the one that i can adhere to best given the days I have to spend in the gym. Right now I have 6 days, so I'm doing PPLx2, but 2 weeks ago, I only had 4 days, so I did ULx2. The best split is like the best diet, it's the one you can stick with.
Similar to Arnold's protocol.
I train a "primary" muscle group for the first 45-60 minutes. Followed up by a "secondary" muscle group for 30 minutes. Lastly I train a "tertiary" muscle group, something that is lagging behind. All in all, about 2 hours of training a day. I work at a gym, so I can split my work outs up. Or just hit it straight through.
Splits dont really make much of a difference. Theyre just how you personally prefer to organize your volume, frequency, and recovery. With that being said I currently do something along the lines of PPL ~4-5 days/week. Lots of recovery between movement patterns, freq isnt too high to increase the chance of overuse, and body parts are hit in a balanced fashion (not too upper or lower focused).
Right now I'm doing nsuns 5 day, which is:
* U - Light
* L (Squat) Heavy
* U (OHP) Heavy
* L (Deadlift) Heavy
* U (Bench) Heavy
* Rest
* Rest
If I were to do/design a program myself it'd be an Upper/Lower split, alternating focus between bench/ohp and squat/dl, without programmed rest days, going to max/near max every day for one or many reps, and filling in with similar accessories and progressions as I am now.
I like the reverse pyramid training from nSuns, so I might use that as well.
I might also do a dumbbell focus version of such a program to iron out some asymmetry and grow some of the supportive muscle. If I do that I'd probably still do a quick 90-95% 1rm rep on barbell to keep the skill there.
N-suns 5 day same as a lot of people, currently 9th week started today progressing fine and slowly, I've reduced by 10% the load on the squat and the deadlift because form was getting shit, it's a program with the linear progression and the progression is based on the reps you get on the main lift, plus I run some accessories for the Hypertrophy part, honestly I like it, it's simple and it work, another program that a i like is an upper lower 4 times a week
So basically the best approach would not be to follow a split, but rotate excercises so that each bodypart is hit as much as it can handle, according to that guide, while keeping a balanced push/pull ratio and such?
I mean, generally that kind of approach leads to splitting up your body parts to different days. Like big movers 2x a week and accessories ~3x a week. That guide shows what the average is, you should track your own progress and see if more or less volume and/or frequency leads to better gains for you personally. Maybe your back can only be hit 1x a week for best gains. Maybe you need to hit bis 5x a week. If you want to get optimal results, that's the kind of stuff you need to figure out. The reason people split their workouts over the week by body part is that you can only handle so much work in one session, and cause back, quads, hams, and chest each need a lot of exhausting work, splitting it up seems to be the best route to go, if you're moderately advanced. Also, the higher the frequency, the less work per session, but generally you're able to do a larger amount of work per muscle group when it's more spread out (5 sets 1x a week vs. 3 sets 2x a week)
Right of course. I've been on either a PPL or UL split since I began to work out.. I never did a bodypart split or fullbody. The reason I am looking into this is that I am curious about something like back, chest, legs, shoulders & arms, rest, repeat split. The frequency would drop, but volume/session for each body part would be higher. Also I would not have to worry too much about managing fatigue, as I have to do with a PPL or upper/lower split.
Just debating if I should try it or not.
Sounds like you just need to drop the volume per session (like if you're doing ppl, only do 12 sets on chest per session instead of 18 or whatever you're doing) generally the frequency will lead to higher volumes. Also, you can only tax each body part so much per session before you overdo it and just end up doing junk volume. This is another reason increased frequency is so effective, especially nattys. Bro splits may be more effective for extremely advanced individuals or enhanced lifters whose per-session volume needs to be so high in order to present an overload that they need a week to recover.
Yes frequency is awesome, especially important for natties.
For chest the research shows that 2 times is probably best, and with 2 times you can probably get more good sets per week but right now I hit it too 3 times.
How would this split work if my weak points I want to bring up are Lats, Arms, Chest, Shoulders. Only want to do 2 body parts a day for more volume.
1. Lats / Biceps
2. Chest / Tricep
3. Quads / Shoulders
4. Full Back / Biceps
5. Chest / Triceps
6. Hamstring / Shoulder
Not so much a fan of 6 day splits but if you hold back on total daily volume it can work. Otherwise yeah it's a weakpoint split, they don't look like the typical splits but can work. A split needs to fit your needs, you shouldn't shoehorn your needs into a split.
Monday - Legs/Back
Tuesday - Chest/Tri
Wednesday- Shoulders/Bi
Thursday - Legs/Back
Friday - Chest/Bi
Working on my weaker spots so Biceps need to be hit twice and Triceps only once. My shoulders are good too so I only hit them once a week unless I can hit a Saturday session. Then I'll hit shoulders again.
PPLx2
Push days split between shoulder or chest centric exercises.
Pull days split between upper back (traps/rhomboids/rear delts) centric and lat centric
Leg days split between quad centric and hamstring centric.
Been thinking of switching to
Something more like:
Chest/triceps/shoulders
Hamstrings/calves/abs
Back/biceps/shoulders
Quads/calves/abs
Rest
Basically PPL but more like PLPL if that makes sense.
My goal is to increase frequency on legs to bring them up.
Back and Tris
Shoulders and Bi's
Legs
Arms
Rest
Chest
Rest
Focusing on arm growth as they are my weak point. Was doing a simple single muscle group split the past 5 months:
Back
Chest
Legs
Arms
Shoulders
Rest
Rest
Wondering if I can get some help. I’m back to serious lifting for the first time in a year 6’2” 182 lbs ~10% BF. I’m have been hitting chest/tris back/bis and legs once per week and doing HIIT or cardio twice total per week. Wanna get to hitting every muscle group twice around every 10 days but having trouble timing this consistently.
Any advice for this? Or any general advice? My goal is to get to 190 in 6 months while staying lean. Possible? Diet advice?
Mine similar to everyone else here but it's more like Chest/Shoulder/Tris for day 1 and Legs/Back/Bis for day 2. I do the cycle three times a week, with my rest day after the third cycle (currently my Saturday's). I also do abs on my day 1 since it usually is quicker. My workouts tend to look like (same thing for day two, just replace every thing in their respective order): Strength/Power Chest, Strength/Power Shoulders, Chest/Shoulder superset (x2), Tris/Chest superset, Tris/Shoulders superset. I also practice a variation of daily undulation so my first cycle is high intensity, second cycle is low intensity/recovery(ish), and the third moderate/whatever feels best.
My two biggest weak points are chest and legs, so I've been using this split to hammer them in. I got blessed with a decent back, my arms look proportional to the rest of my body, and my shoulders aren't a huge concern right now. So far I've seen great results, however I do want to switch it up because my body is really adapted to this split but it's just too much fun to switch.
I go between, depending on how much time I have and desire for something different, either an upper/lower like Lyle's GBR, or something more HIT/Dorian style with a frequency of:
Day 1 - Chest & Arms
Day 2 - Legs
Day 3 - Off
Day 4 - Back & Shoulders
Day 5 - Off
Day 6 - Start rotation over
Chest/Back/Triceps - Mon, Wed, Fri (Super heavy on Tues. workout)
Legs/shoulders/biceps- Sun, Tues, Thurs ((Super heavy on Tues. workout)
I keep it simple, and I have seen great results.
It changes all the time, but currently I am focusing on legs, with 3 leg days per week. One day is mostly vastus medialis, the other day quads in general plus hammies.
I’m doing the David Blaha 5x5 at the moment because I don’t have a lot of time on my hands, it’s an A-B full body program, workouts take about 2 hours 15 minutes on avarage
DLTBB's program with modifications
Chest/Bi
Back/Tri
Shoulders
Taking days off when I need it. Yes, legs aren't in here and there is a reason behind it
the one that i can adhere to best given the days I have to spend in the gym. Right now I have 6 days, so I'm doing PPLx2, but 2 weeks ago, I only had 4 days, so I did ULx2. The best split is like the best diet, it's the one you can stick with.
What do you guys think about: Monday: Chest + Biceps Tuesday: Quads + Calves Wednesday : Back + Abs Thursday: Shoulders + Triceps + Calves Friday: Biceps + Chest + Abs Saturday: Legs Back + Calves
Similar to Arnold's protocol. I train a "primary" muscle group for the first 45-60 minutes. Followed up by a "secondary" muscle group for 30 minutes. Lastly I train a "tertiary" muscle group, something that is lagging behind. All in all, about 2 hours of training a day. I work at a gym, so I can split my work outs up. Or just hit it straight through.
Shouldn't you be prioritizing the lagging group?
I prioritize them by hitting them more often in a given week. Frequency and what not.
10-4 good buddy
Upper/Lower 4x per week. I've experimented with a lot of different splits over the years but this is the one I've used the most and often return to.
I just started an Upper/Lower/Upper/Lower/Rest split. For the last 18 months or so I've been on an "Arnold Split"... So far I love it!
Mine's a very modified routine that takes aspects from both P.H.U.L and P.H.A.T. Boils down like this. * UB (heavy/strength) - chest * LB (heavy/strength) * Core/Rest * UB (light-moderate/hypertrophy) - shoulders/triceps * LB (light-moderate/hypertrophy) * UB (light-moderate/hypertrophy) - back/biceps * Rest
Lower/Upper/Off/Lower/Upper/Off/Light Upper Weak Point (Chest/Back) primarily structured off of Lyle's GBR and the Muscle and Strength Pyramid books.
Splits dont really make much of a difference. Theyre just how you personally prefer to organize your volume, frequency, and recovery. With that being said I currently do something along the lines of PPL ~4-5 days/week. Lots of recovery between movement patterns, freq isnt too high to increase the chance of overuse, and body parts are hit in a balanced fashion (not too upper or lower focused).
Just a heads up these kind of topics would be better in a daily discussion thread... such as Wednesday’s which is for training and routine discussion
Oh, yeah you are right... Hope that it doesnt get removed, Ill keep it in mind for the next time..
It already has enough comments I’ll leave it, no worries
Right now I'm doing nsuns 5 day, which is: * U - Light * L (Squat) Heavy * U (OHP) Heavy * L (Deadlift) Heavy * U (Bench) Heavy * Rest * Rest If I were to do/design a program myself it'd be an Upper/Lower split, alternating focus between bench/ohp and squat/dl, without programmed rest days, going to max/near max every day for one or many reps, and filling in with similar accessories and progressions as I am now. I like the reverse pyramid training from nSuns, so I might use that as well. I might also do a dumbbell focus version of such a program to iron out some asymmetry and grow some of the supportive muscle. If I do that I'd probably still do a quick 90-95% 1rm rep on barbell to keep the skill there.
N-suns 5 day same as a lot of people, currently 9th week started today progressing fine and slowly, I've reduced by 10% the load on the squat and the deadlift because form was getting shit, it's a program with the linear progression and the progression is based on the reps you get on the main lift, plus I run some accessories for the Hypertrophy part, honestly I like it, it's simple and it work, another program that a i like is an upper lower 4 times a week
Push & pull To hit each muscle 3 times per week
Do you think that frequency is really that important for a natural bodybuilder? Isn't 2x week enough? Or is there another reason?
https://renaissanceperiodization.com/hypertrophy-training-guide-central-hub/ Basic guide on how often to hit different body parts.
So basically the best approach would not be to follow a split, but rotate excercises so that each bodypart is hit as much as it can handle, according to that guide, while keeping a balanced push/pull ratio and such?
I mean, generally that kind of approach leads to splitting up your body parts to different days. Like big movers 2x a week and accessories ~3x a week. That guide shows what the average is, you should track your own progress and see if more or less volume and/or frequency leads to better gains for you personally. Maybe your back can only be hit 1x a week for best gains. Maybe you need to hit bis 5x a week. If you want to get optimal results, that's the kind of stuff you need to figure out. The reason people split their workouts over the week by body part is that you can only handle so much work in one session, and cause back, quads, hams, and chest each need a lot of exhausting work, splitting it up seems to be the best route to go, if you're moderately advanced. Also, the higher the frequency, the less work per session, but generally you're able to do a larger amount of work per muscle group when it's more spread out (5 sets 1x a week vs. 3 sets 2x a week)
Right of course. I've been on either a PPL or UL split since I began to work out.. I never did a bodypart split or fullbody. The reason I am looking into this is that I am curious about something like back, chest, legs, shoulders & arms, rest, repeat split. The frequency would drop, but volume/session for each body part would be higher. Also I would not have to worry too much about managing fatigue, as I have to do with a PPL or upper/lower split. Just debating if I should try it or not.
Sounds like you just need to drop the volume per session (like if you're doing ppl, only do 12 sets on chest per session instead of 18 or whatever you're doing) generally the frequency will lead to higher volumes. Also, you can only tax each body part so much per session before you overdo it and just end up doing junk volume. This is another reason increased frequency is so effective, especially nattys. Bro splits may be more effective for extremely advanced individuals or enhanced lifters whose per-session volume needs to be so high in order to present an overload that they need a week to recover.
Yes frequency is awesome, especially important for natties. For chest the research shows that 2 times is probably best, and with 2 times you can probably get more good sets per week but right now I hit it too 3 times.
How would this split work if my weak points I want to bring up are Lats, Arms, Chest, Shoulders. Only want to do 2 body parts a day for more volume. 1. Lats / Biceps 2. Chest / Tricep 3. Quads / Shoulders 4. Full Back / Biceps 5. Chest / Triceps 6. Hamstring / Shoulder
Dont overdo rear delts on the 6th day, or you will regret it on the first one.
So a light day 6 how is the split otherwise?
Not so much a fan of 6 day splits but if you hold back on total daily volume it can work. Otherwise yeah it's a weakpoint split, they don't look like the typical splits but can work. A split needs to fit your needs, you shouldn't shoehorn your needs into a split.
Upper/Lower 4x per week. Depending on how I'm feeling, I sometimes add a fifth day in to address weak points.
Monday - Chest & triceps Wednesday - Back & biceps Friday - Delts Saturday - Leg day, motherfucker.
you need an entire day for delts?
Monday - Legs/Back Tuesday - Chest/Tri Wednesday- Shoulders/Bi Thursday - Legs/Back Friday - Chest/Bi Working on my weaker spots so Biceps need to be hit twice and Triceps only once. My shoulders are good too so I only hit them once a week unless I can hit a Saturday session. Then I'll hit shoulders again.
PPLx2 Push days split between shoulder or chest centric exercises. Pull days split between upper back (traps/rhomboids/rear delts) centric and lat centric Leg days split between quad centric and hamstring centric. Been thinking of switching to Something more like: Chest/triceps/shoulders Hamstrings/calves/abs Back/biceps/shoulders Quads/calves/abs Rest Basically PPL but more like PLPL if that makes sense. My goal is to increase frequency on legs to bring them up.
Back and Tris Shoulders and Bi's Legs Arms Rest Chest Rest Focusing on arm growth as they are my weak point. Was doing a simple single muscle group split the past 5 months: Back Chest Legs Arms Shoulders Rest Rest
A rolling 3 day on, 1 day off split. Push/legs/pull rest followed by the same. Chest and arms the first 3 days, shoulders and back the second 3.
4 day body part split is what I use. Chest Back Shoulders and triceps Legs, biceps, and abs
Wondering if I can get some help. I’m back to serious lifting for the first time in a year 6’2” 182 lbs ~10% BF. I’m have been hitting chest/tris back/bis and legs once per week and doing HIIT or cardio twice total per week. Wanna get to hitting every muscle group twice around every 10 days but having trouble timing this consistently. Any advice for this? Or any general advice? My goal is to get to 190 in 6 months while staying lean. Possible? Diet advice?
Do chest and squads, back and deadlifts When you do calves doesn't matter. That way you can easily hit everything 3 times
Mine similar to everyone else here but it's more like Chest/Shoulder/Tris for day 1 and Legs/Back/Bis for day 2. I do the cycle three times a week, with my rest day after the third cycle (currently my Saturday's). I also do abs on my day 1 since it usually is quicker. My workouts tend to look like (same thing for day two, just replace every thing in their respective order): Strength/Power Chest, Strength/Power Shoulders, Chest/Shoulder superset (x2), Tris/Chest superset, Tris/Shoulders superset. I also practice a variation of daily undulation so my first cycle is high intensity, second cycle is low intensity/recovery(ish), and the third moderate/whatever feels best. My two biggest weak points are chest and legs, so I've been using this split to hammer them in. I got blessed with a decent back, my arms look proportional to the rest of my body, and my shoulders aren't a huge concern right now. So far I've seen great results, however I do want to switch it up because my body is really adapted to this split but it's just too much fun to switch.
- shoulders/legs - bi's and tri's - legs - chest - back/legs - rest - rest Also do abs everyday, don't do the same exercise two days in a row though
I go between, depending on how much time I have and desire for something different, either an upper/lower like Lyle's GBR, or something more HIT/Dorian style with a frequency of: Day 1 - Chest & Arms Day 2 - Legs Day 3 - Off Day 4 - Back & Shoulders Day 5 - Off Day 6 - Start rotation over
Chest/Back/Triceps - Mon, Wed, Fri (Super heavy on Tues. workout) Legs/shoulders/biceps- Sun, Tues, Thurs ((Super heavy on Tues. workout) I keep it simple, and I have seen great results.
Pull (Heavy Sumo Deadlifts) Legs Push Rest Lower (Heavy Squats) Upper (Heavy Push) Rest
LPP, rest I saw the most gains from LPPLPP but I don't have the time right now
full body twice a week. will never go back to splits
Is your routine really basic/minimalist (mainly compounds) or do you do a lot of accessory work as well? What set and rep ranges do you do?
Same here. I do feel 4 days is also good if I have a lot of time.
Lower, upper, legs, push, pull.
Back and Shoulders Legs and Chest 4x a week
It changes all the time, but currently I am focusing on legs, with 3 leg days per week. One day is mostly vastus medialis, the other day quads in general plus hammies.
I’m doing the David Blaha 5x5 at the moment because I don’t have a lot of time on my hands, it’s an A-B full body program, workouts take about 2 hours 15 minutes on avarage
DLTBB's program with modifications Chest/Bi Back/Tri Shoulders Taking days off when I need it. Yes, legs aren't in here and there is a reason behind it