Originally Posted by Reform

Strength and BP splits, ? For Rip

For Rip:

1) My understanding of intermediate programming, from your book Practical Programming, is that a trainee must organize multiple workouts within a week to disrupt homeostasis and spur progress. The Texas Method example uses Volume, Active Recovery, and Intensity days to achieve this end. This makes sense, and I enjoyed great progress on the TM, but my question is: What then of people gaining strength on Body Part Splits?

Inherently, they are (or should be) on the intermediate or higher level in their training stages, yet they are able to gain strength with only a 1x per week frequency. What enables them to do this? Or, does the supercompensation and hypertrophy they develop enable the gains? Would the strength gains necessarily be slower?

Thanks alot!

Originally Posted by Mark Rippetoe

Novices can gain strength on bodypart splits, just like they can gain strength on an actual full-body strength training protocol. The actual question should be: why would a person who is sufficiently unadapted that they are capable of making linear progress like a novice want to use a programming model that limits their ability to make rapid progress? And the answer to that question is that they wouldn't if they understood that bodypart splits waste training time for novices. If you can squat 3 x week, you can make faster progress than on a split that only has your squat 2 x week. And bodypart thinking is not performance thinking, so I may be a little rusty on it.

Rip

Originally Posted by Reform

I think maybe I wasn't clear on the original post.

From conversations with advocates of Body Part splits, they will tell you that a novice should not be on one. They will tell you BP splits should be reserved for "more advanced" trainees. The point of confusion for me is this:

From a programming perspective, I can't figure out an advanced lifter could gain strength on a BP split, since its frequency is dropped to 1x per week. Is there a more complex programming element involved here?

Originally Posted by Kyle / Fortified Iron

I'm not Ripp, but I'll give this a shot for him.

You should define 'advanced lifter'.

There is need for specialization in intermediate-advanced type training. From a bodybuilding stand-point, that is where a body part split might come into play. However a trainee does not have to limit their training to strictly body part splits, a typeical full body or upper/lower training approach would be suitable aswell. Those that advocate a body part split for a more trained bodybuilder are probably still training at a frequency of 2x's per week, per muscle.

Kyle