People would be much better off for several reasons if they did more total body training. Okay? I don't care what their goals are. I am Joe Linhardt, former Army Ranger, college linebacker. I've been a strength and performance coach for over 15 years. Let's get into it. Every sport in the world is a total body sport. That being said, it just makes sense that if we as human beings have to do total body activities that maybe we should consider more often than not training as such. And we have to get over that feeling of not feeling like we completely trashed a muscle because you don't need to trash a muscle to get it to grow bigger and stronger. This whole body split training is a fairly new invention. Four sets of something isn't four times better than one set. Good quality sets and reps are much more beneficial than just doing more and more. Total body splits fit into our lives so much better. You can do so many different types of workouts and blend so many more types of exercises and training modalities together with that. I think we still believe that we cannot get as big or as strong if we do total body workouts. That is a false belief. It's how we naturally move as human beings. Okay. Today I'm going to make a case for why you should consider doing total body workouts regardless of what your goal is. Whether that be to lean out, to get bigger, to get stronger, just to be more athletic, total body workouts, in my educated opinion, are probably the best way to go. So, there's a lot of reasons for that. And when people, first of all, let me back up. I think people tend to focus a little too much on their splits. That's what it's called, like, you know, what's your split? It's a very common question I get asked, and it doesn't matter all that much. There's a lot of splits that will work. Okay? And I always tell people the split you should use is the one that you like to do the best. Okay? I would hesitate um to recommend or warn people about doing like pure bro splits like chest and tries back and buys or having a chest day and then having a shoulder day and having a tricep day. While it's it's definitely better than nothing, for sure, and it's okay for muscle size, there are way better ways to go about it. So, the three splits that I wouldn't caution people against doing that I think are just fine. Okay? A pushpull leg split, which is just fine if you want to do that. An upper lower split, so upper body, lower body. Um I and I do upper lower a lot, too. And then the last and best option is total body. And and why is that? I think total body splits have gotten associated with, you know, people over time that just want to like get in a quick workout, like circuit training and and stuff like that that don't really care about size and strength and aren't really fitness professionals. But if you look at most really good highlevel programs, a lot of times during the year, those strength coaches and trainers are having their athletes do total body training for several reasons. So, one is frequency. So, a lot of recent research has shown just how important frequency is in your training. Now, what is frequency? I'm sure a lot of you already know this, but you know, there's there's three main things that you have to consider when you when you're talking about training. Intensity. Now, I've gone over this before. Intensity isn't how hard something is. Okay? Intensity is at any one moment, how close are you to going at your maximum effort? Whether that be running, jumping, or lifting. Okay, so doing a set of 20 on back squats is extraordinarily hard. And people will be like, "Man, that's intense." But doing, you know, a set of three where you leave a couple in the tank is pretty easy. That's actually more intense, scientifically speaking, because at any one rep, you're closer to your one rep maximum effort um than on that set of 20. And at the center of 20 when you start to struggle, it's simply because you're reaching, you know, muscular failure at that point. So, I guess you could say that the last couple reps of a 20, you know, rep squat are intense, but it doesn't really meet the definition as far as creating the desired adaptations are concerned. So, intensity is is one factor. And then the other factor is volume. It's just how much total work you do over a given period of time. And that can be volume takes the the shape of total amount of work, you know, and so and that takes the place of how much weight you've lifted, how many reps you've done it, how much time your muscles have been under tension, all of that stuff. Okay? So volume and then frequency is just the amount of times during that time frame that you um tax a muscle or a system. Okay? So those are the three main categories. And a lot of times when I say frequency and volume, it doesn't click with people right away. So, backing up a little bit, like studies recently have have definitely shown the value to increased frequency, doing things more often given the same amount of volume. So, just cuz you do things more often doesn't mean the volume has to go up. So, if you do, let's say, 20 sets of legs over the week and you have a couple options, right? You can do all 20 sets in one day. You can split it up and do 10 sets on one day, 10 another, which is good, too. Or you can do, you know, you know, five sets one day, five sets another, 10 sets on the third, or something like that. So, the final option has the most frequency even though all of the volume is the same, if that makes sense. So, especially for things like strength, studies consistently show that given that all the other things stay the same, intensity and volume, more frequency is definitely better than more volume. Okay? Um, on one given day for muscle size, which is, you know, what a lot of people care about, it doesn't matter quite as much. And so people, that's why bro splits do sort of work for bodybuilders and stuff. Another reason is most of those dudes are on steroids and that's something we'll go into in a minute. For natural lifters, and this is the way bodybuilders actually used to train in the back in the day is they would do total body workouts three times a week and they would hit every major body part, you know, um and most good college programs do it too. Now, now why is that? For one, more of the volume on any given day when you do that, you're fresher. So, you know, if I rest a couple days and I do five sets of squats, I'll be fairly fresh for all five sets. But if I do 10 sets of squats or a squat pattern on one day, the last five sets of that, I'm already fatigued. And the benefits that I can get from those, my strength will go down, my power, my focus. I won't get as much out of those five sets. But if I divide those up, I can get more out of every set that I do. Okay? That's a big reason. And that's a big reason why it's so beneficial for strength gains, especially this whole body split training is a fairly new invention. And it really came about in in like the late60s when the bodybuilders started to do body split training. And it also, you know, non-coincidentally correlated with steroid use. So, you know, when somebody's on anabolics, they can handle more volume on a given day and then they stay anabolic for longer. So, they it's a fundamentally different way that they need to train than a natural athlete. So, we can't or I'm not natural. I'm sorry. I take testosterone, but I don't do bodybuilder levels of testosterone, but it still helps, right? But even people like me that take testosterone, we benefit more by more frequency. And so that's not just for natural athletes, but natural athletes definitely would benefit more by training more frequently because they can't stay anabolic as long. So it it means that like, you know, after you tax a muscle for 24 to 48 hours to 72 hours, you're still gaining strength and recovering from that. But then after that you go through a phase where you're kind of in the middle and then you start to drain just a little bit. You know, not a lot but a little bit. So whereas bodybuilders that are on steroids or people on steroids, they stay anabolic for much longer. They also tend, you know, somebody on anabolics, they can store more glycogen in their muscles and more water. Um and that throughout that training session they can handle more volume where as you know a natural lifter the benefits we get the diminishing returns start to kick in really quickly you know so a lot of studies have shown that you know you get about 80% of your benefit from the first two working sets. So more volume is better but it's there's a diminishing return. Okay. So, and and this is not just frequency too, like the total amount amount of volume you do both for strength training and hypertrophy quickly diminishes as you add more volume. So, four sets of something isn't four times better than one set. It might be 20% better. Okay? So, I always look at it like, you know, two sets is definitely better than one. Three sets is definitely better than two. All right? four sets, you get a little bit more benefit, but then you really have to start weighing, you know, the benefit drawback. Like the little bit more benefit versus all of the extra fatigue you're going to accumulate from that four set. That's why three sets of 10 is so common and pervasive. Like people roll their eyes at it, but it's actually pretty decent because 10 is a nice middle ground number between size and strength. You know, I would probably prefer seven. I think is probably like the optimal number if there is one, but 10's pretty darn good. And most people care more about muscle size and strength anyway, like the general population. And 10 is a really good amount of reps, especially like, you know, if you go with a a common movement speed, like a couple seconds down, a brief pause, and one or two seconds up. If you do 10 reps of that, your muscles under tension for about 30 seconds, which a lot of studies show that's about the optimal amount of time to keep your muscles under tension to see um hypertrophy. And then three sets is kind of that sweet spot where, you know, you get a good little bump from three sets versus two working sets, but the but the four set, you know, you don't really get as much and and it really starts to cause more fatigue than you get benefit there. So that whole three sets of 10, I know we roll our eyes at us. It's not bad advice. And and you can't go wrong doing three sets of 10 if you're just trying to get generally fit. Um you know, when I work out or when I train, I normally do two or three sets, you know. Um usually the first working set, you know, you know, stuff's still not quite moving just right, you know. By the second one, I got it down, I get, you know, pretty good. And the third one is that one I really start to feel tired and I know I should probably stop you know if I want to continue to have a quality workout. So it does kind of support the highintensity training that you know Arthur Jones and Mike Mener did that you know they had some good points there. Um I think they missed the mark on a lot of things but really good quality sets and reps are much more beneficial than just doing more and more. I think we all should inherently know that right? But I'm not a big fan of going like to complete failure very often, especially not with my compound movements, which is what high-intensity training requires. And you get a lot of benefits even if you stop one or two reps shy of failure. So, I'm kind of getting off track here a little bit, but that just goes to show you that, you know, less volume, better sets is important. And and under that umbrella of thought, more frequent workouts is better um in order to keep the volume total volume about the same. So, another big reason that you should do total consider doing total body workouts is it allows for maximal flexibility in your training. So, if we do body split training, especially if we're only doing the hitting the body part once a week, and things in our life come up that mess with our schedule and we have to miss a day or something like that or we get sick or injured or tweak something or whatever it is where our training gets interrupted, it is much harder to make up for that if we're doing body split, body part specific training. Okay, total body training is much more flexible in a lot of ways, but especially like with a busy schedule. So, if you know I worked out on Monday, did a total body training session on Monday and I'm supposed to do it again on Thursday, but some or Wednesday, but something comes up on Wednesday and I have to bump it to Thursday, it's really not that big a deal because I'm going to be hitting it again. I just hit it a couple days and resting two days versus three, it might actually be a little bit better. And, you know, so it just it's total body splits fit into our lives. so much better. The next thing I mean by flexible is you can do so many different types of workouts and blend so many more types of exercises and training modalities together with that. There are so many great exercises out there like snatches and cleans and you know burpees. People burpees. That's a bad example. I like burpees just fine. But so many things that you can't really put those in a category like as far as the body part it's working right. Like even deadlifts, like do you put deadlifts on your leg day or your back day or your trap day, you know what I mean? So if you do a total body split and a lot of landmine stuff too, like it's hard to say what what body everybody wants to know what muscle is this working. Well, a lot of times it's kind of working a lot of muscles. All right, so a lot of great exercises we just don't do or people don't do because they just don't know what body part to pair that with. You know, if you see like, you know, a snatch from the ground, you're like, what do I put this in? Do I put this on my leg day or my shoulder day or my back day, you know? Um whereas with total body, it's just a power exercise that you can put on any day of the week. It's fine. So, it just makes it way easier to structure your workouts. You can get way more creative with it. And you can start combining upper and lower supersets and things like that that we'll go into. And you can start doing like more French contrast training and and things like that. And so that's another way that total body training is more flexible. Okay. Another big reason is muscle soreness and fatigue. Okay. So, you know, I like doing upper and lower days quite often because I love to work my legs, but my legs are trashed for a couple days after that and it definitely affects the quality of my workouts on those days, you know, in between, especially if I want to do some sprinting or jumping. And I have to get real creative with how I structure my workouts and try to get most of my really intense sprints and jumps in before that leg day just because I know I'm going to be trashed afterwards. And then it affects the type of cardio I do afterwards. Sometimes, you know, I, you know, would maybe want to do like the stair climber or a spin bike and my legs are just smoked and I have to do go do the rower or something where and which still works my legs, you know, um because my legs would be a limiting factor there because I have so much fatigue in my legs. with total body training, even though you're doing the body parts more frequently, you're never doing so much in a given day where you just feel completely broken down the next few days. You know, Lee Haney likes to say, and I agree with it, you know, stimulate, don't annihilate. Um, you shouldn't always walk out of the gym, even though it's fun to do sometimes, and I do do it too, feeling like you're just totally trashed. And, you know, I think a lot of us, we like to be really sore the next couple days and not be able to do much. And that's good to do every once in a while. But, you know, on a regular basis when you have a family and you want to keep up with your kids and be able to run around and go catch a football, you know, you're going to say no to your kid because your hamstrings and quads are so sore you can barely walk down the stairs, you know? Or if your wife needs help putting something up in the garage, you're going to say, "Sorry, honey. You know, I worked out legs really hard the other day. I can't do that." Like, what's the point of working out then? Just you can just so you can look good. So total body training, it allows you to stimulate the muscle in a way that will cause both size and strength gains, but also stay fresh enough the next few days where you can just live your life and you're not limited. If you want to be on a wreck team or play a sport or anything like that, you're like, "Sorry, you know, sorry guys, I can't be in the soccer match today cuz like my legs are real sore from that leg workout yesterday." Um, with total body training, since you're only doing like five to six sets of any body part on any given day, you normally don't get that sore or fatigued. Um, you may have like a general sense of systemic fatigue if you push it really hard, but not localized muscular soreness and fatigue, if that makes sense. And that is a big reason why highle strength coaches and trainers train total body is because the athlete is not just a bodybuilder, right? They have to go out and perform in their sport and perform at a high level. And the coaches would not be happy with the trainer or the strength coach if none of the kids can run during practice and their hamstrings are cramping up because you had them do 30 sets of leg curls the day before. So that is another big reason. And they know that neither muscle size nor muscle strength is affected by doing total body training, which I will say again because I think we still believe that we cannot get as big or as strong if we do total body workouts. And that is just a you know that is a false belief. Okay. So, what is another reason why I like total body training? It's how we naturally move as human beings. Okay. Very rarely in our day-to-day life do we do something that is just like a bicep exercise or just a chest exercise. And that we, you know, on any given day, we only work our upper body or we only work our lower body. Normally, as human beings, we work our whole body on every given day. every time we're active and have to do something. Every sport in the world is a total body sport, more or less. I'm sure you could probably think of some random ass example, but you know, the example, the exception proves a rule kind of thing. So, that being said, it just makes sense that if we as human beings have to do total body activities that maybe we should consider more often than not training as such. Okay. A lot of people think if they do total body, it'll take a long time because they're still in this notion that they have to do a lot of volume during the as much volume as they did on their chest day. They just have to do that volume for chest and that volume for back. And no, you don't. So, if you normally do 15 to 20 sets of chest on your chest day, you will literally only do three to seven working sets of chest. And you're not going to feel like you got a great workout in on that day for your chest. And we have to get over that feeling of not feeling like we completely trashed a muscle because you don't need to trash a muscle to get it to grow bigger and stronger. Okay? And the good news is, yeah, you might feel like you had some lift in the tank, which is not a bad thing, but you're going to get to hit it again in just a couple days. Don't worry. And usually by the time Friday rolls around or whatever your last training day of the week is before you take a couple days off, your chest or your quads or glutes or whatever it is are going to be pretty fatigued and you're going to be like, "Man, I can definitely tell I worked this this week. I need a couple days off now." But people just aren't willing to do that cuz they they want the feeling more than knowing that they're they're going to see progress. And I'm guilty of this, too. I love trashing my muscles every now and then. I I came up as a bodybuilder. That's why a lot of times I still do upper lower splits, even though I know it's probably better for me to do total body. And I have almost all of my athletes do total body except for very small times of the year where I'm just focused on hypertrophy and they don't have to do anything else and then they just like doing it that way. Okay? Or if they come in and like, you know, their shoulders hurt or their legs are trashed. I'm like, well, we're obviously not going to do any leg work today. We're going to do all upper body, you know. So, you know, there are exceptions to the total body thing. I'm not claiming that there aren't, but generally speaking, people would be much better off for several reasons if they did more total body training, okay? I don't care what their goals are. Yeah. So, you know, it keeps you fresher throughout the week. You're much more flexible in your training for several reasons. It mimics how we live much closer cuz you know, how we live and move, it involves kinetic chains, which people just think they mind blank when I say that or movement patterns. It literally is. It means exactly what it says. It's like the pattern or the sequence that you move. Okay? Kinetic just means movement, right? So, when you train total body, when you do total body workouts or training, you get to employ those movement chains and those kinetic chains and movement patterns more frequently that will mimic somewhat what you're going to do in life, right? And there's a lot of very common universal movement patterns and kinetic chains that cross a lot of different activities and sports. And we can train that in the gym far easier if we choose to do total body fitness. Now, you know, related to total body fitness is the concepts of compound sets or super sets. They're a little different. Um, and circuit training. So when people think about circuit training, they think, you know, usually women or skinny guys, you know, no offense to women, it's just how guys think. Doing high reps of light with light weight going from one station to another so they can get toned in good shape. That's what circuit training is normally used for. But circuit training can be used to great effect to enhance athleticism. Um, and it doesn't have to take that form, right? There's nothing that says you can't circuit train in a way where you can still do heavy reps with low weight. And circuit training doesn't mean that you can't take breaks in between your sets of exercises. So you know a way I like to train train frequently is I will do oppositional or you know upper lower body part exercises very heavy in a circuit fashion taking breaks in between. I used to love doing something, you know, where I would do bench press, pull-ups, and back squats in a circuit and I would do five reps of heavy bench press, take a minute breather, do, you know, five to seven reps of weighted pull-ups, take a minute breather, and then you could do five to seven reps of squats. Now, my heart rate would get higher during that. Not crazy high. I would make sure it wouldn't get crazy high. But since the body part was getting plenty of rest, even though my heart rate was a little higher, I was still able to move really good weight and get a conditioning effect while I got bigger and stronger. And then even though I was only taking a minute between sets, I was taking a full 3 to four minutes before I would do a set again of bench press. So my muscle group would have the full four minutes to rest. And I wasn't just sitting there wasting time until I was ready to do another set of bench press. So the, you know, final reason total body fitness is probably so valuable is just time efficiency. Actually, you're able to do a lot of training in a short amount of time and you don't have to spend hours in the gym if you want to train heavy. Because if you want to train heavy and get stronger, you have to rest in between your sets. at least 2 minutes, you know, minute and a half at the very minimum, probably three to four minutes for the best strength effects, right? And so, what are you going to do in between those sets? You could rehab some some muscles that needed it. You know, another great option is to go over if, and you can do this if you're doing total body workouts and work do an exercise that works a different body part. Now, if you want to maximize your strength, you know, and maybe don't do that, you know, if you're a competitive powerlter that's a month out, but a lot of powerlters when they're not like real close to that competition, they will do that. They'll do a set of bench press and then go over and do a set of squats and go back and forth, you know, but they get really close and they really want to like, you know, are in that peaking phase. Yeah. But like, let's be honest with ourselves now. Most of us aren't competitive bodybuilders or powerlifters and you know you can get a fantastic strength stimulus by doing circuits in that fashion. And you know the you know cost benefit there of you know taking doing a 2hour workout just to do chest because you want to get that last 5% of benefit from not doing anything in between your chest workouts. It it just isn't there for most people. um they're just unwilling to give it up because total body workouts are kind of hard and they're breathing hard, you know, and they justify not doing it under, oh, I lose lose out on strength gains or it's not optimal. It's like, well, you're 50 lbs overweight, your conditioning sucks, you know, you don't do legs very often because you run out of time, you have a lot of muscular imbalances, but yeah. Yeah, you're right. Your chest is really, really strong. Good job, man. But it would be 95% as strong and you'd actually be lean, healthier, happier if you would probably superset or or do circuit training with your weight training. Okay? But people are very dogmatic in their thinking and they just refuse to change, you know, and I've seen so many people that they do their body split training and life gets busy and instead of being willing to change up to full body training for a while, they just will skip every body part they don't like. like they'll go months without doing legs because they don't have time and and maybe you know it would be hard to fit in legs in their current body split. You know, maybe they can't work out six days a week. So instead of doing two to three total body workouts a week and maintaining almost all of their size and balance and health, they just don't do certain body parts for months on end because they refuse to change how they train. So yeah, I'm not advocating for always doing total body workouts. Like I said, a lot of the blocks in my fitness program have an upper lower split. Some of them even have a phase where it's push pull legs because it's enjoyable for some people. And when you do that, you do get to focus a little bit more on like the auxiliary lifts. You know, if you just have like a push day, you get to do like, you know, more dumbbell laterals and you get to do more dumbbell flies or cable flies and and more tricep work. And there is a time and place for that. But that being said, people think if you do total body workouts that you can't do any auxiliary training. The best way that I like to structure my total body workouts, which is what I've been doing for quite a while now, is more total body stuff, is I will every day will be total body. So I'm going to hit every body part at least a little bit, every major movement pattern, which is a better way to look at it, at least a little bit. But then every and I work I do normally about three total body workouts every eight days because that's my split. I have an eight day microcycle. But every one of those will have a different focus. So you know day one is going to be total body with a push focus. So I'll do a couple extra sets of chest on that day or overhead pressing. And then I'll also do like a couple more auxiliaries on that day like maybe some cable flies or something. So, you know, I do my whole total body and at the end I do I get like 15 to 20 minutes of a body builder effect there where I get a nice little pump in my chest before I leave the gym or pump in the front of my shoulders or my triceps before I leave the gym. And then the next day will be total body or the next day the next time I train that way, you know, cuz in between I'll do either some speed training because I can do it the next day because I'm not really that sore, right? And I didn't do extra legs on that day to affect like my sprinting that much like my hamstring safety and everything like that. So, you know, on Wednesday, total body again, and I'll do total body with a shoulder and back focus. So, I'll do like an extra set of or I'll do some dumbbell laterals on that day or cable laterals or um like kettle bell high pulls or something and then I'll do an extra set of like seated rows or straight arm pull downs so I can leave that gym that day, you know, getting a total body effect but also getting a little pump in my back and shoulders, right? And then on Friday or whatever day I want to do it, Friday, Saturday, the my third lift of the week once again, total body, right? But on that day, it's total bodies with total body with leg focus. So for me, I can still do total body and I can kind of get a little because I love bodybuilding and get a little bit of that bodybuilder feel as well. And the cool thing about total body is because power exercises, there are no power exercises, but there are some exercises that lend themselves to power a little bit better than others, right? like high pulls and cleans and snatches, right? Jump squats, right? Like you can turn any exercise into a power exercise just by doing it different, right? So, let me caveat with that. But like power exercises like those total body kinetic chain, especially posterior chain exercises are so valuable to us and so many of us don't do them because we can't fit them into our back day or our leg day, right? So, we just never do a clean or we never do a hang high pull or we never do, you know, everhead medicine ball throws or jump squats or anything like that, right? So, by doing total body every single workout, I am able to start the workout after my prep and my flows that I love to do with one total body power exercise. So, I'm always doing like a single arm dumbbell snatch, um, some box jumps, um, hang high pulls. I love hang high pulls. I'm always doing some kind of power exercise. I like to do a lot of land mine power rotations or land mine cleans. That way, three times a week, I get to do a power exercise. Now, you're like, "Man, that sounds exhausting." You got to remember like I'm doing a couple warm-up sets and then one to two working sets of that power exercise. So, it never exhausts me. And a couple days later, I can do it again and I'm totally fresh, you know? And then normally after that, I like to hit, you know, depending on the day, my main lower body movement. And once again, couple warm-up sets or prep sets and then a couple heavy sets, maybe three if I'm feeling really fresh. And with those, I always super set it. So, I either compound set it with, you know, a broad jump or another lower body power move like a contrast thing, or I'll superset that with like a row or a heavy push, something like that. Right? So, I always superset that next move. And then I'll move on and I'll do one more superset of whatever I hadn't hit. So if it was like a squat and you know a push, heavy push, I'll do a lunge movement and a pull movement next. Superseted, something like that. And then I'll finish out focusing on whatever my focus is that day. So let's say it was a chest focused day. After I do all that, I'll go over and I'll do some, you know, higher rep sets of like dumbbell flies or machine bench or something like that. And then I'll go do a couple sets of laterals and then I'll finish out with like a or not lateral raises, but I'll do a couple sets of like overhead press and then I'll finish out with like some tricep push downs. And since that's more hypertrophy based, I don't have to spend as long with that because my rest periods don't have to be as high. So I can go over, knock out 12 reps of whatever I'm doing, rest 30 seconds to a minute, do another set, get a nice little pump, and then bam, did my total body with the push focus at the end. Walk out with a nice little pump and I'm not fatigued for the next day. Okay. So, I can do whatever I want. So, I would just encourage you if you're one of these people that has only ever done since you were a kid or whatever body part split training, give total body workouts a chance. All right? You can get just as big. You can actually get stronger doing that. And you're going to feel better throughout the week. You're going to start moving much better um and start feeling more like an athlete. and it'll open you up to being able to fit in and program in athleticbased movement into your training. So, that's my two cents and that's my argument for total body fitness. Hope you guys got something out of it. Have a good day. [Music]