[TrueOutlaw]

I'm considering some type of full body or push-pull plan. I'm in the beginning of my research on this type of training and most all suggest (full body) that you train muscles three times per week either 1 on 1 off or 1 on two off, thus hitting all muscles three times per week. My question is as follows: my quads and tris are slow to recoupe. my quads are often sore for most of the week, leading me to belive that i'm no yet fully rested/ repaired. So why train them again? my current routine goes like this:

quads, hams, & calves
leg ext 4x10-20
leg press 4x10-20
squats 3x6-10
leg curls 4x10

chest
incl db 4x8-12
flat bb 4x6-12
iso-mvmnt 3x10
iso mvmnt 3-10

off

back and sometimes bis
wg chins 3x6-10
db row 4x10
t-bar row 3x10
lat-pull 3x10
seated row 3x10-20

shouders tris
military 4x6-10
lateral rse 3x8-12
frnt rse 3x8-12
rear pec-dec 3x10
shrugs 4x10-15

of course i vary the excercises but that is the gist of it any in-put will be appreciated as to effectiveness of full body personal experiences please no this or that is gay. all helpful info is welcome thanks

[Project Evo]

TrueOutlaw, good on you for looking at new techniques and training methods, very sensible to research first too. IMO it's difficult to judge what is right or wrong until you've tasted the experience for yourself, only then can true individual opinions be sought. Rocky and I experimented with the push/pull method a little while ago, predominately using compound exercises. Hand on my heart I can honestly say I prefer the three day split and after a few weeks of push-pull we reverted back. But that's not to say it won't work for me in the future and it's something I'll always consider doing just to vary my sessions for a while and if my growth becomes stagnant, then I'm sure there'll be a place for it my routine. Rocky will probably have more input on the routine we tried, I'm sure he and other sages on this forum will be able to add some more knowledgeable info on this, but this was just my experience. Good Luck.

[TrueOutlaw]

whats up evo long time bro....thx for the input

[hugegunns]

I do a full body routine it goes like this,

Monday
Back Squats 5 sets X Reps range from 20 - 4
Lunges (Sets and Reps stay the same)
Bench Press
Cleans
Pullovers

Wed.
Front Squats
Deadlifts
Incline Bench Press
Snatch
Dips

Fri.
Bench or Straddle Squats
Iron Crosses
Decline Bench Press
Pull-ups
Chins

I understand your legs being sore, but in this workout you spread things out and it works great. I will give you a challenge, you know how you sweat when you do your current workout right, try this for one day and go balls out, get that paycheck, and you will be able to tell the difference in one day how much better a full body workout is compared to a isolation split workout. I truly love this workout, I mean you work legs 3x and chest 3x all in one week.

[Storm]

hi TrueOutLaw. I'm also doing some research about full-body and push/pull routines. I'm taking next week off and i feel like i want to try something different for a while after that.
By now i'm thinking about legs/off/push/off/pull with some cardio in between (fat to loose here ). I will stick to this thread and read whatever is written to you.

Any tips are welcome.

[Rocky]

Hey T.O. - Good for you man.
Huge gunns routine looks pretty good is a little daunting. With regard to your recovery - this is the problem me and Evo faced hence our reverting back to a more split based routine.

We did:

PUSH:

Squat (alternating with front squat)
Lunge
Incline Bench
Military
Dips
Calf Raises

PULL:

Deadlift (alt with SLDL)
BB Rows
Chins
BB Curl
Crunches

But due to the way in which me and Evo train, we weren't recovering quickly enough - not that this was a fault of the programme - more the manner in which me and Evo prefer to train, which may be what you need to adjust to be able to recover adequately. You'll probably find you have to drop the intensity or reduce the work sets to allow for quicker recovery between sessions.
We then adjusted this routine to a PUSH/PULL/LEGS split and seperated the exercises accordingly, but this was really no better than any other 3 way split hence our changing it again.
Hope this gave you a coupld of ideas anyway! Good luck man.

[tim290280]

IMO it's difficult to judge what is right or wrong until you've tasted the experience for yourself

So unless you have travelled around the world it could still be flat?

my quads are often sore for most of the week

This isn't a matter of training frequency, this is a matter of overdoing an exercise or day. The idea behind more frequency of training days is to be exposing the muscles to more stimulus in different movements. You are not trying to do a quad heavy workout like this;

quads, hams, & calves
leg ext 4x10-20
leg press 4x10-20
squats 3x6-10
leg curls 4x10

Instead you should have two leg days with Squats one day, leg press the next. Leg curls one day, stiff legged deads the next, two different calf exercises, throw in some unilateral moves to each and you have a decent workout that doesn't overload the quads at the expense of the hammys.

[TrueOutlaw]

yesterday was my first day doing a total body workout. it really doesn't feel like enough (which i'm sure is par for the course) it is a workout i got off of bb.com. i'm not sure about it so have a look see and tell me what you think. everything was one warm up set and one working set @ 8-10 reps to failure.

squats
leg ext
legcurl
db pull over
bb shldr press
seated row
bb flat bench
bb curl
tri ext
chins
dips
calf raises

[philosopher]

Try HST bro. One of the best training programs out there imo. Its a 3 day full-body split.
All the info you need is on this site: http://www.hypertrophy-specific.com/hst_index.html

[TrueOutlaw]

thx philo

[hugegunns]

Look bro, no disrespect to you because I know you didn't make that workout you posted. I also know that different workouts work better for some people. Now with that being said I must say that is the worst looking workout every. I would bet money that some pencil-neck geek made that workout, because it had tri-ext, and seated rows WTF. How can one warmup set and one working set of 8 help anyone. You said that it didn't feel like enough, no shit its not enough. There are a few basic princibles when making a full body workout,

1.)Keep it simple,do compound exercises
2.)Do 2 lower body, and 3 upper body exercises per workout
3.)do no more than 5 sets of each exercise.
4.)ALWAYS INCLUDE THE BIG 3 (Squat, Bench, & Deadlift), but not all in one day!

[miniduck]

Try HST, like Philo said. I'm doing it myself now.

[TrueOutlaw]

Originally Posted by hugegunns

How can one warmup set and one working set of 8 help anyone.

its called training to failure....