Is there a benefit to alternating muscle groups, instead of wokring out the whole body every other day?
Well the general rule of thumb is to work a given muscle out every other day. If you try and do a whole-body workout every day you aren’t giving your body time to rebuild and strengthen.
There are a couple of ways around this, including doing a full workout every other day, or doing a split workout each day (for example, exercise your upper body on the even days and your lower body on the odd days).
There are a bunch of “Yeah buts” with this and I’m sure that there are some workout gurus who will chime in, however I think that’s the gist of it.
…and I am now getting a good strength & flexibility session by kicking myself in the rear end for missing that your original question was not about doing a full workout EVERY day but rather every OTHER day…
Duh.
When I was in college I did the split routine (alternate upper and lower each day). It worked for a while but I found that it was just a little too much, too intense (I was spending about four hours per day in the gym of which about half was weightlifting) and led to some injuries which kept me out for a few days at a time, and that coming back after those short layoffs was a pain.
Try them both - I think that you’ll find it comes down to some personal preference. If your total workout (upper & lower) takes a long time (several hours) then you may find it easier to break it up and do half each day. If it’s a shorter routine or you just can’t devote the time every single day then the off/on schedule is probably better.
For me the issue is basically time. To do the entire workout in one day would take close to 2 hours. By splitting the muscle groups it makes the workout more manageable by cutting the time in half.
“Weightlifting dogma” would suggest that there are some benefits to splitting your routine. You can save time by doing fewer exercises, work muscles more intensely by doing fewer exercises, have more time for an individual muscle to rest between exercise days (which allows time for the muscle damage that occurs during growth to repair itself, and for “the nervous system to recover”), allow more time for muscle soreness to improve and thus (because of several of these reasons) reduce “weightlifting burnout”.
As usual, the answer depends on what your goals are. Doing the whole body more frequently may offer some benefits for endurance training and muscle toning. Many people who lift for strength or muscle growth, however, swear by the split routines. With good reason.