Full Body Workouts For The Advanced

It's true that you need some fatigue for hypertrophy. But for a fatigue, you don't have to train a muscle until it's dead . You should stimulate your muscles, not damage them. You get enough stimulation and fatigue just doing full body workouts too, but not ABSOLUTE fatigue which would leave your muscles in absolute pain for 2 days, making you have to let them rest for a week. Actually you don't even need to do 3-4 exercises to kill a muscle if you believe that's the best way to train. You can do it just with a single set too. Get a weight that you can do 6 reps with, do 6 reps but don't stop. Do 2-3 forced reps, followed by partials & negatives. Rest&pause for 10 seconds and lift it to failure & beyond it once again. Then do drop sets and do the same things with that lighter rep. Finally, drop it once more and do it again (forced reps/negatives/isometrics/rest&pause). It's technically one advanced set containing a few techniques and it would fatigue that muscle pretty much and would leave most people in pain for days. But is it right way to train? No. You drop the weight, which also means you sacrifice intensity&volume. Your endurance will suck, your metabolic rate will slow down and you'll lose motivation if you keep doing this on a regular basis. So fatigue is not the only thing. I believe the total volume at the end of the week is what really matters. And to keep intensity & volume balanced, you need to avoid absolute fatigue.

5 reps for three sets would work for pure strength (that's 15 reps in total). For hypertrophy, aim to do 25-40 reps per exercise. So if you do heavy weight, do 5x5 (25 reps in total), if you do 8 reps, do 8x4, if you do 12 reps, do 12x3. Combination of all will keep you growing. Personally, I even did 3 reps of 10 sets (you'll need supersets for that, or it will take too long). Had I stopped at the 5th set, I'd have got strength gains but my goal was also hypertrophy at that time, so I had to do more reps. So total reps in total matter. If you do 5 reps for three sets or three reps for five sets, it will be good for strength. You need higher volume for hypertrophy, that's why I recommend 25-40 reps per exercise in total. That doesn't mean you should get a light weight that you can do 40 reps in a row. If you want to get bigger, you need to train above 60% of your 1 rep maximum. Preferably between 70-85%. Sometimes you can set an unloading week and work light, like 20-25x2, 15x3, etc., for keeping endurance in check, shock your muscles, increase your tolerance to lactic acid and avoiding overuse of joints. But generally, stay in 70-85% of 1RM and aim to do 25-40 reps in total (the lighter you work, the more reps in total you should execute).

great article, i never even though of full body workouts as a way to train, even though it seems like a more natural way to train seeing that humans had to use their whole body to survive and not just one part per day  
anyways i read a nice article on this topic talking about the benefits of both full body and split training summing up its benefits and importance of both types, kinda helps us who are still trying to create a good workout routine.
http://www.tmuscle.com/free_online_article/sports_body_training_performance/full_body_vs_split_training

From the FAQ:

Split: Dividing your workout between muscle groups (back, legs, arms, upper body, lower body etc.)

Pretty much. I use this formula (for now):

Workout A: Squats, bench press, pull ups, dips, abs

Workout B: Squats, military press, deadlifts, chinups, abs

I alternate the 2 over 3 days each week.

I need to take some new pics...maybe I'll do that tonight before I eat.

Can someone explain what the exercise "woodchop" is.  I am not familiar with that.  Sounds like one I would like to try.
Thanks,
Conwaygolfer