Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2892: Upper Lower Split Workout | How to Build Muscle 4 Days a Week

Episode Date: July 2, 2026

In this episode the guys break down their brand new MAPS Upper Lower program — a classic four day bodybuilder split designed for people who want to shape, sculpt and build their body with more volume than a full body routine but without the intensity of programs like MAPS Aesthetic. They cover why the upper lower split is one of their personal favorite ways to train, how the three phase structure prevents plateaus, why the final phase ends with a five by five strength focus, and why they built separate men's and women's versions with different priority lifts. MAPS Upper Lower: ⁠ https://mapsupperlower.com⁠ Code: LAUNCH for 40% off. Includes male and female programs, workout videos, exercise demos, coaching videos and live coaching with Cole. At home dumbbell version included. SPONSORS Olipop: ⁠ https://drinkolipop.com/mindpump⁠ Buy any two cans of Olipop in store (any flavor, any retailer) and they will pay you back for one. New flavors: Blackberry Vanilla and Raspberry Sherbet. New can designs. LINKS Mind Pump Store: ⁠ https://mindpumpstore.com⁠ Maps Fitness Products: ⁠ https://mapsfitnessproducts.com⁠ Instagram: @mindpumpmedia 0:00 - Intro 2:08 - Introducing MAPS Upper Lower — what it is and who it's for 3:32 - Why the upper lower split produces great results and how it differs from full body 9:02 - Phase breakdown — rep schemes, set structures and why the program ends with five by five 16:20 - Why the final phase ends heavy instead of starting heavy like MAPS Anabolic 18:38 - Men's vs. women's versions — shoulder priority, glute priority and why they're different 20:10 - At home version and what equipment you need 21:11 - Live coaching with Cole 

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump. Mind Pump with your hosts. Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded Fitness, Health, and Entertainment Podcast. This is Mind Pump. Brand new Maps program. Brand new launch.

Maps, upper, lower. It's a classic bodybuilder split. You want to build your body, sculpt your body, shape your body, and you like to work out. It's a four-day split. You're in the gym. or working at home four days a week, upper lower, day off, upper lower. That's how the split breaks down.

By the way, this program comes with an at-home version. If you just have dumbbells, you can also follow the program. But if you have a well-equipped home gym with a barbell and squat rack, then you can follow the program as well as it's laid out. Comes with the men and women's version, so the program is a little bit different. Women like to focus more on glutes,

a little bit more on shoulder versus chest. Guys, you get the classic breakdown. This program has workout demos, exercise demo, coaching videos. And if you sign up now, you get it for 40% off. Plus you get live coaching with our personal trainer,

our mind pump personal trainer here, Cole. So here's how you sign up. Go to Maps, upper lower.com, use the code launch, get the 40% off discount and the live coaching

in this episode is brought to by Ollie Pop. So Ollie Pop tastes like the soda as you had when you were a kid. They're delicious. But they're also very low in sugar. 50 calories per can.

High in, fiber. They're good. They taste good and they're good. Well, I like them because I think they're good for me. A lot better than soda, that's for sure. And they have all kinds of crazy, amazing flavors. They have traditional flavors. But then they have something like raspberry cream. I had one earlier. It tastes like a lollipop or like a popcicle when I was a kid. But again, 50 calories. So if you like drinking soda, you don't want the sugar. You don't want the calories. Here's what you do. Go to drink olipop.com slash mind pump. By the way, you can get a free can of olipop. If you buy any two cans of olipop,

the store, they'll pay you back for one. It works on any flavor, any retailer. All right, here comes the show. All right, real quick, if you love us like we love you, why not show it by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over at mindpumpstore.com. I'm talking right now, hit pause, head on over to mindpump store.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. All right, everybody, we have a brand new Maps program. It's Maps upper, lower. This is a classic bodybuilder split. A lot of you guys have been asking for this

and we think this will fill the need. It's a great program. We're talking all about it today and give you guys the breakdown of what this program includes. This is our first true four day

a week split program. Yes. So the reason why we created this besides demand, right? People ask for certain things is we have we have great full body muscle building programs, right?

Like maps, anabolic, classic, you know, muscle building, full body routine. Right? Then we have like high voluble volume full body and high volume splits. We have maps split, very high volume, maps aesthetic, very high volume.

Not appropriate for most people. So a lot of people are like, oh, I want to do that program, but it's just too much for most people. It doesn't produce great results with them because they just can't recover from it. Now, if you're advanced, they're great programs. But what we didn't have was kind of a moderate bodybuilder split. We have a good beginner bodybuilder split with PPL, which we released relatively recently, right?

It was, what, a few months ago? Yes, this is a good follow-up to that. And PPL is super popular. It's a three-day bodybuilder split, push-pull legs. And so this is like a little bit of another step, right? It's an additional day a week, a little bit more volume, but still in the same vein of that kind of bodybuilder split type routine. So if you like routines that are kind of body-builder-focused where you can shape, sculpt a body, and you want more volume than three days a week. But you don't want the crazy volume of, let's say, split or aesthetic.

this is a great in the middle. Well, this would be, like, to Justin's point, this would be a great follow-up to PPL. Yes. And we did just release that not long ago. So hopefully people that are finishing up with that, if you really like PPL, this is a great follow. Keep it going.

Keep that momentum going. I think this would be a great program to follow right afterwards. Yeah. And this is a split. I've done this type of split many, many times. This is actually one of my favorite ways of train. Same here.

So I like, PPL is always just classic, right? Push-pull legs, very, very classic, kind of first-time split. This upper lower was one of my favorites. I did do the single body part splits at one point, but they never produced the same kind of results. As like this kind of upper, lower allows me to kind of hit the body twice a week, but breaking it up into the upper and lower body.

And four days a week allows you three days of recovery. And I always got really great results with routines like this. Yeah, I'd say I started off my journey in the bodybuilder, one muscle group per workout type of a split. then realize how valuable the full body routine was. And then I'd say this is kind of where I landed, like afterwards. I run more of a Map 15 type of protocol these days. But for the, I'd say the beginning of mind pump and a lot of what my training looks like now,

if I run some sort of a split, it would look up or lower. I find I need a little extra oomph for leg day. And so it gives me that kind of, break the toggle. Like I feel like I can get up and do upper any, any time, doesn't gas me as much. Legs take a lot out of me, deadlifting and squatting and lunging and doing movements like that. And so I feel like I get this, like I can get after it in that day.

And then I have like a day where of rest or a day of upper body where it's much easier for me to motivate myself to get there. I find that easier. And so I like this a lot. Yeah, I like, so full body routines are great. They work for most people. but when you're progressing and you're applying progressive overload, which can look like more weight on the bar or more wraps or more volume.

So a lot of people don't know that or don't realize that progressive overload also applies to more volume. When appropriate, adding another set is one way of getting the muscles to grow. And the data shows us clearly. The three ways that I listed are the main ways that you'll see in the data that signal or trigger or cause. hypertrophy, muscle growth. And what happens with the full body split, once you start to progress, is adding more volume to the routine

can get a bit tedious. If you're training the whole body in a workout, it could very easily turn into an hour and a half, you know, two hour workout. Yeah. Especially if you're resting it long. Especially if you're resting two or three minutes

in between sets, you know, to maximize strength gains. And so when that happens, it makes sense to split the body up into upper and lower. So now you can do more volume and the workout's taking you, you know, 45 minutes to an hour and 10 minutes versus, you know, an hour and a half to two hours. Well, I think, too, that's a lot of the appeals. Like, you can really emphasize certain body parts and muscles and really stay there, you know, and like really, especially legs and really build and develop that strength in legs. I haven't devoted a whole day to that sometimes.

That's super beneficial. I turned a lot of clients on this, too. So I had a lot of clients that wanted to come to the gym more than just three days who we. week. And so I found what it looked like was a lot of times I trained upper and a lower with them. And then they trained them. They repeated those. Yeah, they're really advanced ones. Uh-huh. And so I did do a lot of clients with upper lower. So this is, I like that we wrote this because I know we hadn't written anything like this yet. It is a tool. It is a programming that I, I utilize myself a lot. And I did use with clients a lot. So if you like going to the gym, going in the gym,

four days a week, and it's a little bit less taxing to your point than the full body. I love this split. It also puts you in the gym an extra day a week over a full body routine. And for me personally, and this, I mean,

this doesn't have a lot of backing in terms of what it can produce in terms of results, but in terms of feel, it feels pretty awesome to do an upper body day, to feel a pump in your entire upper body. Yeah, you're going to really get a good pump this way.

Yeah, like chest and back and delton arms, all feel really pumped. And for those people who want to develop their lower body, to feel the entire lower body. That's another great point that I, I feel like this is why I like this too, is still the bodybuilder in me likes the pump feeling.

And I don't get that with the full body routine the same way. No, no. Full body is, you're hitting so much of everything. And you're only doing so many sets for each muscle group that I don't feel like I get as much of a pump where when if I just cut the, split the body in half from all upper body or all lower body, I definitely walk out with a pump in the lower body or the upper body.

And so I still do like and enjoy it. Now, I want to talk a little bit about the breakdown of how the program is phased. So all maps programs, if you follow any maps program, you'll notice that they're all broken up into phases, meaning these are kind of mini cycles within the whole program. So the whole program, you know, maybe, let's say, nine weeks or 12 weeks, depending on the program that you get. But the program itself is broken up.

into kind of mini programs. Now, they're not many programs in the sense that they're radically different, but rather the rep scheme and the sets can change and the exercises can change a bit with the same ultimate focus. So the ultimate focus of upper lower, maps upper lower, is to shape, sculpt and build the body. It's definitely a bodybuilding routine. So it's not a powerlifting routine. It's not one for athletic performance.

It's for building the body and shaping a sculpt like a bodybuilder would. And so that's the, ultimate focus of the program, but it's broken up into three different phases. And each phase is a little bit different. And each phase, the reason why we phase programs is because it helps prevent plateaus. The body starts to adapt to a particular style or rep scheme of training and shifting out of that while maintaining focus on the ultimate goal, which in this case is kind of that bodybuilding shape and scope focus, helps prevent things like nagging injuries, keeps things fresh. and exciting, but it also helps prevent plateaus.

The body tends to progress better when we start to mix with things or mess with things every few weeks. And so this program, like other maps programs, has three phases. And I want to discuss a little bit of the breakdown of each of these phases. Before you get into that, I think it's important to, we haven't talked about this in a while since you brought up the whole phasing in three weeks. you have to talk a little bit about why three weeks, because especially for any of our peers or research nuts around,

like the body adapting, and what most of the studies show for like that. And why three weeks? Why not four to six, which is what a lot of studies will show? So I think that's important to explain the logic to that, because this is something admittedly I got from you that is different than how I originally. program myself. And I remember when you first explained it to me, the logic behind it makes a lot of sense why you would do that, even though traditionally when I would program for myself, a lot of

stuff looks like a four to six week type of phase versus a three week phase. No, it's a good question. So this is more, this applies more to the programming and not necessarily to exercises. Sometimes people confuse it to. So like, okay, barbell squats, you know, like the big three or like the big compound lifts or the main moving. type of lifts. I thought I was supposed to do those all time. Does that mean I stopped doing them after three weeks and switch to something completely different? No. It's very important that you continue

to practice continually the main lifts. And of course, you inject in auxiliary lifts or you alternate kind of how you apply them or variations of them so you avoid injury. But those stay very consistent. But what does change are things like rep ranges and maybe set schemes

do change. And the reason why you change them every three weeks is because what we want to avoid is a plateau. We want to change before the body plateaus. It's much easier to do that than hit a plateau, try to back out, and then try to get the body to move again. And what you tend to see is that plateaus tend to kick in around week five or six, maybe higher.

And every three weeks, you just kind of avoid that. And the body tends to progress a little bit better that way. And so then the follow-up question of that for some people might be that, well, then why not change it every single day or every single week then? Too quickly. Yeah. Yeah, good question. Too quickly because you want a period of time to get your body to acclimate and then to get the results from that particular rep range, for example. So if I change it up so often that my body's never really getting used to it so that I can really push intensity, drive the weight, whatever, then I'm also missing the gains.

So it's a bit of a balance. Yeah, you want it to be measurable at the end of the day, too, to be able to see and point back like I was making progress. and then you want to like adjust it so you can keep making progress. So that's sort of the sweet spot. Totally. And so here's how it's kind of broken down. So it's a four-day-down. So it's a four-day-off, two days in a row, two days-in-a-row, two days off.

So during the week, it may look something like Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. Okay. So you're hitting up or lower, a day off, up or lower again, two days off, start the week again, and you're ready to go. And so typically what you see is week over week, you'll see progress. whereas the second workout in the week, not so much, not as much rest, but we're sending that signal, boom,

two days rest, you come back, you get really good, you start to see this progress. As far as the set and rep ranges, I'll go over what they are, and we can kind of talk about why they are the way they are. The first phase is typically the exercise are about three sets each,

depending on the exercise, can be as little as two. And we're going eight to ten reps. Eight to ten reps is a good rep range, nice, moderate rep range. It's not super heavy, not super light. Great for muscle building.

Then we get into phase two. We don't change it a lot, but we do up the reps to 10 to 12. Now, remember, it's a bodybuilding routine, so we are going to keep the reps a little bit higher. So phase two, 10 to 12. Then we get to phase three, and here's where it gets fun.

Now it's five sets of five. Now it's five by five. Someone may be wondering, why do five by five at the end and not at the beginning? For example, MAPS Anabolic, one of our flagship programs,

starts with a heavy low rep phase and then ends with a higher rep phase. Now, there was a strategy for that. The strategy was to show people strength gains right out the gates. That's just full disclosure. Okay. Now, there is a downside to it, which is this. When you're following a program, there is something known as cumulative stress that builds up over time.

One of the downsides of going heavy, low rep, then moderate, than high rep, is that cumulative stress builds, builds, builds, builds, builds. With this program maps up or lower, the accumulative stress actually reduces a little bit because low wraps don't have the same effect on the body when it comes to recovery. So you'll actually hit the end of this program, hitting PRs and feeling really, really strong.

I also like training this way personally for myself because I don't need to convince myself the benefits that come from strength training and five-by-five building. I think this program attracts somebody who's, I wouldn't say, you don't have to be an advance lifter to this, but you're not a brand new novice lifter. And the anabolic was designed.

That's why I love when you did that. I saw what you were doing. When we've talked about this, when we talked about it when we relaunched anabolic, that you know, you're trying to show the average client, which was for us, mostly women,

we had a lot of female clients, total results and get them bought into the programming right away. And so showing them a five by five in the first phase was a brilliant way to do that. Now, when I think of somebody who's already bought in, knows that strength training. That's right.

I like training with a higher rep, first. And a lot of that is getting in the rhythm, getting the technique, getting the pump, getting, getting on my body. Yeah, a lot of practice into it. And then working up to, okay, I'm feeling good. I'm in a rhythm. Now let's really load and see how what I get out of it. I personally like to train this. Yeah, same here. So this is like, again, this is like a moderate to advanced amount of volume and training for the average person. So you're not like a competitive bodybuilder and you've advanced beyond like a PPL type of volume. Now are you doing this, four-day split in doing this.

We also did something with this program that we had only done with one or two of the programs before and it was super popular, which is this. We altered the programming a bit for both men and women. And here's why. Here's what we found. And we discovered this when we wrote Maps Muscle Mommy. Men and women respond the same to strength training.

Be very clear, okay? Strength training application is the same for men and women. There's no different exercise or different way of training. You both build muscle the same way. burn body fat the same way. And it used to annoy us when people would tell us, create a program just for women or create a program just for men. And we just kind of put it off, put it off, put it off.

Like, that's dumb. Everybody trains the same way. It all works the same. But then this occurred to us. Women and men tend to have different parts of the body that they prefer to focus on, that they want to develop more or less of. And this is true for both men and for women. For example, in training the upper body,

women tend to want more shoulder development than chest development. It's just very common when a woman trains. Lower body, women are more interested in glutes than guys are than quads. Guys are a little bit more interested in and I want to get a heavy squat. I think I want more quad development. And so those are just two examples of how we kind of change the programming. So for example, what you'll find in the women's version is on upper body day, traditionally what you'll find in bodybuilding routines is if you're training the whole upper body,

chest goes before shoulders. This is a very classic programming. Okay, very classic standard muscle building programming. It's like you go chest before shoulders. Why? Because your chest pressing movements involve the shoulders. Why fatigue the shoulders? Your takeaway strength from the chest, not a good idea.

However, it is a good idea. If you're more interested in developing your delts, then you are developing your pecs. And so in the women's programming, you see this priority in the programming. You also see this with the lower body. Typically, you wouldn't do heavy, you wouldn't place in a heavy emphasis on heavy hip thrusts

over things like a squat or a front squat or something like that. But you would if glutes are really important. Same thing with hamstrings. Hamstrings tend to be more value to women than quads. And so what we did in this program is we have a men's version and a women's version with the programming is just slightly different based off of what men and women are interested in in terms of how they look and what they want to develop.

It only took us 10 years to find that. I just showed you how stubborn we are because I think we're trainers. Well, yeah, to your point that, you know, early on when we would hear, you know, that there's a program for women, a program for men. I know we used to get really frustrated and scoff at that because it's like, to your point, I trained all my female clients on all the movements that I train male clients on. Same rules apply. Yeah, and the same rules apply for building muscle and burning body fat. but there is something to be said about that my female clients did tend to like different focuses. And so I absolutely would do different things.

Yeah, I would do different things. And I would prioritize certain things in the workouts specific to an individualized to each. Now, I do that individualized for every individual client. But there are some general things that my female clients tend to like more or want to focus on more. And there tend to be stuff that my guys were. And so that's the modification of the tweak here. There's not huge radical differences. when you look at it.

There's adjustments to it. Yeah. They're very, very similar programs. There is just a little bit of a twist on, okay, if I was taking a female through this, here's the areas. If she would want different, this is probably where it would be. Yeah, and we've also learned over the years, too, to include the at-home version as people, like,

although this program definitely is going to appeal more towards people that are in a commercial type-setting gym and, you know, somewhere in that regard. Like we've made sure to put in there a blueprint at home just so that way. Oh, yeah. You have that kind of convenience kind of built in. And so we've tried to kind of go back and really do that with all of our programs going forward. Yeah. So this program, like what Justin's saying, so if you have a basic home gym, first of all,

if you have a full home gym, you do the full program. Okay. You know, barbell, squat rack, the whole deal. But if you just have dumbbells and a bench, you can also follow maps up or lower because we have blueprints where they're, you know, the program is written in a way to where that's all you need. So this is very at home friendly as well, even if you don't have a full gym. Now it comes with, like all of our maps programs, workout videos and exercise demos.

Okay, so you go on the program, you see an exercise like a dumbbell pull over. You can click on it. Boom, there's a demonstration of how to do the exercise. It also comes with coaching videos where we get on there and we talk to you about technique and form and frequently ask questions that people ask when following your program. program like this. And this is something new that we've added for the last two new programs that we've released that is really popular, really helpful. When you sign up for maps up or lower, you also get live coaching with one of our trainers, Cole. And Cole is one of our top trainers.

And he gets on a Zoom with people who signed up. And he really helps people with elements that are not found in the program. Yeah, he covers a lot of questions that people typically have when they're kicking the program off. A lot of it's related to diet and intensity and choosing weight and all the questions that you can think about that you might be uncertain of when you get started on this program, even if you've listened to the podcast for a long time. And so having him help guide those people and kick them off on their program is we've heard we've had tremendous feedback. And so it's something that we've only been doing now for what, maybe six months or so. Super. And it's worked out really well. But we've the feedback. People are more consistent, getting better

results because they get some coaching. And so that was. start right away too. So the audience knows this was the desired outcome or the purpose behind this is one of the things that we can see is not only can we see obviously every individual that purchase is a program but we can actually see how often

they open or have logged into something and one of the things that can be discouraging and we know this from personal training for so many years that a lot of people you know sign up to the gym or have you know great intentions and then the follow through the falloff is typically more than

half of the people don't follow through. And so we see that same type of pattern in the maps programs. And so like a big focus for us this year was like, okay, what can we do to help ensure people follow through these maps programs and have more success? And that was helping them with a coaching call to get started. And we've already seen an increase in the frequency of how many people are actually logging into their math programs and doing it. And so it's been a huge success and probably something we'll do going forward. Totally. And because it's a brand new program, it's 40% off. You get it for 40% off, lifetime access. So if you're interested, here's how you sign up.

You go to Maps, upper lower.com. Use the code launch. That gets you the 40% off and the life coaching. With Cole, we hope to see you soon. You can also find us on Instagram. It's Mind Pump Media. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body,

dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes Maps Anabolic, Maps Performance, and Maps Aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos,

the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support, and until next time, this is Mind Pump.