Why I Love High-Frequency Total Body Workouts

But They May Not Be For Everyone

There is no shortage of things for folks in the lifting community to argue about. Two of the biggest areas of contention are training splits and training frequency. As is the case with most topics in most fields, everyone wants to separate into factions and dogmatically defend their preferred form of training, because it makes them feel superior.

I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t matter as much as people think, so it’s really up to you how you want to structure things. Not everyone will have the same preferences, constraints, or capacity, so it’s natural for folks to prefer to train differently.

To reiterate, I’m covering two things in this post: training splits and training frequency. I will explain my choices for both and why when combined they work extremely well for me. This is not prescriptive. Do whatever makes you happy. I’m simply explaining my reasoning for why I’ve chosen to train the way I do as someone who has thought about this way too much.

Training Splits

The topic of training splits, also called workout splits, makes my eyes glaze over for two reasons: I don’t think they’re that important, and people talk about them way too much. For the uninitiated, training splits refer to the way your workouts are structured and how the volume (or overall work) is distributed. Here are some popular ones with links to a Google Doc so you can see what they look like:

• Full Body

  • Works all the major muscle groups every workout

• Upper/Lower

  • Separates training days into upper and lower body workouts

• Push/Pull/Legs

  • Upper is split into pushing and pulling and legs have their own day

• Body Part Split

  • Chest and Triceps, Back and Biceps, etc.

  • These are very popular in the bodybuilding community

• Others

  • There are other types of splits for more advanced lifters, but I won’t get into them here

Before I get into why I think total body workouts are superior for the majority of gym-goers, I will talk about when they might not be as useful.

Why You Might Not Want To Do Total Body Workouts

Combining Cardio and Lifting

The best argument I’ve seen for why not to do total body workouts is if you’re trying to balance a cardiovascular training regimen with lifting. If you’re doing intense cardiovascular training, it might make sense to give those same muscles a break in your lifting session.¹ If, for instance, you have a hard run you might have recovery issues if you do a leg workout on the same day. Pairing lower body cardio with upper body training and vice versa can make it easier to manage both activities.

You Want A Break From Legs In General

Some folks don’t want to train their legs every workout. If you’re the type of person that prefers to have one or two shitty leg days and to not think about them the rest of the week, then I get and respect that.

Total Body Workouts Are Too Fatiguing

Total body workouts can be systemically taxing. After all, you’re involving your entire body each workout. But I prefer the feeling of diffuse total body fatigue over the localized fatigue of blitzing one or two muscle groups over and over again. I always feel like I worked out, but I never feel like any part of my body is going to be useless the next day.

You Like The Pump From Smashing The Same Muscles Multiple Times In The Same Workout

For years, the prevailing bro-science theory was that the greater pump you get from an exercise, the more effective it is for muscle growth. If you’re not familiar, the pump is the swelling you get in the target muscle after a particularly difficult set. For example, after a burnout set of bicep curls, your biceps will feel like they’re going to explode. That’s the pump.

It’s possible that the pump may independently increase the size of a muscle on top of simply getting stronger over time. If that’s true, some folks may benefit from targeting a single muscle multiple times—as in a body part split—in the same workout for maximum pump. But I wouldn’t bet the farm on that.

Why I Prefer Total Body Splits

Every type of split can work. No split seems to be unequivocally better than another, as long as you can do the same amount of volume and aren’t constrained in any way by time, frequency, etc. You can build strength and muscle with any of them as long as you’re training hard and doing more over time (progressive overload).

But practically, I think total body splits have an edge for the following reasons:

• People miss workouts and missing a total body session only means lowering the volume (number of sets and reps) for the week rather than omitting an entire part of your body. If you miss a workout with any other type of split, you may be neglecting half your body (upper/lower), pulling exercises (PPL), or body parts like chest (Body part split). Total body workouts ensure your training stays balanced even if you miss workouts. Many people overlook this because no one assumes they’re going to miss a workout. But we must be realistic with our training schedules and accept that the vicissitudes of life will get in the way.

• They’re easier to recover from (in my experience). This one is more anecdotal and seems antithetical to my point about systemic fatigue, but it is much easier for me to recover workout to workout when I’m not focusing solely on 1-2 muscle groups per day. My legs, back, arms, etc. are never completely trashed after a workout, so I never have to worry about whether I’m ready to go for the next workout.

• Lowering the number of exercises per muscle group per day means you can come to each exercise with greater intensity. By the end of upper/lower or PPL workouts, the muscles you’re targeting will be significantly more fatigued than they are for total body workouts. If I’m doing a chest and tricep workout, I’m getting much less out of tricep exercise number 3 than I would if I did that same exercise as the only tricep exercise in a workout. It may only be the difference of a few reps over the course of a workout, but in aggregate over months and years, that could result in a significant loss of reps and stimulus.

• You’re mixing what you want to do with what you need to do. You might be more inclined to skip an entire day devoted to legs, but if legs are mixed in with more enjoyable upper body exercises, you’re more likely to do them. This is an example of temptation bundling, which I first encountered in James Clear’s Atomic Habits.

Training Frequency

The research is pretty clear that when volume, the amount of overall work you do via weight, reps and sets, is equated, the results will be mostly the same. Which means you can get similar results by cramming everything into 2-3 days versus having to train 5-6 days. This is a great thing, because it gives people options. But there is a caveat here.

At a certain point, piling more volume into the same workout becomes untenable, and eventually, counterproductive. So while the results may be the same when volume is equated, volume is easier to increase with higher training frequencies. But again, this may not matter for you if you don’t need more than what you can do in 2-3 days. And to be honest, most people probably don’t need more than that.

Easier to Get Motivated To Workout

It may not matter much on paper, but getting over the psychological barrier to working out matters…a lot. It will make or break consistency. Let’s say you have two workouts: one is forty-five minutes and only consists of four exercises and the other is at least sixty minutes and has six exercises. Which are you going to be more stoked about?

I struggle to get moving just like anyone else, and it’s easier for me to overcome the mental inertia preceding a shorter workout.

Building A Better Workout Habit

Bite-sized workouts are a godsend when you’re trying to build a workout habit. Building a habit is about putting in the reps, and high-frequency training means more reps. It also has the added benefit of reducing the need to decide when you’re going to workout. In my experience, it’s far easier to put workouts off when you’re only working out a couple times a week. So people will keep punting until they run out of days and end up not getting the workout in.

My Body Feels Better With More Frequent Movement

Humans are meant to move. When we don’t, our bodies don’t work as well. More frequent workouts means less days with little to no movement. For the same reason we want to break up long periods of sitting across a day, I think it’s a good idea to break up periods of sedentary behavior across a week.

We are what we repeatedly do.

Summary

There are probably more benefits that I’m forgetting about, but I think I’ve made my case well enough for anyone on the fence. To recap briefly, combining high-frequency and total body training solves almost every major pain point:

• Less volume on any given day and training a movement only once means recovery is less of an issue

• You can bring greater intensity to movements due to less local fatigue in a given session

• Missing workouts is less costly

• More frequent workouts better cement a workout habit

• Greater movement frequency improves physical wellbeing

I’ve been doing high-frequency total body workouts for five or so years, and I can honestly say I won’t work out any other way now.

You may think, “This won’t work for me because I’m too busy” and that’s fair. But for someone that trains people to lift for a living, I hate spending any more time than necessary in the gym. This was my way of addressing that. If I do make any changes to my regimen, it would likely be to cut workout time down but keep the frequency. So maybe 4-6 days of 30 min workouts or so.

It’s not for everyone. Some people prefer not to workout most days a week and that’s completely fine. As long as you’re doing the same stuff, you can break it up in whatever way fits your schedule and preferences.

Thanks for reading. If you have any questions, comments, or want to call me mean names, please do so in the comments.

1. Note that I said intense here. If you’re not actively trying to improve both cardiovascular capacity and a lifting outcome at the same time, you may not need this level of program micromanagement.