Now I have always been an advocate of using split routines for strength training so that I could keep my workouts short and focus on limited muscle groups.  I also kind of dreaded trying to work my whole body in a single workout, so maybe there was a bit of laziness on my part.  A couple months ago I began to study yoga and started practicing 6 days a week in the evenings when I would normally do my weight training.  Now I wasn’t about to give up weight (strength) training so I consolidated my routines into a single day that would accommodate my yoga practice on the other 6 days a week.  I thought that I was going to lose strength and conditioning as I did need to trim some exercises and sets out of my strength training program to fit everything in to one session and not kill myself.  In reality the loss of strength or conditioning has not occurred, so I am going to hypothesize that there are several reasons including:

1. The yoga is actually helping me retain my strength.  If you have ever performed yoga poses you know that they take a great deal of strength, so not only are you taking the opportunity to stretch but you are also using your muscles to balance and hold poses.
2. It turns out that even though I had to cut out some sets to fit everything into a single strength training session, the fact that I was using supporting muscle groups going from chest to triceps, to biceps and shoulders, to legs and to back.  When I was doing a split routine I would work a muscle group and that was it, with a full body routine that same muscle group gets utilized just minutes later to support the focus on another.  For example after working out my shoulders, I would later do some back work which would again engage my shoulders in a supporting role.
3. It turns out that at my age I might not need to torch my muscles with weights multiple times in the same week.  So my recovery period is longer and this might actually work to my advantage.
4. One last thing, when you know you are only going to lift weights once during the week you make sure it counts, and you are less likely to miss a workout.  When I was doing a split routine I would occasionally slack off and just skip a day and my schedule would begin to slide.

I’m not advocating that you drop you split routine, and for myself I would have stayed the course if it were not for the demands of my yoga practice, but to my surprise the full body routine has its advantages.  Maybe another epiphany here is that you don’t have to give up weight training because you love yoga or Pilates or running or some other form of training.  You can find a way to adjust your schedule and still get the benefits that these multiple disciplines provide.

Namaste