In this article we will learn all about the age old heavily debated topic in the fitness world, training splits. I hope to clear up some misunderstandings and dissolve some of the mystery regarding what the optimal split routine is. One of the questions you will be asked a lot when socializing in the gym is: “What split are you on, bro?”. This question refers to how you organize your training in terms of splitting up body parts in separate workouts.
Training splits have changed dramatically during the history of weight lifting/bodybuilding. Back in the beginning days of lifting, all the way up to the 60’s and 70’s, full body workouts used to be the norm. Every single person training in the gym wouldn’t be concerned with the subject of training splits, because there was no such things as a training split. During a large part of the history of lifting, most people trained full body 3 times per week. Professional strong men trained full body with an even higher frequency and people got amazing results out of training this way. Think about guys like Eugen Sandow, Arthur Saxon, George Hackenschmidt. They had phenomenal physiques without having access to all the knowledge we have today.
Later on guys like Steve Reeves and Reg Park would steal the scene. Full body routines were more popular than ever, since their training revolved mainly around training full body 3 days per week on non-consecutive days. These guys used full body training systems throughout their entire lifting career. It was typical for bodybuilders to start their lifting careers with a lower volume full body workout routine and as they grew more advanced, as work capacity and strength improved over time by being consistent with their training regime, they would increase the volume of their workouts by adding more sets to the exercises they performed or adding in new exercises. This forced their bodies to receive new stimuli to grow bigger and stronger.
As time went on and a new era of the sport began with figures such as Arnold Schwarzenegger (which built his foundation and majority of his physique with full body workouts!), Franco Columbo and Sergio Oliva in their prime years, training routines had been completely revamped from what they used to be. The traditional full body training routine had been swapped for a split routine where body parts were grouped together in one workouts and annihilated for that training session. With the rise of drugs, lifters were able to perform way more training volume, recover much better from these grueling workouts and grow much bigger. They needed more per session volume to fuel their drug enhanced physiques. Full body training would take too much time and be too strenuous on the body with such insane amounts of training volume and therefore, training evolved into training one or two body parts per session. Still, each body part was trained twice to three times per week, even on a split routine. Beginning amateur lifters started blindly copying what the world champions were doing and passed on these traditions to the following generations of gym members. Body part split have become the norm and people perform them without really knowing why. People think this is just the way it is.
Are body part splits really the best way to train? Or should we not split anything up at all and go back to full body training? Should we train each body part hard once per week or should we train our upper and lower body separately twice or three times per week? Which training routine is best and which one should you use? The answer will soon become clear.
Key principles to an effective training routine
Before determining which training split or which training routine is best for you, you should be aware that there are a couple of key principles that are crucial in order to design an effective training routine. If these principles are not in check, you probably won’t make optimal progress. The essential factors that every lifter should take into consideration when designing or choosing a suitable training routine are:
● Training availability ( =How many days are you able or do you want to go to the gym?)
● Training volume (= The amount of sets close to failure needed to grow muscle optimally)
● Training frequency (= The number of times each muscle group gets trained)
● Fatigue management (= Managing fatigue for your wellbeing and workout performance)
It doesn’t matter if you choose the best
workout ever designed if you won’t make it to the gym anyway. Therefore it’s
important to be honest with yourself how many days per week you’re able to the
gym and the day per week that you want to spend on going to the gym. If you are
a young man without a lot of responsibilities and going to the gym is one of
the highlights of your days, there will be a big difference in the time that
you have available and want to spend on going to the gym versus a man in his
late thirties with a demanding job and a 2 child household. Whereas the young
man will be able to make it to the gym 6 days per week, the business man or
father of 2 might only be able to make it 2-3 times per week. You should design
or choose a program that suits your lifestyle and time available. Going to the
gym more days per week isn’t necessarily better than going to the gym less days
per week as long as the two key principles of training volume and frequency are
respected and your training is set up accordingly.
Recent scientific research has clearly
shown that optimal training results are experienced when trainees lift with a
training volume of 9 to 20 sets per muscle group per week. The amount of volume
necessary to get maximum results will vary depending on your training
experience. Beginners will need way less volume than an advanced bodybuilder to
make gains. Most normal people with families and jobs who want amazing physiques
will do great on a training routine that has them perform between 9 and 15 sets
per muscle group per week. If your weekly volume is too low, you will make
suboptimal gains. I recommend that you perform at least around 9 sets per
muscle group per week to see significant changes in strength and muscle mass. If
you’re new to the gym, start on the lower side with 9 sets per muscle group per
week. If you’ve been lifting for a while and want to break through a plateau
for certain muscle groups and squeeze out new gains, work it up to about 15
sets per week. Do you simply want to keep making steady progress or maintain
your physique? 12 sets per week per muscle group is a sweet spot. 9 to 15 sets
per muscle group per week is a manageable amount of volume that can be
performed in only 3 workouts per week, which is doable for most people.
People who wish to maximize their growth
will have to perform higher volume cycles throughout the advanced stages of
their lifting career where certain body parts receive more volume than others
to maximize their potential, building it up to 15-20 sets per muscle group per
week. This amount of volume would be very hard on the body if you’d perform
this for each and every muscle group. Therefore you should work in specialization
cycles of 3 to 4 months. This means that you select one or two muscle groups
that will receive significantly more weekly training volume, while other muscle
groups get a moderate amount of volume. This will allow the selected muscle
groups to grow at a faster rate for that cycle. After that you reduce the
volume for those muscle groups again and prioritize another muscle group to
receive a higher amount of volume. For the majority of people with normal lives
though, 9 to 15 sets is the sweet spot to keep making solid and consistent
gains over the long run, without experiencing excessive fatigue and being able
to make it to the gym.
Now that we have established that we need a
certain amount of volume, the next point we should keep in mind is training
frequency. It has been clearly shown that better results are experienced when
the weekly amount of volume per muscle group is spread out over at least 2
sessions. A training frequency of twice or more per week, where volume is
spread out over multiple sessions resulted in far better muscle growth compared
to the same amount of weekly volume performed only once per week. For this
reason alone I would never recommend a training program to anyone when every
muscle group is only hit once per week, because it simply is suboptimal. Unfortunately,
due to conventional wisdom, this is exactly how a lot of people train. They perform
typical bodybuilding bro splits where each muscle group is only hit once per
week with a ton of volume per session. What happens is that after a couple of
intense sets, your muscle already experiences high levels of fatigue, which
means that it can’t produce the same amount of force compared to when it is
fresh. As a result the quality of the following sets will suffer and the sets
will not have the desired effect to maximally stimulate muscle growth anymore. Compare
that to someone who splits up his volume over 3 sessions, where 12 weekly sets
are split up over 4 sets per workout are performed 3 times per week. I can guarantee
you that if you train with proper intensity (ending a set within 2 reps of
reaching failure) that you will experience, better and faster strength and
muscle gains because you are hitting each exercise fresh from the start. Lifters
seeking to maximize the hypertrophic response will simply do better on a
program where every muscle is targeted 2 times or more per week compared to
programs where each muscle is only stimulated once per week.
Lastly there’s element to training that
many people overlook and that is fatigue management. Lifting weights is hard on
the body. There’s no use for a beginner to perform a 6 day training routine
with extremely high volume if he has no work tolerance. Nor does he need excessive
amounts of volume to grow, as any amount of volume will be sufficient to make
new gains. The per workout volume should also be taken into consideration,
where too many sets can be counterproductive for someone who hasn’t built up a
solid base of work capacity. Even for advanced lifters fatigue management plays
a very important role. The stronger you are, the more taxing weight training is
on your body. Using heavier weights and performing more volume on a more
frequent basis elicits higher levels of fatigue. Too much chronic fatigue can translate
itself into performance and therefore into less gains. It’s important to incorporate
adequate rest by either splitting up the volume, splitting up body parts and
incorporating adequate rest days. Another factor in fatigue management is
whether you are bulking or cutting. In a bulking phase you are eating more
calories which means that your recovery is better compared to when you’re
trying to shed body fat and undereating.
Types of training routines that work
Full body workouts
Full body workouts are just as the name implies. It’s a workout routine where the whole body is trained in each and every workout. In the beginning of the sport of weight training and body building, this used to be the norm and nobody questioned its effectiveness. The benefit of full body workouts is that every muscle group is targeted within one single session and you can be more flexible with your routine.
Properly designed full body workouts can be performed from as less as 2 times per week and still provide amazing results in regard to both building muscle on a bulk and maintaining muscle on a cut. People who genuinely love training full body like myself, can perform a full body workout up to 6 times per week if you program things properly. This makes the full body training routine attractive for both people with very little time available to train and people with a lot of time to hit the gym.
For beginners full body is awesome as the high frequency offers a lot of opportunity to master the lifts and to make quick strength gains. This day and age, lots of people believe full body workouts to be for beginners only, but they couldn’t be more wrong. Champion physiques have been built by the use of full body workouts. The key to making the full body workout efficient and sustainable is proper programming. They are a staple in the list of effective training routines for lifters of all levels. Eugen Sandow, Steeve Reeves, Reg Park and even Arnold Schwarzenegger have built their bodies on full body routines.
Upper lower splits
The upper lower split is a time proven training template that splits the training routine up into workouts where only either the upper body musculature is trained or workouts where only the lower body musculature is trained. Just like full body routines, the upper lower has built amazing physiques and amazing strength athletes. To make an upper lower routine most effective, you should be able to make it to the gym at least 4 days per week, since every muscle needs a frequency of being trained twice per week to grow optimally. For people who have a decent amount of time per week to go to the gym with a good balance of rest days, the upper lower routine is an excellent choice.
The upper lower routine is ideal for intermediate and advanced lifters and just like the full body workout, is something you can do for the rest of your life as it is so effective at producing results and a sustainable form of training. People who wish to increase the to maximize their growth by performing a higher volume phase in their training career or simply want to spend more time in the gym can make it a 6 day training routine, by adding both one upper and one lower training day. This will keep the per session volume and fatigue build up tolerable, but will bring up the total weekly volume.
Push Pull Leg splits
A favorite of many modern day lifters and also a routine where amazing physiques have been built on are the push pull legs training split. This routine hits all upper body push musculature (primarily chest, front delts, triceps), all upper body pulling musculature (primarily back, rear delts, biceps) and lower body musculature (primarily quads, hamstrings, calves) in individual training sessions. To make this routine as effective as possible, you’ll need to train 6 days per week so that each muscle is targeted twice per week. This makes it more time intensive and is better suited for individuals who can make it to the gym on a daily basis. The benefit of a push pull leg routine is a proper distribution of volume, an optimal training frequency and having a very favorable fatigue management factor by which you most likely won’t be extremely worn down after every sessions and give each muscle group sufficient rest after each workout.
If you want to go to the gym most days of the week and want a simple and effective training routine, the push pull legs split is an excellent choice.
Body part splits
Body part splits target one or two muscle groups at a time per workout. Popular choices of grouping body parts together for a single workout are chest and triceps, back and biceps, shoulders and legs. In many cases, people train each muscle group one day per week where the muscle gets blasted with a ton of per session volume and afterwards receives a full week of rest. This isn’t optimal for multiple reasons such as excessive per session volume, suboptimal muscle protein synthesis (growth responses per week) and possible detraining after a week’s rest.
The problem with body part split routines isn’t the fact that muscles are trained individually or split up. It’s the programming of the routines. If you wish to split up your muscle groups and train them individually, you have to make sure to train each muscle twice per week. What a lot of people forget about the Golden Era heroes such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Franco Columbo is that even though they used split routines, each muscle group got hit 2 to 3 times per week. This checked off the necessity for an optimal training frequency.
It all comes down to how you organize your body part split routine. It’s about respecting the recommended weekly volume guidelines and have a training frequency of at least twice per week.
Which workout routine is right for you?
The truth is that every single workout routine has the potential to work amazingly if you set them up right, respecting the key factors that make a weight training routine effective! Choosing a workout routine is more a matter of personal preference. I have tried all of the above workout routines and they all work amazingly. I started my lifting career with a typical 5 day per week body part split that hit each muscle group only once and had me doing excessive amounts of volume per session because that was just how things were and I didn’t know any better. I didn’t make the progress I hoped for and educated myself properly. That’s why I have tried all routines for at least a year and I can’t say that one is necessarily better than the other. It simply comes down to respecting the key factors. Hitting each muscle at least twice per week with a sufficient amount of weekly volume.
Personally, my heart goes out to full body workouts because I just love hitting each muscle group multiple times per week and I love the flexibility it offers. Flexibility in which days I choose to train. If I miss a workout for example because sometimes life gets in the way, no worries, I just do it the next day and I still hit my frequency and volume goals. It’s harder to make up for a missed workout session with a split routine. However, it all comes down what you love to do, what suits your lifestyle best and what you will be consistent in! If you can’t stick to a body part split which makes you go to the gym 6 days per week, what’s the point? Then you’re better off doing a full body routine 2 or 3 per week or an upper lower routine 4 days per week that you will stick to. Ultimately, consistency and respecting the key factors are what going to drive progressive overload and therefore noticeable results in your physique.
Here are my recommendations according to the time you have available or want to invest at going to the gym:
Number of workout days per week | Type of workout |
1 – 3 | Full body routine |
4 | Full body routine |
4 – 6 | Full body routine |
Conclusion
For a workout routine to be effective, certain principles need to be respected when setting up a program. If these principles are incorporated into the training routine, all workout programs are effective. It all comes down to personal preference and the time you have available to invest in going to the gym.
Choose a workout program that respects the most important key principles, a workout routine that suits your lifestyle and that you enjoy because ultimately, being consistent following a well-designed program is what is going to deliver the best results!
Kevin Mahjoubi