Body Part Splits... (Video)

I did over 300 squats within 20min 2 days ago... and then a set of Tabata jumping squats with a 45# barbell yesterday. The "fitness" community outside of Crossfit would say,

"But, JO, you're not supposed to do legs two days in a row. No wonder you're scrawny as f*ck!"

In Crossfit, as in the athletic community, we don't do body part splits. We train the body as a whole, because that's how it is meant to work. The bicep is not designed to do a bicep curl, because it is never designed to work in isolation. Neither are the hamstrings, quads, triceps, or any other muscle in the body for that matter.

The body is designed to push, pull, run, jump, throw, swim, climb, swing, punch, kick, you name it. None of these movements will ever require any muscle isolation.

Additionally, isolation movements move a small weight a short distance, as opposed to compound movements that move a large weight a long distance. You do more work doing compound movements, they are safer, and more effective.

So why did this method of training "spawn" in the first place?

The theory is that isolation movements were invented by the globogym/bodybuilding community. Yes, I said invented, because they are not natural movements: somebody invented the bicep curl and lateral raise, nobody invented the squat (that's just how you sit down). Isolation movements worked for them, because the reality is, back in the day it was much more common and accepted to be on some kind of anabolic agent. People still do isolation movements today, but not as often while "on something," and thus the movements become far less effective. People who do isolation movements are still "huge" a lot of the time, but this is because they do big lifts as well (bench, squat, dead, etc... everybody, even the biggest globogym junkie, knows that these are the moves that get them big.)

Anyways, the point of this post was not to knock isolation movements, but to talk about body part splits, which are equally as ludicrous.

So here's a video by CFHQ trainer Pat Sherwood discussing them.

"But, JO, we KNOW about 'growth cycles' stimulated after exercise, and that we need to rest a couple days after working out a certain muscle group in order to get huge."

I guess somebody forgot to tell Olympic weightlifters that. Check out the legs on Pyrros Dimas as another example, and visit Mike's Gym, a USA regional weightlifting center, for an idea of what Olympic weightlifting programs look like.

Lots of legs, right?

Edit:::

Just to be clear, doing 1RM backsquats everyday of the week is not an effective way to train. Our bodies need variety, and muscles do need rest, in order to grow and become stronger. However, don't be afraid to use the same muscles a couple days in a row if that's what the workout requires.