The most common question I get asked in the gym is: “What’s your split?” The reason for that question being asked so frequently is most likely because many believe that if they can discover the perfect split that someone in the gym told them about, they’ll get magical gains and suddenly add 10lbs of contractile tissue in a month and PR all their lifts. In reality, many different splits work, and if you’re currently getting stronger and achieving your body composition goals, then for the love of god DON’T CHANGE IT. If however, you feel that you’re stagnating in your lifts, are rarely sore after workouts (no DOMS are not the primary indicator of an effective workout but they can be AN indicator) and you’re not seeing any improvements, there’s a chance your split could in part be to blame.
So, what is the ideal split? Full body? Upper/Lower? Push/Pull/Leg? Or perhaps something a little more complex...
Firstly, it’s worth mentioning (as I have in a previous post) that your muscles can recover after a 48h period, or at the very most a 72h period, so if you think that by training Chest on Monday and then not hitting chest again until the following Monday that you’re doing everything you can to grow your chest, you’re very wrong. If you’re an absolute beginner and one chest day makes you sore for 4 days straight, then fair enough, otherwise, it might be time to up your frequency.
Full body workouts, as in training every muscle group on the same day, is a good option for those completely new to training. When you start working out, it is more than likely that you won’t be using a lot of weight and almost ANY form of stimulus will be sufficient for growth, so a full body workout done multiple times a week is not a bad way to start, as it will allow you to get accustomed to training with weights and practicing the movements over and over again. On the other hand, if you have been training for any amount of time consistently and you’ve started to build some strength, a full body workout would require you to do incredibly long sessions as you would need to warm up to your working weight on each movement, for every body part. An example of a full body workout for a beginner could be as follows:
This is a very simple plan that would allow a beginner to get a sense of the movements and could be simplified even further by removing the accessory movements that follow the big 3 and to simply do instead an SBD session.
Naturally however this comes to a point where you will struggle to see any improvements if you are only doing these movements again and again and may well find it difficult to recover from the workouts if you are doing them 3 times a week and are now able to move around a good amount of weight. Here is where an upper/lower split could come in handy.
An upper/lower split is, as the name indicates, a training session where the upper body is trained and then the lower body is trained in the subsequent training session. An upper/lower split will allow a lifter who has grasped the basics of training to do more varied movements and exercises in each session as well as have a more rounded and complete training programme. In an upper body session for example, you will be able to put more of an emphasis on certain lagging body parts. If done correctly an upper/lower split should allow the lifter to do two different upper and lower sessions per week, whereby one upper session could be more posterior chain focused (back) and the other session more anterior chain focused (chest). The same can be said for lower body sessions, whereby one session could be more anterior focused (quads) and another more posterior focused (hamstrings). You should however still have some posterior chain involvement in a more anterior chain dominant workout and vice versa. I won’t break down a full upper/lower split as that would be an entire programme… However the upper/lower split is a perfectly good option for many and can even be sufficient long term as a viable option for programming. A way in which I may programme this split would be as follows:
Monday: Upper (Flat press chest dominant/ vertical pull)
Tuesday: Lower (Quad dominant movements, accessory movements)
Wednesday: Rest
Thursday: Upper (Horizontal pull back dominant/ mostly incline and shoulder chest)
Friday: Lower (Hamstring dominant movements, accessory movements)
Saturday/Sunday: Rest
I have employ splits similar to this with great success, the issue I find is that the frequency could still be higher, and when progressing to the point of being an intermediate lifter, you may well find that you can handle even more volume than this, some muscles as I mentioned previously could be hit 3 even 4 times a week. The delts, biceps, triceps, forearms, calves are all muscles that can recover incredibly quickly and therefore be frequently used. If you are training purely for strength, an upper/lower split can work very well, but in terms of bodybuilding, there could definitely be more optimisation through higher frequency of some body parts that may get neglected through the upper/lower split. If you are willing to have non sequential training days and do upper/lower rest and repeat, this could be a way in which you could increase frequency but again whether or not you can recover from that is down to your management of your MRV (maximum recoverable volume).
A push/pull/leg or leg/push/pull split (or a squat/bench/deadlift split if you’re a powerlifter) is a good split in order to hit a specific movement pattern and really push the musculature involved to failure. By working only the legs for example you will be able to do an entire session focused around leg development, and if you have gone through an intense leg session, you should know that they can be incredibly uncomfortable. My issue with the PPL split is the diminishing returns you get from a prolonged session focusing solely on one movement pattern or group of muscles that work synergistically. If for example you train shoulders and triceps after your chest exercises, they most certainly will already be fatigued and you won’t be able to get as much out of them as if you had trained them separately. This is not to say that this is wrong but personally I think it is not optimal. If you are a powerlifter, this split can work as you have a heavy squat, bench and deadlift session every week, but again here frequency is the issue and one squat session a week is in my opinion not enough.
So where does this leave us? Well, what I have found over time is that the simple rule of working synergistic muscles in one day, or only working one movement a day, will hinder your overall progress. I have found that I can train log press and deadlift on the same day, squats and bench on the same day, etc. Of course these are all just examples, but whatever lagging body part you have or weakness on a specific movement may lead you to add in frequency where it fits your current training best. I personally was weaker on movements like the overhead press which I need in strongman, so I simply added in another day of log pressing in my week. When trying to get a 140kg bench, I trained ‘Smolov’ which is 4 bench sessions a week, I by no means suggest that you do this as every other movement has to take a back seat with this form of training. This means that you would need to reduce the intensity, volume or frequency of other movements in order to avoid injury and/or failing your lifts. The fact remains however that Smolov did allow me to get a 140kg bench, so adding movements that you need more often is not a bad thing. If you have lagging triceps for example you could add in a few sets of skull-crushers or tricep extensions after your leg workouts, or train triceps with back. The point is that you may well find that YOU need to train a specific movement or body part 2, 3 or even 4 times (typically only smaller muscles) a week, and if that’s the case, you should organise your training according to basic principles such as MV, MEV, MAV, MRV (as explained in a previous post), find how much volume and frequency you can handle on specific movements/muscles and then add or subtract from there, I suggest you don’t just use a cookie cutter programme but rather understand the fundamentals of training and then do as much as you can while being able to recover sufficiently and whilst continually progressing.
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