Versus Series #1: Total vs. Partial Body
Are you busy? It happens. Changes in job, relationships, moving to a new town, starting a family and the list of things that keep us busy and out of the gym goes on.
What do you do when you cannot make it in to the gym as often as you'd like?
I was speaking to a client recently who had switched jobs AND take on a second job AND had someone move in with her. That's a lot of change and her schedule certainly seemed hectic!
She could only make it into the gym once or twice per week and she wanted to know if she should work out one body part or their total body when they are in the gym.
In this particular case, I told her to go with total body. However, not all cases will be the same.
It depends on several variables in my opinion; frequency, goals, and ability, with frequency being the main factor.
If you are only able to make it into the gym once or twice per week, you need to be working your entire body each time. This is independent of your goals. Fat loss, muscle gain, strength gain will all benefit from that frequency. Regarding fat loss, we want to be stimulating your metabolism as much as possible and we do this by working the total body. For muscle gain, if we wait too long between workouts you will begin to atrophy so we definitely want to work each muscle group at least once per week. For strength, practicing movements more often will help you perfect the technique and ingrain the movement pattern. As this happens you become more proficient and gain strength.
What happens when you can make it into the gym three or four times per week?
If your goal is fat loss, you could conceivably still do total body at a high frequency but you would likely need to make some adjustments. You should be in a caloric deficit during a fat loss phase therefore your recovery ability will be compromised. You would likely want to make two adjustments if you wanted to maintain total body workouts; 1) reduce total volume, i.e. the amount of sets and reps you perform and 2) choose different exercises for basic movement patterns, i.e. if you do barbell back squats one day then do goblet squats the next time in the gym to work the squat pattern slightly differently.
If you goal is fat loss, you could also easily do a push, pull, leg split or upper, lower split instead of total body.
If your goal is muscle gain, you could still do total body each time as mentioned above for fat loss. You would not need to reduce volume as much due to the higher calorie intake and greater recovery ability. However, the advice about choosing different exercises for basic movement patterns still applies.
You could also do the splits mentioned above.
If your goal is strength, I would either rotate between upper and lower or stick with total body. Typically, if you are seeking to improve strength, you are concerned with squat, deadlift, bench press and overhead press. For total body, you could structure your day to include one upper and one lower each workout, as squats and bench press one day and deadlifts and overhead press next time you are in the gym. For upper lower split, do one movement heavy and one light. For example, for a lower day you may do heavy sets of 3 reps for squats and then do lists sets of 2 on dealing with a weight you could typically lift 12 or more repetitions.
I mentioned ability as a third factor above. This will only apply to fairly advanced trainees. Once your strength is at a high level, you will find not only your muscles very taxed from a workout, but also central nervous system. The higher level of stress and fatigue you are creating as you become more advanced requires more attention to recovery. This is just a fancy way of saying that a man who squats 400 pounds will need more time to recover then someone who can only squat 50 pounds. Obvious right?
Therefore someone with high ability will naturally need to gravitate towards only working partial body each workout. The exception would be for fat loss. An advanced trainee who is training for fat loss may choose to do total body each session as long as they programed their sessions accordingly.
If you are relatively new to training, or even intermediate, total body several times per week will still work well for you.
To sum it up:
Work total body: if you can only make it into the gym once or twice regardless of your goals
Work partial body: if you are fairly advanced training for strength or muscle gain
If you fall outside of those scenarios, feel free to work total or partial body, taking into consideration some of the concerns mentioned in this post.
P.S. Also, I should mention, all of this is in reference to gym workouts. Ideally, even if you could only make it to the gym once or twice you would still be finding time to do a home workout. Home workouts are often conducive to a busy schedule since they cut down on travel time and waiting for equipment. A small investment in some home gym equipment can really help you maintain a higher frequency of working out.
But even if you do not invest in home equipment, two of the best exercises in existence do not require any equipment; squats and pushups. Women, even if you cannot yet do a full pushup, you can modify the difficulty by going up against a stair case. The closer you are to an upright position the easier the pushup will be. As you get stronger, gradually decrease the step height.
