Routines
8x8
5x5
3x8
Pyramid up
Pyramid down
pre exhaust
train to failure
westside
5/6 day split
upper lower
push pull
321
etc etc etc
all have a planed style of training, mand i agree they do work for some muscle groups.
Over the last few months in my own gym i get people to start with 3x8 then move on to 5x5 full body workouts....these t2 routines IMO give a gopod BASE to start from, the 3x8 with dumbells is a good foundation and the 5x5 is the first or second course of bricks
as we get more experianced and start to understand more about intensity we need to change things around (to keep growing) and as we do that other body parts catch up and some settle and some start to slip a bit.
The reason for this is IMO......is that each body part needs a different routine all of its own and each person has a different need to do that
example: my lats get a pump just thinking about training, but respond to heavy high rep dumbell rows (particularly but any row works) better thanmost other exercises and i can hit them 2 times per week, my shoulders on the other hand need a week to recover and respond best to a heavy weight routine followed by 2 or 3 isolation ex3ercises, my lower back works best with heavy heavy deadlifts for lots of single reps and needs a week and a half before its ready, legs really reavy and need 2 or 3 weeks to recover, biceps 3x6-8 quite heavy every 3 days, triceps best with 3 or 4 exercises with a mmix of heavy and high rep and again take 4 to 5 days to recover
so we need to start looking at the way we plan routines, there is also the specificity for a particular athlete to take into accvount
a guy that comes in to the gym trains a lot with oly lifts and IMO quite high reps he also does 3 x8 type compounds on other days......IMO he makes slower progress because he is not looking at the needs of his body correctly
The problem may arise however that an athlete may need to train 4, 5 or 6 bodyparts on 1 day and possibly 1 only on another day, however you could see natural periodisation & de load times occur as at some point there will also be days or longer periods with no training
The reason for the above is that every muscle in every body has a different percentage of fast and slow (just the two for ease of explaining) and though there are theories on being able to change them its more likely that you are training say slow twitch to perform like fast twitch though they are still slow twitch ..... so recovery for all is different
also looking further into it there are things like country of origin and evolution, take3 a large built african man, a slight built african man a wesindian (origionally from africa) a brazilian (living in rainforest) an eskimo living in extreme cold and a scot or viking where weather is quite harsh but not too harsh.... all the above have different natural needs for cooling and heating the body....the reason africans have a blood systenm than keeps the blood in the muscle more is due to cooling needs, the large muscle mass of the brazilian is different to the large muscle mass of the african and they both differ to the muscle mass of the slightly built african
all have to take that into account when planning their training
.