What’s the Best Workout Split?

[00:00:00] Hey, it’s Mike. And this podcast is brought to you by my books. Seriously though, it actually is. I make my living as a writer. So as long as I keep selling books, I can keep writing articles over at muscle for life and Legion and recording podcasts and videos like this and all that fun stuff. I have several books, but the place to start is bigger leaner, stronger.

If you’re a guy and thinner leaner, stronger, if you’re a girl, now these books, they basically teach you everything you need to know about dieting training and supplementation to build muscle, lose fat and look and feel great without having to give up all the foods you love or grind away in the gym every day, doing workouts that you hate.

Now you can find my books everywhere you can buy books online like Amazon, Audible, iBooks, Google Play, Barnes Noble, Kobo, and so forth. And if you’re into audio books like me, you can actually get one of my books for free, one of my audio books for free with a 30 day free trial of Audible. To do that, go to muscleforlife.

com forward slash audio books. That’s [00:01:00] www. muscleforlife. com forward slash audio books. And you can see how to do this. Also, if you like my work in general, then I really think you’re going to like what I’m doing with my supplement company, Legion. Now, as you probably know, I’m not a fan of the supplement industry.

I’ve wasted who knows how many thousands of dollars over the years on worthless supplements that really do nothing. And I’ve always had trouble finding products that I actually thought were worth buying and recommending. And basically I had been complaining about this for years and I decided to finally do something about it and start making my own products.

And not just any products, but really the exact products that I myself have always wanted. So a few of the things that make my supplements unique are one, they’re a hundred percent naturally sweetened and flavored. Two, all ingredients are backed by peer reviewed scientific research that you can verify for yourself because on our website we explain why we’ve chosen each ingredient and we also cite all supporting studies so you can go dive in and check it out for yourself.

Three, all ingredients are also included at [00:02:00] clinically effective dosages, which are the exact dosages used in the studies proving their effectiveness. This is important, of course, because while something like Creatine is proven to help improve strength and help you build muscle faster. If you don’t take enough, then you’re not going to see the benefits that are seen in scientific research.

And for, there are no proprietary blends, which means that you know exactly what you’re buying. All our formulations are a hundred percent transparent, both with the ingredients and the dosages. So you can learn more about my supplements at www. legionathletics. com and if you like what and you want to buy something, use the coupon code podcast, P O D C A S T, and you’ll save 10 percent on your order.

All right. Thanks again for taking the time to listen to my podcast and let’s get to the show.[00:03:00] 

Hey, this is Mike from muscle for life and welcome to the episode of the podcast. In this episode, I want to talk about workout splits, something that I’ve touched on here and there, but again, like last week, I dove into cardio and talked all about cardio. Let’s talk all about workout splits.

Let’s talk about full body splits push pull legs, upper, lower body part and so forth. I’m And yeah, just go over some of the things that you should know when you’re evaluating which split is going to be best for you, and even how certain splits are programmed, if they make sense, if, they’re likely to work or work well and so forth.

So let’s start first with a full body type of split. So a full body split would be where you’re doing you’re training your entire body, usually two or three times a week. Because if you try to do more than that, you run into or you’re just doing too much. If you’re trying to, especially if you’re trying to lift heavy weights, if you’re trying to do a full body workout, a heavy full body workout already in and of itself is hard enough to do once, to do it four or five times a week is just not feasible.

So full body programs [00:04:00] could be like starting strength or the RIPTOS other practical was it practical strength? Program, practical programming, I think it’s called strong lifts, five by five is another full body program. And these programs are good. They’re, better there.

I would say they’re best for beginners which there’s also though you got to keep in mind when you’re new to weightlifting, pretty much anything works and that, that can it can be a little bit deceiving because you can see somebody that is can actually do quite well on a pretty poorly Programmed workout routine, and not that starting strength is strong.

This, those are actually well programmed routines, somebody could just pick up a magazine and do some silly bodybuilding routine, which is it’s a body part split, which isn’t bad in and of itself, but it’s like a poorly programmed. Layed out body parts split that just has you do a bun has you doing a lot of reps, a lot of isolation stuff, drop sets, super set, very little heavy lifting.

You’re usually you’re not going to be doing much dead lifting or squatting. You’re going to be doing bench pressing cause a lot of people, a lot of guys specifically are concerned with building their [00:05:00] chest. But if you’re new to weightlifting and I should know because when I got into weightlifting, that’s exactly what I did.

I just went and bought some magazines. And just started doing workouts really with my friends. I wasn’t like, Hey, in the beginning, I wasn’t taking it super seriously. It was just, I wanted to get into weightlifting. I grew up playing sports and wasn’t playing sports anymore. Wanted to do something, figured I’d get into weightlifting, sure.

Pick up some magazines and give some, give some workout programs to go and just see how my body just to see what happens kind of thing. Coming back to the full body workouts are. Better, no question, a good full body workout like starting strength or five by five. Those are much better.

That’s a much better place to start than your typical body part split type of workout that you’d find in a magazine. But to that also should just be, I would say you also should think with that like my program for men and women, bigger leaner, stronger, thinner, leaner, stronger.

It’s like my main programs for men and women are it’s a hybrid between a body part split and upper lower split because you do have body part days, like you have a chest day, but then [00:06:00] you’re doing a little bit of additional chest work later in the week. And same thing with your shoulders, that’s, that’d be for guys cause I’m in, in the bigger picture.

What you’re going to find is especially in doing a lot of heavy compound lifting is your lower body. Your legs are going to develop faster than your upper body. They just will. Like you’re going to be happy with your leg size sooner than you’re going to be happy with your upper body size just because the legs are the biggest muscle group in the body.

They respond. You can really overload them. You can lift heavy. They respond well and they grow quickly. Like rarely ever do I hear from a guy. That complains that his legs aren’t growing fast enough, whereas I hear regularly from guys that are, have the opposite issue where they’re like their legs have their, they’re already now having trouble fitting in their jeans and they have the leg size that they want, but their upper body is lagging.

That’s just because the upper body, the visual that you want in your upper body as a guy. Is there smaller muscle groups? They just take time. Like your shoulders, your arms are just small muscles and it takes time to get them where they need to [00:07:00] be. Even the pecs, they’re not when you compare your pecs to your legs, they’re just small muscles and they take time.

Also pecs in particular. Or a pain because most guys when they start weightlifting have no peck development whatsoever because you don’t really use your pecks much in your daily life. Unless you’re doing, some type of physical labor, manual labor that, that involves it.

But if you’re the, average person where you’re spending a lot of your time sitting at a desk or maybe walking around or whatever, your pecks are just not being used much. So then when guys. Go from that, situation to weightlifting. They find in the beginning, their chest is super weak and to the point where a lot of guys in the beginning, they don’t even feel the bench press, like they don’t even feel their pecs working.

They feel bench press more in their arms, like in their triceps. And that could be a form issue, but it also is not necessarily a form issue. A lot of guys that, that is just how it is in the beginning. Same thing with pulling a lot of guys with. With like barbell rows, they don’t even feel their back muscles working because they’re so underdeveloped.

But then, after let’s say [00:08:00] three, four, five, six months, they’ve built some size. Now they’ve built some strength and they can actually really feel those muscles working. So anyways, I have a lot of people that are brand new to weightlifting that just start guys and girls. The girl program, by the way, is a bit more lower body and emphasize the lower body more because the majority of, at least the girls I speak with and hear from are more.

Or their main concern is they want the lower body. As quickly as possible. They want the legs and butt and the upper body though they can wait on. And a lot of girls are not nearly, they’re just not nearly concerned with the upper body development. Yes, they want to have toned arms and they want to have good shoulders and they want to have, they want to look athletic and lean up top.

But where they really, where they’re really focused is on the bottom half. So the women’s program switches up a little bit where it’s a body part split, but it’s a hybrid and that you’re doing a bit of additional lower body work, especially for your butt. And and so P I have on my website, hundreds of success stories from people that started brand new with my, what I’m [00:09:00] talking about, which is this hybrid body part, upper, lower split and have done as good as you can possibly do.

If you look at it it’s hard to judge one program’s results versus another, even if you’re looking at before and afters, because There are a lot of unknown factors. A lot of before and afters are fake that are out there. You have genetics that come into play for sure. Some people’s bodies respond much better to weightlifting than others, which is why some success stories that I post on multiple life people cry steroids when I’ll get some occasionally where it.

Even I think that drugs were involved, and I’ll ask and they’ll say no, but I just don’t post them because I just think drugs are involved and I don’t want to, I don’t want to, I just don’t want to get people’s hopes up on, Hey, look what this guy didn’t in three months or something like that. But if there, there definitely are some before and afters that I’ve posted that might look gray where you’re like, maybe drugs are involved.

And I can’t say for sure. I do ask if it looks. Shady. And if the person says yes, then I just don’t post it. But if they [00:10:00] say no and I can’t, it’s not completely obvious then I take their word on it. And, but what I know for a fact, two things that kind of mess with people.

If you don’t know, it can you can go, how is that possible is if somebody has previous training experience, which you always see, and if you go look at the go read, when we post the successes, it has their little story. They’ll always talk about, if they have previous training experience, that makes a huge difference because muscle memory is real and you will gain muscle back very quickly if you had it previously there’s a permanent the structure of your muscles have been permanently changed to where you can gain it back much faster.

So if somebody, was into weightlifting for a while, didn’t lift for six months and then got back into it. Yeah. The type of growth that they’re going to see is as if they were on steroids. And so you have that. And then you also have genetics. Some people’s bodies just respond really well to weightlifting and some people’s bodies don’t respond as well.

But so it can be hard when you’re trying to compare, Hey, is this program better than this program or how effective really is this program for building muscle? And I think a better [00:11:00] way to judge any program is just look at it in terms of how much muscle you can build naturally, period. So no program is going to give you, let’s say 30 pounds of muscle in your first year of weightlifting.

It’s just not going to happen. You’d have to have. Really? Like the top 1 percent of 1 percent of genetics or something like that, for that to be possible, the average person that’s guys and girls, even I the average guy can gain, let’s say 20 pounds of muscle in this first year is on the high end.

And to do that, he’s going to have to start out lean. The guys I’ve seen that, that can do that they start out lean, they don’t gain fat. So they’re just a leaner body type. And they manage their diet very carefully the entire time and they keep themselves in a mild surplus. They do not go crazy with their cheating.

They don’t, they really stick to it. And so that allows them to put on fat slowly and gain muscle over a long period of time. So they’re spending a large percentage of that first year in a calorie surplus and they work [00:12:00] hard in the gym. They don’t mess, they don’t miss workouts. They are always pushing every week to try to beat the last week, they work at it.

And those are the people I’ve seen guys that can gain upwards of 20 pounds of muscle. And also, there’s a bit of genetics that if you can gain 20 pounds of muscle in your first year of weightlifting, you are you, your body responds well to weightlifting. You have good genetics for it.

Girls, half that number. So 10 pounds is really like the upper limit. Maybe you could push it to 25 pounds in the first year of muscle guys, and maybe, 13 ish for girls, but those are really the top. You’re not going to get more than that. So if you look at it in that way and you go, okay, so if a program like, let’s say my programs again, I have hundreds of success stories on my website.

I hear from guys every week that gain anywhere from 15 to 20 pounds of muscle in their first year on my program. What more do you want? That’s really I don’t care how fancy you get with the program. I’m not saying my program is the best. There are a lot of different ways to get to that 15, 20 pounds.

And there are a lot of, and we’ll talk about more [00:13:00] other types of splits that can work well as well. But if you’re, if your goal is to get strong and build muscle and you Start with nothing on your weights and then you’re, you dramatically increase your weights by the end of year one and you gain 15, 20 pounds of muscle.

You’re really, I don’t care what else you would have done. You’re not going to get more than that. You’re just not. If we’re talking pure strength, then yes, you would train differently. My programs are not pure strength. Pure strength training programs. They’re a high, in that sense, they’re a hybrid between strength training and bodybuilding because they have you do, have you doing a lot of heavier weightlifting, pure strength training is a lot of, it’s a lot of very heavy weightlifting combined with lighter weightlifting to train in the movement patterns.

And just basically if you want to get stronger on your deadlift, let’s say, You’re going to want to be dead lifting several times a week. That’s just a known that’s known scientifically. That’s been proven in scientific studies. And we just know that anecdotally from how the strongest people in the world have been training now for decades.

Now of course, if you’re going to do that, you have to balance your, [00:14:00] the amount of weight that you’re lifting and the amount of reps that you’re doing, because you can’t just go do, let’s say 10 sets of heavy deadlifts three times a week, you will kill yourself. That’s why good strength training programs are also very recovery focus or recovery oriented where five, three, one is a good start is a good strength training program.

It’s simple. It works. It’s great, especially for beginners and the workouts are relatively short. They’re 25, 30 minute workouts generally speaking, and you’re working up to your max weight and then you’re taking a deload week and those weeks where you’re working up to your max weight, you’re using, it’s submaximal where you’re, let’s say you’re taking 80, 85 percent of your one rep max where you could normally do.

wraps with that is actually a bad example. It’d be more like taking something that you normally could do 10 reps with and doing six reps. So you, it’s a wave type of progression. So if the back to more, the point is if you are, if a program, let’s say you’re looking at the success stories of a program or looking at results on a [00:15:00] program and you’re seeing that guys in their first year of weightlifting is are gaining like five, 10 pounds of muscle.

Then there’s probably some, something’s probably, there’s probably, it could be better. It could be better. It doesn’t mean it’s like a terrible program, but if five pounds of muscle in the first year, that’s a terrible program. 10 pounds is not bad that again can depend on genetics.

It can depend on program on compliance. How are they with their diet? But if you start getting to a program, I’m talking about guys now, girls are just half these numbers. If you see a program where guys are gaining 15 to 20 pounds of muscle in their first year of weightlifting. You’re just, that, that’s about as good as it’s going to get in terms of results.

Is it possible that some other program might have been able to do, give them 22 pounds instead of 20? Maybe. But again, now we’re looking at, very minor, there’s just not much of a margin beyond that, that 20 pound number. So when I, if you’re new to weightlifting, you might be able to get that 15, 20 pounds doing full body workouts and that’s why starting strength is a very [00:16:00] popular program.

That’s why five by five is a very popular program. But you could also get there using something like my program, which is more of a body Part split again, combined with some upper lower work or a straight upper lower type of program. Yeah, you can get there using any of these, any of these types of splits.

And the same then is I guess we’ll talk about beyond beginner. in a second. So just to summarize, if you’re new to weightlifting, a full body workout can get the job done. I don’t, the only thing I don’t really like about full body workouts, even for newer weightlifters is as a natural weightlifter, you need to be emphasizing heavy compound weightlifting.

You know that. And if you try to do a bunch of heavy compound weightlifting for your entire body in one workout, it gets really hard. Really fast. Just go. You could try it sometime. Try doing a few sets, three to four sets of heavy deadlifting, three to four sets of heavy squatting.

And by heavy, I mean something like in the four to six rep range. If you can get six reps, you’re, add more weight. If you can’t get [00:17:00] four it’s too too heavy and and then try after that some heavy bench pressing and heavy military pressing. It’s just, even when you, once you get through the heavy squatting and the heavy deadlifting or heavy deadlifting, heavy squatting you’re just going to be, you’re already going to be feeling drained.

So then when you go into your, heavy benching and heavy military pressing it’s just really tough. It is really hard. And whatever comes later in your workout always suffers from that, that you just don’t have the energy. You’re just fatigued. And it also takes a lot of time, too, because you have to warm up, obviously, everything, and then you need to be resting a few minutes in between these sets.

So you’re going to be in the gym for an hour and a half, two hours to to do all that. So that, that’s my only kind of, that’s my main gripe with full body workouts and it becomes more pronounced as you become more advanced weightlifter because then you really start pushing some heavy weights and especially if you want to be periodizing your training too, which is something you do want to do as you become a more advanced weightlifter.

And that is you want to be now working in, you want to be doing some very heavy lifting like two to three [00:18:00] rep. stuff, some middle range stuff for a six rep and some higher rep stuff like eight to 12 or even higher, depending on what, depending on what your, what program you’re following. So doing that with a full body program, just as not feasible you are not, I can guarantee you, you are not going to be doing some two, three rep.

Dead lifting and squatting and benching and military pressing and more and more, you just can’t get it all done in one workout and one full body workout. And I guess that kind of actually brings me to one other thing that is tricky with full body workouts is balancing the total weekly balancing the intensity and the frequency and volume.

So intensity is the amount of weight that you’re lifting. Frequency is obviously the amount of times that you’re working out and volume is the amount of sets that you’re, or sorry, the amount of reps that you’re doing essentially. Out of all of those, intensity is the least forgiving in that the, when you increase intensity, the other two have to decrease just because you need more recovery time in terms of what it takes to recover from workouts.

You can, if you’re doing low intensity. low weight. You can do quite a bit of frequency. You can train a muscle group several times a week with [00:19:00] low weight using, a high volume type of workout, a lot of reps, and you can get away with that. But as you increase the intensity, the other two have to come down.

And With in terms of what the optimal type of range is there, I’ve written articles about this and there are a couple good reviews that, that go over hundreds of studies on this subject. And basically what the long story short is, if you are emphasizing heavyweight lifting, which you need to be 80, 85 percent of your one rep max and up then the optimal number of reps per major muscle group per week is going to be somewhere around 60 60 to 80 in that range.

And it really depends. Now that’s with the heavy. Heavy weightlifting. If you were doing lighter weightlifting, you could go up to 150, even 180 per week and depending on your body and depending on your diet and depending on your sleep hygiene and blah, blah, blah. You can get away with that in a sense.

You can make that work. But if you are lifting a lot of heavy weight, which you should be doing, you [00:20:00] just have to do a lot less because your body needs more time to recover. And it’s not just your muscles that need to recover. It’s also your central nervous system. Heavy compound weightlifting puts a lot of stress in the central nervous system and needs to recover.

In the same way that muscles need to recover, your body systemically needs to recover. So 60 to 80 heavy reps, that’s 80 to 85 percent of your warmup. One rep max and up is a good place to start per week, per major per major muscle group. So 60 to 80 heavy reps for your pecs for your for your shoulders, for your legs, for your back.

And of course, there’s overlap. Deadlift, the deadlift, for instance, doesn’t just train your back. It also trains a bit of your legs. It’s actually very much opposed to your chain exercise. The bench press doesn’t just train your pecs. It also trains your triceps and it trains your lats and trains your shoulders.

But when you’re looking at what are those What are those exercises really emphasizing? Okay. So the bench press is emphasizing obviously the pecs and there’s a bit of overlap. So in terms [00:21:00] of if it’s hard to, it’s hard to really say with that overlap how many of those chest reps are being counted as shoulder reps?

And you don’t, in, in my experience working with a lot of people and getting a ton of success stories, you don’t have to. If you are, again, coming back to, if you’re giving each major muscle group around 60 heavy reps per week with an exercise that really targets that area, you’re going to do well.

And the frequency is not as important. Really frequency. You can think of the frequency as a tool for hitting your, that weekly volume. There are benefits to training just body parts just once a week. Be, one benefit is then you can really just focus on that body part because if you’re going to, if you’re going to split everything up until let’s say an upper lower split and this is getting into an upper lower split now where you’re going to do your upper body and lower body.

Okay.

Again, this can work well, there are a lot of good upper, lower programs out there. And there’s nothing wrong with that approach. The only thing that I personally don’t like about it is that means you’re going to be doing heavy [00:22:00] benching and heavy military pressing in the same workout and whichever one comes second is going to suffer a little bit.

Your performance is going to suffer a little bit in terms of how much weight you can lift. And, if you would have done. The other one first, then that one would have, you would have been a bit stronger on that. And, that some programs account for that by just swapping the exercises every week.

And that is, so let’s say week one, you start with your bench week two, you start with your military press and then vice for in just alternates like that and that’s a way of doing it. And, on the lower, obviously the problem is do you squatter deadlift first because whichever one that comes second is going to suffer a little bit.

But this is a minor point. I wouldn’t say this is a point that makes upper lower splits bad at all. And one benefit. Of increasing frequency is, and I mentioned this earlier is it’s better for strength purposes, for pure strength purposes. You, the more frequently you do the movement, the better you’re going to get at it.

That’s just like anything, any physical activity, the more you do it, the better you get. And that also applies. This is more on a neural neuromuscular level where it’s teaching your muscles. [00:23:00] To get better at, you’re teaching them this movement and then they’re going to improve their efficiency at it over time.

And and also even form, the more you do something, the more you’re going to get the form and four makes a big difference. Good form, certain depending on the exercise and depending on what aspects of form we’re talking about can be the different, you can fix something in your form and jump 10 percent in or 5 percent in the weight you can lift just by fixing form.

So yeah, that’s Jen that’s how upper lowers are generally laid out. I don’t there, I don’t know if there are any really popular upper lowers that like, starting strength is the most popular full body. I don’t know. Nothing comes to mind. Of course, there’s like lane Norton’s fat program is a fairly popular, or at least it’s a known upper lower, and it’s a good program.

The only. thing that I’ve come across with that program is it’s really hard. Like you’re doing a lot every week. And I, if you’re in a calorie deficit, forget it. No way. You are not going to be running that program as it’s laid out on any calorie deficit. And There’s a whole school of thought when you’re in a calorie deficit [00:24:00] that you only need to really lift weights two or three times a week.

And I understand that it’s actually for muscle maintenance purposes, then that’s very true. You don’t need to be doing more than three workouts a week. You could do three full body workouts. You could do, push, pull legs or an upper lower with a supplementary day and maintain your muscle while you’re cutting the.

And I would say that makes sense. If you’re basically at a point where you’re, you have a couple of years of weightlifting in your belt, you’re not going to be building muscle and a calorie deficit anyway, and you don’t mind me. I enjoy working out. It’s like a, just a good way to start my day.

So there’s a benefit there regardless of anything that happens, aesthetically to my body. So if you don’t mind, just missing workouts and also, weightlifting burns quite a bit of calories too. There’s quite a bit of a, you’re burning calories while you’re doing it and then there’s that afterburn type effect.

For increasing energy expenditure, I like. Just when I’m cutting, lifting weights for that reason, because I enjoy weightlifting more than cardio. So if I need to be burning a certain amount of energy [00:25:00] and of course diet comes into play too, but you only can cut your calories so far. So there’s a point where you have to move more and I prefer to go lift weights than, go walking for an hour a day or go do more hit cardio or something like that.

And you can definitely Lift weights four or five times a week when you’re in a deficit and not overtrain again, you just have to keep your reps, like I was talking about. You want to keep them, still in that 60 range and keep doing your heavy lifting. And and yeah you’ll be fine.

And keep your cardio low. Keep it, an hour and a half max, two hours a week. I recommend hit. And don’t have your calorie deficit be too large, high protein dieting, eat plenty of carbs, all the good, all that stuff that you already know I always talk about and you’ll do fine. So back to this upper lower, a program like fat is not made for a calorie deficit in my opinion.

It’s made for a calorie surplus. And even then I’ve heard from quite a few guys that have tried to run that program in a surplus. And just, it just beat the shit out of them. They just had by after a couple months, [00:26:00] they weren’t sleeping. Their mood was all messed up. They were tired throughout the day.

Just typical type of symptoms of where they’re going into overtraining territory. And yeah, If obviously they can do though, take some rest, let their body recover and they might have been able to run another, make another go of it. But that’s the only thing that I really have to say about fat is that it’s very hard.

Just know that. And there are upper lowers that are similar in that you do, you have a heavy upper heavy lower day and then you have a lighter, upper light, lighter, lower day. That’s the basic layout of most upper lower splits. But just lower volume. That’s really the where fat.

That’s what makes it so hard is their high volume workouts, both the heavy workouts and the lighter workouts are very high volume and you’re doing a lot of compound weightlifting. Anyways that’s the only the only downside to upper lowers again, in my experience is whichever exercise is coming after the first, which as you get, as you get deeper into those workouts, it gets, it just gets harder to do [00:27:00] what you need to do.

And you have to make sure that you are not going overboard on the on the volume if you’re lifting, if you’re doing the heavy lifting. And then, so we have a push pull legs split is not really, it’s it’s a, it’s, so you have push, which is upper, and then you’re splitting your lower into pulling and pushing.

Squatting essentially for this purpose of what I was really, it’s because of what I was saying is that if you’re trying to do your entire lower body in one workout, the further you get into it, the harder and harder it gets to lift as much as you possibly can. So by splitting the deadlifting and squatting into different workouts as heavy deadlifting is just really.

Tiring. It’s just hard. Three to four heavy sets of deadlifts and you’re, you’re not feeling as energetic as you were just 10 minutes ago. So it’s splitting those up. And there again, there, there’s there, I don’t know of any this push pull legs program, there are just like the standard push pull legs out there where it goes, push pull legs, rest, push pull legs, rest, et cetera, et cetera.[00:28:00] 

In speaking with people that run those types of programs and I haven’t run that program myself. I just know that again, you can run into overtraining issues. If you’re in a calorie surplus and you have you’ve been weightlifting for a while and you have good genetics, you might not run into that, but I know a lot of people that have.

So then the. the little changes, push, pull legs rest, push, pull legs rest, or, push, pull or basically every five days, there are three weightlifting days and two rest days. And it you can put those rest days in how you want. I would recommend, so you can push and pull and that, and then, back to back and you’re fine.

I would personally like to have a day of rest in between my pulling in my legs just to give my legs a break from the deadlifting. So I’m not going straight into heavy squatting the next day. So I would probably go push, pull, rest, legs, rest, and then repeat. And again, this is a totally workable split.

And I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily better than an upper lower. It does have a little bit of an advantage there and that you are splitting your lower. But some people, [00:29:00] they, they don’t mind the, what, just alternating and working through their upper lower days and moving different exercises.

Cause really the core of any good program is going to be the compound list. And that’s really what you want to see progress on, good weightlifting programs are always built deadlifting, military pressing, bench pressing, dumbbell pressing, stuff like that. And then they have. It’s supplementary exercises that you do in addition to that, because you can get a bit more out of that muscle group, than just three sets of workout.

It’s not, it does the, it’s not Jim, it doesn’t progress linearly. It’s not three sets of an exercise are not necessarily, three times, it’s not necessarily three times more effective as one set. There’s, but. Three sets of an exercise is more effective than one set and six sets for a muscle group, especially when we’re talking now different muscles that are involved.

And cause the deadlift for instance, yes, it does hit everything in your back. And that’s why it’s a great exercise. But now you have some individual muscle groups like your lats, for instance if you want to have good lats, you’re [00:30:00] going to have to do a bit more very, it’s very likely you’re gonna have to do a bit more like you’re gonna have to do some pull ups and wide grip pull ups and some or, barbell rows are good and things like that to, to, to where you’re starting to, I wouldn’t say you’re, it’s not the barbell row is an isolation exercise, but it’s going or the wide grip pull up is an isolation exercise.

But it’s going to do more for your lats than deadlifting probably will. So I would say both upper and lower and push pull legs splits are really, good for everybody as you get more advanced, you will find them harder once again, because of how much weight you’re going to be lifting.

And especially if you’re trying to periodize your training, you’re going to find it very hard. You just will an upper. Even at upper lower, like I was saying with full body periodization, no way, it’s just not going to happen. Upper lower periodization, depending on how you’re periodizing is just very hard as well.

So that’s something to keep in mind. Now coming to the body part split, which I already talked a bit about earlier. Where chest day, back day, legs day, shoulders day. It’s not that this split has a bad reputation among the fitness guru type of a crowd. [00:31:00] And for a good reason, it’s earned that bad reputation because there are a lot of bad programs out there that use body parts splits, but the body parts split itself is not necessarily bad.

If the weekly volume is good. If you’re lifting heavy weights, if you’re doing the right exercises and if the days are laid out well, there are some advantages and it is really my favorite approach is is a, like I said, it’s a hybrid. We have a body part split with a little bit of extra work for lagging body parts.

So you get a little bit of increased frequency on the body parts that need a little bit more. Work, but you are primarily focusing on one major muscle group per day. And the reason why I like that is because it allows you to really get as much work done on that muscle group by doing it that way.

So like when you have a chest day, you are going to move the most weight on your chest. Bench pressing and your dumbbell pressing doing it like that as opposed to an upper body day where your shoulders are also now going to need work. And then any shoulder [00:32:00] work you do is going to take away a bit from your chest work and vice versa.

And shoulders, another good example, it takes a lot of work to build good shoulders. And you want as much, you could say energy, or you want to be able to move as much weight as possible for each of your major muscle groups. And the body part split has that as an advantage. It also has an advantage When it comes to periodization, because you can actually, especially different ways to periodize, literally where you’re doing just, let’s say you’re working in the four to six rep range for a month or two months and then you’re moving up to six to eight and then for a month or two and then eight to 10 for a month or two, you can do it like that.

The only thing I don’t like about that is the periods, it tends to detrain the rep ranges you’re not working in. So you’re, the higher rep ranges are more of a muscle endurance rep range. In terms of muscle growth, there is the cellular fatigue aspect, but the heavier lifting is going to deliver a bit more in terms of muscle growth due to muscle damage and due to, Progressive overload.

It’s easier to progressively overload your muscles with heavier weights than it is higher up weights. It just [00:33:00] is if you’re working in a 10 to 12 rep range, getting, trying to going for 13 reps with that weight or 14 reps and then trying to beat that by rep beat that by rep. Yeah, you can’t. Oops.

Yeah, you can do that. It’s just with the amount of muscle burn and fatigue that you’re dealing with. I find it hard to even, it’s just it’s hard to know to really, could you have gotten one more rep maybe? Whereas when you’re lifting heavier weights, it’s very clear. You either are going to get that rep or you’re not.

So the heavier lifting is, that’s why. One of the reasons why I just recommend it really, you really emphasize it. And so another way to periodize in a way that I like to periodize is where you’re training each rep range in each workout. Some programs train different rep ranges in different days of the week.

So you’re not going, let’s say a month or two without ever doing a two to three rep set or a four to six rep set. And that’s, I think that’s a good way to periodize as well. But what I personally like the most is in each workout, you’re doing some two, three rep work, some [00:34:00] four to six rep work, and maybe some eight to 10 or 10 to 12 rep work.

So every workout you’re training all rep ranges. And so none of no, no rep ranges get left behind in a sense. And when you’re training like that a body part and you want to be training. All of your muscles like that. So you want to be doing very heavy work for your bench pressing, for your military pressing, for your squatting, for your deadlifting, you want to be doing that every week.

A body part split lends itself well to that because on your chest day, for instance, good. So you can do your heavy bench pressing and move on to your other stuff for your chest. And you’re not trying to, in the same workout, doing very heavy chest work and very heavy shoulder work, which again, you just run into even more of that issue of whichever, you comes the further you get into your workout, the less able you are to do it.

As well as you could, if that muscle group, if the muscle groups were separated, same thing goes for very heavy deadlifting and very heavy squatting in the same workout. It’s just very hard and hard. It’s not bad. In the So in the bigger picture, what we’re, what we really want to see is we want to see [00:35:00] progression on our big lifts.

And I find that when you can really focus just on one muscle group, the progression can, especially when you’re an advanced weightlifter, when you, once you’re in your, you’ve gotten your first year and a half under your belt and now you really have to grind out, you have to work hard.

As a guy in your second year, if you gain 10 pounds of muscle, you’ve done well. As a girl, it’s half that five year three, if you’re, if you can gain seven ish as a guy, half that as a girl, you’ve done well. And you’re four and on, you’re looking at three to five pounds a year and that’s doing well.

If I wanted to, I’m not really trying to just get bigger, but. If I wanted to gain another three pounds of muscle that would mean that I would start bulking and I really had probably have to drag, I try to run that bulk for a good six months probably. And then I would cut for two months to get back to, around 10 percent and then I would bulk for the rest of the years and then maybe I could hit that three pounds and that’s like working hard.

So you know just know that once you get into that intermediate phase, everything is everything changes in terms of [00:36:00] the newbie phase. You have to work very hard and you have to be very strict in your diet. Diet becomes very important, hitting your numbers, making sure that you are seeing the changes that you need to see in your measurements and on the scale.

If you’re bulking, making sure that you are slowly gaining weight, your measurements are slowly improving, you are getting stronger. Yes, you’re going to be getting fatter as well, but it shouldn’t be a rat. It’s going to be a slow progression of everything. If you’re cutting, then again you don’t want to dick around with a small deficit that’s going to mess with your muscle growth.

So you’re not going to really, you’re not going to gain muscle, but you’re not going to lose fat fast enough. So then a cut that should have taken two months takes four months because you just weren’t really watching your numbers and, or your weekends were too crazy or whatever. So when you’re in that.

When you enter that phase, then that’s also where periodization is very helpful because now you’re strong enough to for a few reasons, one you’re, you should know form well enough now to where you can comfortably handle heavy weights. So you could comfortably do two to three rep, squats, deadlifts, bench press, [00:37:00] military press and not hurt yourself.

Whereas if you’re new to weightlifting and you try to jump right into that, there’s a. a higher chance that you’re going to get hurt just because you’re not familiar with the exercise yet. You don’t know the movements yet. And then with higher up stuff, you can make better use of it because you’re strong.

Now you can actually move some weights that matter for those high reps, as opposed to, little baby weights that are just not going to do much in the way of stimulating muscle growth. So that’s where I think a body part split and Again, it has to be a well designed body part split.

And again, my programs are not saying they’re the best design. I’m not saying the best ever. I don’t think there’s any program that’s like really perfect or best ever, but my programs are sensibly. They’re laid out sensibly and they work. You can just go look at the hundreds of success stories and that’s so like bigger than you’re stronger.

For instance again, you’re doing. You have you have a chest day and which is a lot of heavy, a lot of heavy pressing. You have your back day, which is a lot of heavy pulling. And then you have your arms day, [00:38:00] which a lot of also people say you don’t need to train arms. And I disagree.

If you want to build arms, if you want to build your arms, then as quickly as possible, you definitely should be doing some direct, like you need to be doing some sets directly for your biceps and triceps. Yes, heavy compound with lifting will grow your arms, but they will grow faster if you also do some work for them, especially if it’s heavy work.

And then you’re doing an upper body day, which is some higher rep bench pressing, some lower weight bench pressing, and some heavy shoulders. And and then you’re doing some leg training. So you’re doing some squatting. So you’re too big, lower body days are your deadlift day and your squats are separated.

So you can really, hit both of them as hard as possible and doing a little bit of extra. Shoulder work for the, particularly for the side delts because they take a lot of work. They’re just it’s a small muscle group that makes a big difference in terms of the visual appeal and thinner, leaner, stronger is laid out a little bit differently.

You’re doing a bit of extra lower body work and butt works. You’re doing some [00:39:00] additional lower body and butt work on your pull day and you’re doing some additional butt work on your legs day. So that type of body part split, when you combine it with proper weights, you’re lifting heavy weights, proper exercises proper weekly volume and proper rest, it works and it works well.

So don’t. Believe when people say that a body parts split doesn’t work, they’re really, I wouldn’t say you can’t really say that there’s any split that doesn’t work. There are some times out there, there’s some programs out there where you’re doing one workout every 10 to 12 days and that’s very high intensity, high volume type of workout.

And there are people that will get results from that program. I think it’s very limited and it’s not something you could do forever. And then there are, programs that would have you be doing very low volume workouts very frequently, and you can get results from those too.

So it’s not, there is no program that quote unquote just doesn’t work, that flat out doesn’t work. Now, we’re, we want to Optimized though, we want to get the [00:40:00] most out of our time. Yeah. So I think that’s everything that you should know about workout splits and frequency and volume intensity and how they all kind of work together.

And I’ll be putting together on muscle for life. I’ll put together some upper lower splits and some push pull leg splits. I have. But I think make a good post just to give some examples of different well designed, a well designed full body, a well designed push, pull legs, upper, lower body part.

Just so you know, people can give things, can try things. And that’s really, there’s nothing, it’s funny because sometimes you will email me almost, thinking that I would be upset that they’re trying this other program. And not at all. You should try different programs.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Again, because. with programs that are well designed it’s not really, it’s hard to say which one is definitively better. And some of it does come down to what do you like doing more and what do you find your body responds better to. And some people’s bodies do respond better to let’s say higher volume type of where maybe [00:41:00] something like I was saying lay Norton’s upper lower.

Where there are, I can remember hearing from a couple of guys that could just get away with crazy high volume, crazy high weights every week, just genetic genetic freaks for weightlifting. I don’t know what to say. You know what I mean? So that stuff is out there. So yeah, look for that. Coming up on MFL, I’ll put something together and you.

Find it helpful. All right. So that’s today’s episode. I hope you liked it. Hit me up, let me know, email, social media, how to find me and I’ll see you next week.2