The number one thing you need to get from this article is this. Significant increases in the muscular size of any particular muscle group, can not be achieved without similar increases throughout the entire body. Any and all exercise performed has an indirect effect on all the bodys subsystems and muscular structures.

An exercise which primarily involves the legs, produces to varying degrees, muscle growth in all other muscles throughout the body. The relative size of the muscles involved largely determines how great the indirect effect will be. The larger the muscle group, the greater the overall indirect effect on other body parts. Got it. Good

This indirect effect is the result of intensity of effort. If the intensity is low, indirect muscle growth is minimal. If the intensity is high, indirect muscle growth is absolutely incredible. But remember, these muscle gains are not stimulated through the quantity of exercise performed, but from the overall intensity of effort.

Maximizing intensity of effort requires the same style of training for absolutely everyone. That mean you and me. However, individual performance is relative. For example. while the performance of a 100 pound bench press may involve a high level of intensity for one person, a considerably stronger trainee could perform the same exercise with a much lower intensity. But as we now know beyond a shadow of doubt. High levels of intensity must be reached, before an increase in muscle size will be produced. If you train below that particular level, your muscle gains will be practically non-existent.

Although the level of intensity required to produce maximum muscle gains may actually be below maximum intensity, determining exactly when that point has been reached during your workouts is near impossible. Even if the required intensity for maximum muscle gains could be converted into a percentage, you wouldnt be unable to determine accurately when that exact level is reached during an exercise. Working at one hundred percent, maximum intensity of effort guarantees that this level is always achieved, regardless of whether it is an actual requirement or not. Are you following me?

Look. If maximum muscle gains is your goal, working out with anything less than one hundred percent intensity of effort is not going to cut it. In fact, its almost a complete waste of time. Regardless of the actual intensity of effort required, working the largest of muscle groups will produce incredible muscle growth all over the entire body.

Although we may not be entirely sure why, we do know that without a doubt, it does happen. For the best possible muscular gains, the major muscular structures should be trained intensely. If the exercise is intense, brief and infrequent, maximum gains will be achieved. As no muscle can be truly isolated from the bodys subsystems and all exercises have some degree of overall effect on the body, for the best possible muscle gains, only full body workouts should be performed.

As I has explained to you here. Split-routines are in fact physiologically impossible. A training program which splits the body into muscle groups, doesnt permit sufficient recovery time for the body overall. As a result, split training programs do not produce maximum possible muscle gains. In almost all cases, they actually prevent them. No exceptions.