Multiple short workouts throughout day

Hi all, a question I’ve been wondering recently is what are the potential cons (or pros) of splitting a workout up throughout the day.

I’m still doing home workouts due to the pandemic and am looking for ways to switch it up because I’m having a really hard time getting decent workouts in - I just lose focus too quickly.
I was considering just trying splitting up the workout throughout the day. For example, a few sets of chest press in early afternoon, a few sets of a tricep workout in late afternoon, and a few sets of shoulder press in the evening.

I think when it comes to answering this question there is two main aspects 1) what type of training i’m doing (or what goals i’m looking for) and 2) whether or not to take risk for injury into account.

Regarding #1, in general I’m interested in powerbuilding. Basically I just like strength and bodybuilding and have no plans on competing or anything. As far as my workouts go, my hope is at least maintenance because I know my workouts arent good enough for me to maintain strength. I just know its important to keep moving weights so im doing that with my dumbbells at home.

Regarding #2, I dont like working out without a good warm up, and I know that good warm ups have helped prevent injury for myself in the past but recently my warmups have been shitty anyways.

My initial thought is that you will be losing out on the metabolic stress portion of the hypertrophy response because you wont be overlapping the workout as much. But maybe it will also allow you to get better sets in with a long rest in between.

I know theres a lot of hypotheticals and variables in here that need controlling for a perfect answer but I’m wondering if anyone knows science behind something like this or has experience with it first hand.

Jorepstein,

You can split up your workouts however you want throughout the day. I don’t think that there are any real downsides outside of some metabolic benefits (unrelated to hypertrophy) that may require somewhat prolonged training and the additional time commitment for starting, stopping, etc. I don’t think there’s any change in injury risk with either approach.

I don’t know that having shorter workouts will help you and based on your question here, the programming itself might be suspect.

It would be very strange if you weren’t able to maintain most of your strength while still resistance training. If you’re new to training, I’d expect you to get stronger.

I used to train multiple times per day because it worked better for my schedule. It didn’t help me train any better, but it did help me train.

-Jordan

Thanks Jordan! I dont know that having shorter workouts will help either. But I have to try something new. My current workouts are just not cutting it. I get so distracted between sets and its so boring and uncomfortable

What program are you running right now?