Full Body Old School Training
Workout of The Week
Death to the bro split. If you can only train 3x/week or less then full body training is the way to go. Full body training is also a great way to train muscle groups multiple times a week without beating yourself into the dirt.
Full body training isn’t new. Athletes have been doing some level of full body training for decades. Old school bodybuilders and strongmen were also known for doing full body training during their careers. Reg Park, John Grimek, Steve Reeves, George Eiferman, Vince Gironda, and even Arnold Schwarzenegger used full body training at some point in their careers.
Why Full Body Training is Effective
You’re forced to prioritize only what’s important: compound lifts, less fluff work, training HEAVY.
Frequency. You’re stimulating the muscles more often per week than you would on a traditional bro split where you just train chest on Monday.
Stimulate, Don’t Annihilate.
Strength & Technique. The soviets often talked about strength as practice. The more frequently you perform a lift, the better you’ll become at it. This will consequently allow you to lift more weight. The increased efficiency will also allow you to recruit more motor units and use more muscle as a result as you get stronger.
Reg Park Best Lifts:
500lb bench press
605 lb x 2 squat
700 lb deadlift
Front Squat 405 lbs
330 lb clean for high reps (apparently he's cleaned 330 x 9)
Reg Park Is known for his full body 5 x 5 training that included squats, benches, rows, and cleans 3 times per week. Very simple but very effective. He believed that in order to get bigger, you need to get stronger.
He was the first bodybuilder to bench press 500 lbs and this is in the pre-steroid era.
This idea fell out of favor once steroid use became more rampant but many lifters back in the day focused a lot on strength and their physique came with it. Most people that bench press 300+ lbs don’t look small. It’s not a coincidence.
Don’t get it twisted, Reg didn’t just do 5 x 5. Reg would also do higher volume full body training to prep for Mr Universe but the 5 x 5 was a cornerstone to his training.
We’ll go into some of the other lifters listed above in these next couple of weeks.
Training Splits
Above you’ll find some sample full body training splits. I’d recommend starting with lower volume at first if you’re not use to full body training and leaving 1-2 days of rest in between sessions.
Press and pull accessories can be direct arm work if you don’t like how small your arms are.
The Workout
Reg Park inspired 5 x 5 training
A/ B Split. Perform Workout A on one Day, Workout B the next day. If you train 3 x per week you would do A, B, A, then next week do B, A, B. Keep rotating back and forth. You can do this program for 4-8 weeks.
I recommend starting with 70-75% of your 1RM for the compound lifts and then just add 5 lbs per week. If you hit a wall and can’t do 5 reps, reset to 70-75% and start over.
Feel free to mess around and plug in weaknesses in the C and D series. Accessory work really should be customized to address weak points.
Stay Strong.