Is It Better to Do Full-Body Workouts or Break Up Your Sweat Sessions by Muscle Group?
There’s something incredibly satisfying about the idea of focusing a workout on one area of your body and tiring it out until you feel that sweet, sweet burn.
Maybe that’s one reason why split workouts—where you focus on different areas of your body or muscle groups on different days—are so popular, especially in the age of the fitness influencer, says Laura Girard, CPT, a NASM-certified personal trainer and founder of the online fitness studio The Energy Academy.
For one, it’s easier to make clickable content around “leg day,” for instance, than it is around a more balanced full-body workout, Girard says. And, “the fitness industry loves to glamorize suffering,” Girard says, and those split workouts often lead to more muscle soreness than full-body workouts with their more-concentrated efforts.
But there are some major benefits to split workouts, too: There’s more potential for hypertrophy and muscle growth and more time to spend thoroughly challenging each muscle group. But full-body workouts also come with their own slate of lifestyle and physiological perks, like efficiency.
This begs the question: Which workout option is right for you? We dive into everything you need to know about full-body workouts versus split workouts so you can make the best decision for your fitness.
Full-body workouts
Benefits
The best workout for you is the one you’re actually going to do and that fits into your schedule. For many busy people, full-body workouts make more sense for efficiency’s sake.
