Full body workouts were once the norm, but at the current time in the bodybuilding world, the bro-split seems to be a very popular approach to training. The basic idea behind the bro-split is to train separate muscle groups on separate days in order to train each muscle group once per week. My advice to anyone who experiences success with this method is to keep doing it. However, if it does not produce the results you hoped for, you may want to do what some of the most successful old-school bodybuilders did, which was full body workouts. These were usually performed three days per week, with a day of rest between each workout.
Leroy Colbert Full Body Workout
One of my favorite old school bodybuilders is Leroy Colbert. Leroy is often recognized as the first bodybuilder to develop 21 inch arms. He did this without the use of steroids because they hadn’t been developed for wide spread use in the 1950’s when Leroy was a bodybuilder. You would think that Leroy developed his arms with a special arm workout in which he only trained arms. However, Leroy believed in training his whole body, three times per week. You can learn more about Leroy’s training from the following videos.
Leroy Colbert Old School Mass Training Full Body Workout
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Leroy Colbert: Why Full Body Workouts?
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Leroy worked up to a fairly high training volume with his full body workouts. This is especially true of the number of sets that he did for his arms, which included 16 to 20 sets for both his biceps, and triceps. However, in some of his videos, he stressed the point that it took him several years to develop this type of work-capacity.
Most lifters and bodybuilders who employ full body workouts do three to five work-sets for each muscle group. It is very difficult to do high volume workouts consisting of a lot of sets for each muscle group if you are doing full body workouts. At the same time, those who do full body workouts generally work each muscle group three times per week, so the weekly volume tends to average out to somewhere between nine to fifteen sets per muscle group. This means that the training volume may seem low for each muscle group within a single workout, however, the weekly volume adds up to is substantial amount of work.
Full Body High Frequency Workouts
One of the reasons that I decided to write an article around the topic of full body workouts, is that they work good for high frequency training. It’s hard to do split routines in conjunction with high frequency training unless you work out multiple times per day, every day. However, you can train each muscle group five days per week with only five workouts per week if each workout is a full body workout.
High frequency training has always worked better for me than low frequency and medium frequency. In my own case, I found that working out each muscle group three times per week worked better than training each muscle group once or twice per week. I also found that training my whole body five to six days per week worked better than training my whole body three times per week. However, in order to benefit from high volume training, I had to make sure I limited the workout to a fairly low volume of a few warm up sets, followed by two work-sets for each muscle group. I also had to back off on the intensity of the workout in order to recover within 24 hours. My favorite full body high frequency workout is the 6-15 workout. The 6-15 workout is explained in the book, The 6-15 Workout, which is available for free when you click on the book cover on the home page of this website.
If you want to hear from a bodybuilder/powerlifter who has plenty of experience with high frequency full body workouts, consider listening to Jeff Nippard. He has some good information based on scientific studies along with his own experience with high frequency full body workouts in the following videos.
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Jeff Nippard: Full Body Workout Five Times per Week
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Jeff Nippard’s Experience With Full Body Workouts 5 Times per Week
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Do What Works
Even though I prefer full body workouts, I am not dogmatic about my preference in the sense that I believe that everyone should be doing full body workouts. If you are currently experiencing good results by working different muscle groups on different days, then keep doing it. On the other hand, if training different body parts on different days isn’t working very well for you, it may be time to consider full body workouts. The opposite is also true; if you are not experiencing progress from full body workouts, you may benefit from a change to a split routine in which different muscle groups are trained on different days. The bottom line is to keep doing what you are doing if it is working, and to try something different if what you are doing isn’t working. May God bless you with the best of training.
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Additional Video Resources
More on Jeff Nippard’s Full Body Workout 5 days per Week
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Leroy Colbert’s Full body workout
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Full Body Workouts: The Swolefessor
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Full Body Workouts: Vicsnatural Workouts
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