GRIP

Look up a workout now and it's very likely to be focused on a certain area of the body. I mean who hasn't heard of the infamous 'chest day' or (in some cases much rarer) 'leg day'. So what's the idea behind these split routines? They've been designed to completely exhaust single muscle groups through sheer volume of exercises performed in one workout, using primarily only those muscles. This in turn causes muscle damage, which is then repaired during rest as well as promoting extra growth on top to adapt to this training load. So does this mean split training is the only way to build muscle? What are the other options? While there are many different split variations (usually based on how many days a week you can workout) to choose from, the other main contender in workout design is the full body. As the name suggests, this means every muscle group is worked during a single session. Unless you're going to spend 6 hours in the gym. this obviously mean...

T-Nation devised this challenge: 500 total reps of swings per workout;  10 reps 1 rep of strength movement 15 reps 2 reps of strength movement 25 reps  3 reps of strength movement 50 reps Rest 3 minutes Repeat 4 times to get a total of 500 swings Between sets of swings add a low volume strength movement (e.g. barbell overhead press, dip, goblet squat, chin ups, pistol squat, front squat, handstand push up, wide grip pull up, muscle up) For the 1-2-3 rep lift use 5 rep max weight For things like dips do 2-3-5 rep scheme If you do the workout 5 days a week one of those days only do the swings (no strength in-between) If you do the workout 4 days a week use the strength movements every workout  You may use a different strength movement every workout, rotating between them It was all going so well... Firstly I wanted to do this challenge as i'd never embarked on one before and Josh is always having a go at them, so I thought why not give it a try. My goa...