peterjames
New member
I'm doing a full body routine 3 times a week for quite some time now and I'm making pretty good progress with that. But lately my stamina becomes more and more of a limiting factor so I was wondering if I should switch to a P/P/L routine which should help in that regard.
I also read that you should go close to failure but don't need to go to complete failure as you would need way longer to regenerate while the benefit isn't that big. That wouldn't be a problem anymore with P/P/L.
A pro for the full body routine might be the more frequent training of each muscle and thus more optimal use of the actual time frame of protein synthesis.
But then there's also volume. The studies say 12-18 sets per muscle group would be optimal as far as I know.
Let's keep it simple with the muscle groups, as I am doing mostly compound lifts which you could break down to pull exercises (biceps and posterior chain), push exercises (chest, triceps and shoulders) and leg exercises. I actually do isolation exercises but quite balanced for different muscles so let's ignore that to prevent this from getting longer than it already is.
In my routine I'm doing 2 pull, 2 push and 2 leg exercises for 3 sets each 3 times a week resulting in 18 sets per muscle group.
If I would do a P/P/L 3 times a week with 6 exercises for 3 sets in each workout, I would have the same volume.
I did upper/lower before, but I had less upper body volume with it and the full body routine was working way better for me. I'm not planning to train more often than 3 times a week, as I feel like that's fitting my lifestyle and goals pretty well.
So considering the points above, does it actually matter which routine I'd follow or should I just choose the one I like better? Is 1 training per muscle group a week insufficient? Is the full body workout too taxing on my stamina? What do you think?
I also read that you should go close to failure but don't need to go to complete failure as you would need way longer to regenerate while the benefit isn't that big. That wouldn't be a problem anymore with P/P/L.
A pro for the full body routine might be the more frequent training of each muscle and thus more optimal use of the actual time frame of protein synthesis.
But then there's also volume. The studies say 12-18 sets per muscle group would be optimal as far as I know.
Let's keep it simple with the muscle groups, as I am doing mostly compound lifts which you could break down to pull exercises (biceps and posterior chain), push exercises (chest, triceps and shoulders) and leg exercises. I actually do isolation exercises but quite balanced for different muscles so let's ignore that to prevent this from getting longer than it already is.
In my routine I'm doing 2 pull, 2 push and 2 leg exercises for 3 sets each 3 times a week resulting in 18 sets per muscle group.
If I would do a P/P/L 3 times a week with 6 exercises for 3 sets in each workout, I would have the same volume.
I did upper/lower before, but I had less upper body volume with it and the full body routine was working way better for me. I'm not planning to train more often than 3 times a week, as I feel like that's fitting my lifestyle and goals pretty well.
So considering the points above, does it actually matter which routine I'd follow or should I just choose the one I like better? Is 1 training per muscle group a week insufficient? Is the full body workout too taxing on my stamina? What do you think?
. I don’t frequent this forum much but it’s such a repeat of optimal, this study, that study, every 48 protein synthesis, full body only etc lol. So glad I learned lifting techniques back in the early early 90’s from the “ real science guys “ the consistent gym veterans of the iron and not some 6 week study that was conducted from the North Pole then that’s rehashed on a forum as “ the way “.