Total-Body Exercise Associated With Greater Strength
The gym debate is timeless. Should you train your whole body in one session, or split your workouts to focus on specific muscle groups throughout the week? It’s an argument that has filled forums and locker rooms for decades. But a study offers new data that may tip the scales.
A paper published in Frontiers in Physiology suggests that for strength gains, a total-body routine may have a distinct advantage. The difference, however, doesn’t appear to come from building bigger muscles. It comes from the nervous system.
Researchers at the University of Tampa took 19 resistance-trained men and divided them into two groups for an eight-week experiment. One group was assigned a total-body (TB) training routine, exercising three days per week. The other followed a split-body (SB) protocol, training four days per week, typically dividing sessions between the upper and lower body. Critically, the total weekly training volume—the number of sets and repetitions—was identical for both groups. This ensured the comparison focused on training frequency, not just total work.
The results were clear. When it came to pure strength, measured by the one-repetition maximum (1RM) on the squat and bench press, the total-body group pulled ahead. The men on the TB routine saw their 1RM squat and bench press numbers increase significantly more than the men on the SB routine. It was a direct win for the total-body approach.
“We believe the primary driver for the enhanced strength gains in the TB group is due to neuromuscular adaptations,” stated Dr. Mike Roberts, a principal investigator on the study.
This is the core of the finding. The nervous system is a huge component of strength. Simply put, strength isn’t just about the size of a muscle; it’s also about how efficiently your brain can recruit that muscle to produce force. By performing the squat and bench press three times per week, the total-body group was practicing the movements more often than the split-body group, who only performed them twice. This higher frequency, according to the study’s authors, likely improved motor learning and the “skill” of lifting heavy weight.
But here’s the twist. While the TB group got stronger, they didn’t get bigger. Using ultrasound to measure the thickness of the quadriceps and pectoral muscles, the researchers found no significant difference in muscle growth, or hypertrophy, between the two groups. Both routines were effective at building muscle tissue. The split-body group, despite training four days a week, didn’t pack on any more muscle than the group training three days a week.
So what does this mean for your workout? It depends on your goals.
If your primary objective is to maximize strength—to lift the heaviest weight possible for a single repetition—then training the major lifts more frequently through a total-body split appears to be a more efficient strategy, based on this data. The nervous system seems to respond well to that repeated stimulus, refining the compute power needed to execute the lift.
If your goal is purely aesthetic, focused on building muscle size, the choice is less clear. This study suggests that as long as the weekly volume is the same, both total-body and split-body routines can deliver similar gains in hypertrophy. The extra day in the gym for the split-body group didn’t translate to more muscle within the eight-week timeframe of this specific investigation.
Of course, the study has its limitations. The sample size was small, consisting only of young, already trained men. The findings might not apply to women, older adults, or beginners whose bodies may respond differently to training stimuli. The eight-week duration also provides a snapshot in time, not a long-term analysis of which program sustains progress over years.
The data doesn’t end the debate, but it does refine it. It suggests the conversation shouldn’t just be about which routine is “better,” but which is better for a specific outcome. For raw strength, frequency seems to be a key variable. For muscle growth, total weekly volume remains the most critical factor to integrate into your planning.
Future research will need to deploy similar protocols across a wider user base and for longer durations to see if these neuromuscular advantages are sustained or if they eventually plateau.
