply trained and modified…then trained and modified some more.
[/quote]

Right, plus it’s not like splits had been around for decades at that time, and these BB’ers found that doing TBT actually got them better results from a muscle building standpoint. In fact, it seems like the opposite has happened.

Those guys did TBT (and a lot of gymnastics type training) because that is what they had to work with. BB’ing wasn’t a mainstream (or even named) sport at the time, and the only people that these pioneers could look to for inspiration were athletes (like gymnasts, circus strongmen, etc…). So, they used them and their exercises as models for how to build muscle (interesting concept modeling successful people).

At some point along the way someone (who really knows who was the first) decided to try splitting their workouts up instead of training their whole body in one session. Well, they must have got some pretty good results and others must have saw those results and inquired what this person was doing to get them, because clearly the concept has become wildly popular/successful.

That’s how things work, trial and error. Concepts live or die by the results they produce. If TBT were truly more effective at building muscle, then that’s what the Pros would be doing. They have no allegance to splits, they only care about results.

117

[quote]Sentoguy wrote:
They have no allegance to splits, they only care about results.

[/quote]

They only do splits because it’s the easy way to train, and they are on so much juice that they grow muscle from watching TV and eating ice cream.

What, don’t you read the articles on this site? :wink:

118

Professor X:

I’m sure they didnt call it TBT, i think people dont bother about labeling their training like this that outside this forum. I just mean that they trained their whole body in the same workout(tbt is a faster way of write that).

Sentoguy:

I understand what you say, and , again, i’m not saying tbt is superior. My point was only this: what was “wrong” before in now the “right” way to train, so if one tried both ways and found one is better for himself(that seems to be the case of forlife) should train that way in despite of being “wrong”. Just that.
I agree that its about copying sucessful people, etc… but more like a starting point, not limiting what you can or cant do/try. Another thing is that seems you are considering as if weight training reached the end of its evolution, the trial and error you mentioned are still in process. Look at martial arts: it is over 3000 years old and see how much it changed only in the last 20 years.

119

[quote]Sagat wrote:
Professor X:

I’m sure they didnt call it TBT, i think people dont bother about labeling their training like this that outside this forum. I just mean that they trained their whole body in the same workout(tbt is a faster way of write that).

Sentoguy:

I understand what you say, and , again, i’m not saying tbt is superior. My point was only this: what was “wrong” before in now the “right” way to train, so if one tried both ways and found one is better for himself(that seems to be the case of forlife) should train that way in despite of being “wrong”. Just that.
I agree that its about copying sucessful people, etc… but more like a starting point, not limiting what you can or cant do/try. Another thing is that seems you are considering as if weight training reached the end of its evolution, the trial and error you mentioned are still in process. Look at martial arts: it is over 3000 years old and see how much it changed only in the last 20 years.
[/quote]

I already knew what you meant, and again, the gyms have been the scientific laboratories of bodybuilders for over a century now. That one place is where decisions were made to try this or that and KEEP what worked while tossing out what didn’t. It is not a coincidence that most bodybuilders QUIT working their entire bodies in one session. Working certain body parts per session was tested again and again. The kinks were worked out over decades. It stuck BECAUSE IT WORKED, not because it is a phase that people are going through.

If working your entire body was the optimal way to get big the fastest, bodybuilders would still be doing it in majority.

You can’t look back 60+ years and act like they had tried everything and settled on “TBT” when there was no “TBT” and most of those guys would likely NOT be training that way if they were still in their youth today.

120

[quote]Professor X wrote:
Sagat wrote:
Professor X:

I’m sure they didnt call it TBT, i think people dont bother about labeling their training like this that outside this forum. I just mean that they trained their whole body in the same workout(tbt is a faster way of write that).

Sentoguy:

I understand what you say, and , again, i’m not saying tbt is superior. My point was only this: what was “wrong” before in now the “right” way to train, so if one tried both ways and found one is better for himself(that seems to be the case of forlife) should train that way in despite of being “wrong”. Just that.
I agree that its about copying sucessful people, etc… but more like a starting point, not limiting what you can or cant do/try. Another thing is that seems you are considering as if weight training reached the end of its evolution, the trial and error you mentioned are still in process. Look at martial arts: it is over 3000 years old and see how much it changed only in the last 20 years.

I already knew what you meant, and again, the gyms have been the scientific laboratories of bodybuilders for over a century now. That one place is where decisions were made to try this or that and KEEP what worked while tossing out what didn’t. It is not a coincidence that most bodybuilders QUIT working their entire bodies in one session. Working certain body parts per session was tested again and again. The kinks were worked out over decades. It stuck BECAUSE IT WORKED, not because it is a phase that people are going through.

If working your entire body was the optimal way to get big the fastest, bodybuilders would still be doing it in majority.

You can’t look back 60+ years and act like they had tried everything and settled on “TBT” when there was no “TBT” and most of those guys would likely NOT be training that way if they were still in their youth today.[/quote]

Right.

And yes Sagat, training is still evolving and improving. But to try to use individuals who trained 50+ years ago as example of people who trained a certain way as evidence for that method being superior to the way that people train today (who are much bigger) simply isn’t a good argument.

In other words, TBT is not an evolution in training, it’s more like a de-evolution (from a historical standpoint anyhow). It’s not new, and it’s not used much (if at all) anymore by the biggest people because better methods were discovered.

Does that mean that it won’t build any muscle? No, absolutely not. Might it be a better method of training in other contexts besides building muscle? Yes, it might. It has value, just not as much as split training when it comes purely to building muscle (at least not in the majority of real world cases).