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New Meta-Analysis: No significant difference on strength or hypertrophy between full body training or body part splits when volume is equated New Meta-Analysis: No significant difference on strength or hypertrophy between full body training or body part splits when volume is equated

Efficacy of Split Versus Full-Body Resistance Training on Strength and Muscle Growth: A Systematic Review With Meta-Analysis - PubMed (nih.gov)

Brief background: Strength athletes (like weightlifters in the Olympics) frequently train their entire body in one training session. Bodybuilders tend to split their training into "body part days" (chest day, leg day, etc).

Strength athletes tend to have fewer resistance training sessions per week (3 or so) while bodybuilders might do 4-6 resistance sessions per week. For hypertrophy, current evidence is that ideal volume is 12-20 sets per body part per week.

Finding here is as long as volume is equated, there is no significant difference on either strength or muscle increase whether full-body or body part splits are used. So do whatever you prefer.

The authors note that it might be easier as a practical matter to get higher volume with body part splits. But the current evidence does not show any strength or hypertrophy benefit to one over the other.


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Struggling to reach Zone 4/Zone 5 Struggling to reach Zone 4/Zone 5

42M, been weightlifting 4x week for the past 20 years. In the past couple of months I started incorporating aerobic training 2x using an indoor bike (this is in addition to the 4 sessions of weights): a 30-min session at Zone 2 hear rate (130-140bpm) and a 4x4 session.

I am struggling with reaching my estimated Zone 4 (154-165bpm) and Zone 5 (166+ bpm) during the 4x4 session. I set the the bike resistance to a level that I can sustain for the 4-min stretch with difficulty getting progressively harder. The last minute is gruesome but I can reach only Zone 3 (142-153bpm). While my legs get extremely tired and have a high lactate build-up, I feel that my lungs/heart have more to give.

Does anyone have suggestions on how I can reach a higher heart rate?