Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - How to Find the Best Workout Split for You

Episode Date: August 24, 2020

When you first start working out, one of the most confusing questions you’ll face is what workout split to follow. A workout split refers to how you’ll organize your training throughout the week. The reason it’s called a split is because most workout plans split up your training in a way that has you train different muscle groups or exercises on different days of the week. Sounds simple enough: some days you train some muscle groups or exercises, other days you train other muscle groups or exercises. Of course, it’s not that simple. There are countless ways to organize a week of workouts, but everyone has an opinion on what works best, and they’ll tell you you’re wrong if you’re not following exactly what they recommend. Should you do traditional bodybuilder workouts where you train each muscle group once per week, obliterating it with as many sets as possible? Or should you follow one of the minimalist full-body strength-training programs that have become popular over the past few years? Or should you do something in the middle, like a push pull legs split? Well, the short answer is that none of these approaches is perfect. There isn’t one “best” workout split, and the best one for you depends on your goals, training experience, and preferences. If you’re having trouble deciding how many days per week to work out, which muscle groups to work on which days, or which workout split would work best for your goals, this podcast is for you. Let’s start by looking at what a workout split is. Timestamps: 4:42 - What is a workout split? 11:05 - What is the best workout split? 13:01 - The body part split 26:43 - The upper lower split 30:16 - Push pull legs 39:24 - The full body workout Mentioned on The Show: Legion VIP One-on-One Coaching: https://legionathletics.com/coaching/ Beyond Bigger Leaner Stronger: https://legionathletics.com/products/books/ --- Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.legionathletics.com/signup/

Ahoy there, I'm Mike Matthews. This is Muscle for Life. Thank you for joining me today to learn about one of the most confusing aspects of training, something that I get asked all the time about, and that is which workout split to follow and why. Now, what is a workout split? Well, it's just how you organize your training throughout the week. It's called a split because most plans split up your workouts in a way that have you train different muscle groups on certain days or different exercises on certain days, or in some cases, it's just a mashup of everything. A full body split is one option, for example. And it sounds pretty simple. All

right. So you could do a body part split. For example, you could just train your chest on one day and your back muscles on another day and your legs and your arms and shoulders. Or maybe you could do a push pull legs. You could train your push muscles one day and your pull and your legs, maybe take a day off and do it again. And there are several other popular splits that I'll be talking about in this podcast. Okay, simple enough. Where it gets complicated though, is when you start listening to people talk about which split is best and why. And there are many, many opinions on this. Should you be doing full body programming, which is particularly popular right now? What about body part splits? Those have been shit on for a long time now. Are they actually useless or do they have certain applications? What about push-pull legs? What

about push-legs-pull? And in this podcast, I'm going to give you a crash course in workout splits. I'm going to quickly summarize the major splits, how they work, what the pros and cons are of each, because each popular split does have pros and cons, and each popular type of split out there has its uses. Sometimes it makes sense to follow a body part split, sometimes it does not, and that applies to each of the other workout splits that we are going to be talking about in today's episode. And by the end of it, you will know which split or splits you should be following. You may have several options.

Most people do have several options. For most people, there is not one single best workout split. And there certainly is not one single best workout split. And there certainly is not one single best workout split for everyone, no matter their circumstances. Also, if you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my VIP one-on-one coaching service, because my team and I have helped people of all ages and all circumstances lose fat, and I have helped people of all ages and all circumstances lose fat, build muscle, and get into the best shape of their life faster than they ever thought possible. And we can do the same for you. We make getting fitter, leaner, and stronger paint by numbers simple by carefully managing

every aspect of your training and your diet for you. Basically, we take out all of the guesswork. So all you have to do is follow the plan and watch your body change day after day, week after week, and month after month. What's more, we've found that people are often missing just one or two crucial pieces of the puzzle. And I'd bet a shiny shekel it's the same with you. You're probably doing a lot of things right, but dollars to donuts, there's something you're not doing correctly or at all that's giving you the most grief. Maybe it's your calories or your macros. Maybe it's your exercise selection. Maybe it's your food choices. Maybe you're not progressively overloading your muscles or maybe it's something else. And whatever it is, here's

what's important. Once you identify those one or two things you're missing, once you figure it out, that's when everything finally clicks. That's when you start making serious progress. And that's exactly what we do for our clients. To learn more, head over to www.buylegion.com, that's B-U-Y-Legion.com slash VIP and schedule your free consultation call, which by the way, is not a high pressure sales call. It's really just a discovery call where we get to know you better and see if you're a good fit for the service. And if you're not, for any reason, we will be able to share resources that'll point you in the right direction. So again, if you appreciate my work and if you want to see direction. So again, if you appreciate my work, and if you want to see more of it, and if you also want to finally stop spinning your wheels

and make more progress in the next few months than you did in the last few years, check out my VIP coaching service at www.buylegion.com slash VIP. Okay, let's start with what a workout split is. I mentioned this in the intro, but you might not have listened to the intro. So a workout split simply refers to what exercises and what muscle groups you're training on different days of the week. It is really that simple. Now it is important to follow some kind of split because the best way to make no progress in the gym is to not go to the gym. And the second best way to make no progress is to just kind of do random things, to not have any rhyme or reason as to which exercises you are doing on which day and which muscle groups you're training on which day, and how much time you are giving those muscle groups to recover before you train them again. And that doesn't mean that

you have to get very fancy and you have to fire up Excel and build out a year-long program with all types of periodization techniques, but it does mean that you need a system to follow. that you need a system to follow. And that system needs to be based on sound training principles that, for example, allow you to subject each major muscle group to enough weekly volume to be able to progressively overload those muscle groups to increase weight on the bar, weight on the dumbbells over time. And also exercise selection plays into this. So how often are you doing, for example, the big compound lifts? How frequently are you doing them? And where are they falling in terms of not just your weekly programming? So for example, are you squatting on your first day of the week or your last day of the week? And in some

cases, in the case of like, if your squat is behind or your legs are behind and you really want to bring them up, then you should be squatting earlier in the week, not later. Whereas if you are more concerned about bringing up, let's say your bench press or your deadlift, you would want to do those earlier in the week. And when you're just fresher and have more energy and you have less peripheral fatigue accumulated from your workouts and you'd be squatting later in the week. And when you're just fresher and have more energy and you have less peripheral fatigue accumulated from your workouts and you'd be squatting later in the week. And well, you get the idea. Those are some of the variables that must be accounted for when you're building out a workout program or otherwise stated building out your workout split. So just to give you a couple of examples, an upper lower split as, as it is referred to, involves dividing your workouts into upper body workouts and lower body workouts, and then you alternate between those. you might go ABA. Let's say you're training five days a week. So Monday, Wednesday, Friday,

upper A, B, and then A again. And then on Tuesday and Thursday, lower A, lower B, or you could flip that around. If you wanted to emphasize your lower body, you might start the week with lower A, Monday, and then do upper A, Tuesday, and then do lower B Wednesday, upper B Thursday, and then lower A again on Friday. And so that gives you an idea of how a workout split works. Again, there are several other types of workout splits. We will talk about them. Now, quickly though, I want to address the claim that you don't need to follow any type of workout split, that workout splits just as a concept are antiquated. And we have now moved beyond that. And it's more just about looking very specifically at the exercises you are doing at the major muscle groups, your training at the weekly volume you are doing

per major muscle group and how you are progressing. And yeah, that's fine. But even if you start that granularly, you end up with something that is a mashup of workout splits. You'll end up with, for example, a push-pull leg split with a couple of full body workouts thrown in, or something that looks like an upper-lower split with a couple of body part workouts thrown in. So a combination of upper lower and body part or something that is primarily a body part split with maybe an extra leg workout or two thrown in. And so my point is anyone who negs the entire idea of a workout split is really just engaging in sophistry. It's probably for marketing reasons because saying contrarian things, just going against the norms gets attention. And that is an easy way to do it.

You have to stop training like this if you want to supercharge your gains. So anyway, using workout splits in your programming is an effective way to ensure that your training is effective. In some cases, it is as simple as following a workout split more or less exactly as it's laid out by someone like me, for example. So over at legionathletics.com, I have articles on different types of splits. For example, I have articles on upper-lower workouts, how to work that split. I have a popular article on the push-pull legs split. And I have articles on body part workouts as well, how to make a body part split work. And again, sometimes it makes sense to combine splits into a Frankenstein split, especially if you are minimally an intermediate, probably mostly

an advanced weightlifter. I think that's where it makes the most sense to essentially get as fancy as it makes sense to ever get in your programming. When you're new, you can keep it real simple. You don't have to overthink it. You don't have to make things more complex than they need to be. Your body is so responsive to your training. You just kind of show up and pick things up and put them down in a reasonably logical manner in terms of how your workouts progress from one to the next and strength that is available to you in your first year or so, but then things get more difficult and you do have to be more deliberate in your volume, in your progression, and in your exercise choices, and also your exercise sequence, how you are doing your exercises in your workouts and how you're doing your exercises in your weekly training cycle. Okay, so I think I've teased you enough. Let's get into the specifics here, starting with, I'm going to repeat myself,

and that is there is no best workout split for everyone, no matter the circumstances. You just want to focus on finding one that is going to work for you, that suits your goals, your training experience, and your preferences. What you enjoy, that matters. Because no matter how scientifically optimized a workout split might be, even specifically for you and your situation, if you don't like it, you're not going to do well with it. Your compliance is going to suffer. You're going to miss workouts probably more often than you would otherwise. is going to suffer. You're going to miss workouts probably more often than you would otherwise.

And you're going to have a hard time training with enough intensity in your workouts because you're not liking it. Even if you have a lot of self-discipline and a lot of willpower, there is a big difference between a workout you enjoy and you look forward to and one that you don't. So keep that in mind when you ultimately make your choice for which workout split you are going to follow going forward from this podcast. And at any point in the future, if you're going to switch to a new split, don't neglect the subjective element of how you experience it, how much you like it. Okay. so the split that you should choose mostly comes down to how much time you have available to get in the gym and what you like and how hard you need to be training to continue gaining muscle and strength. And I would say also which muscle groups you are most

concerned with developing. And that might be all of them. If you are new, that's definitely the case. Even if you are an experienced weightlifter, but maybe not at the end of your genetic rope, if there's still a bit of muscle and strength left to gain, you might also feel like, I just kind of wanted everything to get bigger. Or if you're a woman, maybe you wouldn't think in those terms. You might think, oh, I would just like to get more muscle definition everywhere on my body. And with that, let's start with the body part split. This is affectionately called the bro split and is probably the most well-known workout split because for a long time, this is how bodybuilders, professional bodybuilders trained. And this is still how many professional bodybuilders train. And this is likely how

you got introduced to weightlifting. It's how I got introduced to weightlifting. I remember I picked up some bodybuilding magazines when I was like 17 or 18 and chest. When did you train chest? Of course it was on Monday. And then you did maybe back on Tuesday and then you did your arms on Wednesday or maybe your legs on Wednesday and then shoulders. And then if you hadn't done your legs yet, you're doing your legs on the last day. And again, this was the most popular workout split for a long time. Now, as of the last decade or so, it has become less and less popular, particularly in the evidence-based fitness space. And you have a lot of people who have been saying that it is a very ineffective way to train or even saying it simply does not work. You have to be on steroids to make gains on a body part split. And that is not true at all.

If you are new, you can do quite well with a body part split. And the reason is if you're new, you don't need to do more than maybe nine or 10 hard sets. Think of that as a muscle building set, a training set per major muscle group per week to gain more or less all of the muscle and strength that you're going to be able to gain for at least your first six months. I'd say probably like your first year or so. You just don't have to do more than that. You can if you just like to work out and if you want to burn more calories, but you should not expect much of a difference in bottom line results between let's say 10 hard sets per major muscle group per week and 15.

As a newbie, you'll burn more calories, you'll get to spend more time in your beloved gym, but you're not going to gain much more in the way of muscle and strength. And something else to keep in mind is you can only do so many hard sets for one major muscle group in one training session before you reach the point of diminishing returns and any further work isn't going to provide much more in the way of muscle growth. And research shows that's probably around 10 sets or so, maybe nine sets in an individual training session. You could think of that as the maximum effective dose, training dose in an individual session. And so when you marry those two concepts, when you map them on

each other, you go, oh, okay. So I guess if I were new, I could just do like nine or 10 sets of chest on Monday and then nine or 10 sets of back muscles on Tuesday. And if I'm deadlifting, there's also some lower body in there. So that's cool. And then come Wednesday, if I'm deadlifting, I don't want to squat. So I'll do some shoulder work. I'll do some more work for my front deltoids and my side and do some side raises, some rear raises. Okay, cool. And then on Thursday, I'll squat. I've given my legs a day to recover from the deadlifting. Or if that's not enough, maybe you do your arms on Thursday and then you squat on Friday. And if the body part split is programmed halfway intelligently and it provides 10-ish hard

sets per major muscle group per week, and you're not doing, of course, then any more than 10 sets for an individual muscle group in any individual workout. And also keep in mind that you have direct and indirect volume. So direct volume when you're training your chest is, of course, you're doing the bench press, direct volume for your chest. But it also is providing volume for your deltoids. It is providing, especially the front delts, obviously, and it's providing volume for your triceps and your lats are involved to some degree, not enough to where I'd count that as volume, but it's reasonable, for example, to count one set of

the bench press as one set of direct volume for your pecs and maybe a half a set of volume. Well, I should say one set of just volume for your pecs and then maybe a half a set of volume for your triceps and your front delts. And so you have to keep that in mind as well. When you then go to train your shoulders, let's say a couple of days later, and you're doing now three or four direct volume sets for your front delts. Yeah. Okay. Fine. You only did three or four in that workout, but you did nine, let's say sets of pressing, or it could be like bench press, or it could be the dumbbell press, or it could be a dip, all exercises that provide direct volume for your

pecs and indirect volume for your front delts. And so really you came out of your Monday with four, maybe five sets of volume for your front delts in particular already done. And so now you do three or four more direct now, direct volume, and you're right where you need to be for the week. And the same goes for, let's say, pulling in the biceps. Your pulling that you're doing of any kind, really, you could probably argue about the effectiveness of deadlifting on the biceps and maybe you wouldn't count that volume. However, you certainly would count a barbell row as something toward your biceps and a chin-up, of course, is very much involving the biceps. It's probably direct volume for the biceps, really. The pull-up is indirect volume.

So similarly, let's say you're doing 10-ish sets of pulling in your pull workout. Well, you might have, let's say, three, four biceps sets already done. So then when you go to train your arms later and you do another, let's say four sets for your biceps, you're getting up there to about where you need to be. And so all of those words mean that the bro split really can work. I'm not saying if you're new, you should follow a bro split. You have other options, but it really can work. And where it makes the least sense actually is with an intermediate weightlifter, where now the amount of volume that is needed to continue gaining muscle

and strength for all of the major muscle groups is higher. You might need 15 hard sets per major muscle group per week to continue making progress. And of course, you could get there with a bro split. If you looked at, okay, I can't just train my chest once per week. Now I'm going to have to train it twice per week. Okay, fine. So I'll do, let's say seven or eight sets per chest workout, but then you're going to have to do the same thing for each of your other major muscle groups. And when you start building that out in Excel, it no longer looks like a body part split. It looks more like an upper lower split, for example. Now, when we then progress beyond our

intermediate phase, and now we are in the advanced phase where there's really not much left to gain in terms of muscle and strength, we can use a body part split for maintenance. It is more than adequate for maintenance. Again, and a reason to do that might be that you just like it. You enjoy that style of training and it's perfectly fine to maintain your physique. That's what I did essentially for six months of lockdown was mostly a body part split because I have a very limited setup at home. I just have some dumbbells that go up to 90 pounds. I have some bands and it was just very easy for me to program. Okay. I'll do a bunch of chest stuff. I can do obviously dumbbell pressing. I can do some flies and I can do some dips. I have a little dip station. I can do banded pushups with my feet elevated and okay. I'll just

get in like 12 sets in that workout of pressing and then maybe do a little bit of something else, maybe a little bit of biceps as well. And then I'll do my pulling. I'll go do pull-ups in my basement in the mechanical room on an I-beam because I can't even use a pull-up bar that sets up in a doorway because it rips the molding. I mean, it didn't happen, but if I would have kept doing it, it would have ripped the molding off of the doorway, unfortunately. So I have to just grip an I-beam. Okay, I'll do some pull-ups there. I can do some one-arm dumbbell rows and I can do some inverted rows on my dip station. Cool. Let's just get in enough volume again, just to maintain, rinse and repeat for each of the major muscle groups, throw in a little bit of extra work just so I can get to a weekly volume

between 12 and 15 hard sets per major muscle group week. That's what I was doing simply to stay in good condition. So when I got back into the gym, I wasn't too far behind my numbers before the Cove arrived. And now that I'm back in the gym and under and over the barbell, I'm seeing it worked out quite well. My deadlift, let's see, I think I had 330 or so for sets of five, four sets of five. Wasn't very difficult, which I was surprised because I haven't deadlifted in six months. This was my, was it my third deadlift session now this week? Yeah, I think it was my third in like six months. And so my strength is quickly coming back up there. Bench press 1RM seems like it's down maybe only 10 pounds, which is cool. And

my squat 1RM is down quite a bit, 40 or 50 pounds. I expected that because although I was training my lower body intensely, I was doing heavy dumbbell front squats, for example, and I was doing heavy lunges and heavy split squats, all effective exercises and Nordic hamstring curls, for example, which are quite difficult. It's just not the same as the barbell squat. The barbell squat is the most technically demanding exercise of the bench press and the deadlift and the squat. The squat's the most difficult and it's just hard. My squat 1RM is down probably 40 or 50 pounds despite doing 12 to 15 hard sets. I'm talking about no more than 10 reps per set. I have enough weight to do that. Taking those sets close to failure, didn't miss a

single workout for six months. And my squat one RM is still down about 50 pounds. It feels way harder than I expected to be honest. But on the whole, my little maintenance strategy worked out well. And I did it with mostly a body part split and you don't need much volume to maintain muscle and strength. That is one of the lessons here. If you get in, let's say you are an advanced weightlifter like me, and you get in probably five, maybe six hard sets per week per major muscle group, that is almost certainly enough to maintain all of your muscle and a lot of your strength. Okay. So let's do a quick pros and cons of the body part split here. So on the pros side, we have, it's very simple to program. It's very

simple to follow. It works. It gives special emphasis to the upper body in particular, which is what many guys care about, the beach muscles, right? So again, especially with guys who are new, you don't need to be squatting more than once a week if you are also deadlifting to get the lower body that most guys want, period. You don't ever need to do anything more than probably nine or 10 sets of heavy lower body work, direct lower body work. Doesn't have to be all squats, but it's going to be squats and RDLs and leg press and leg extensions and leg curls and so forth.

Plus let's say three or four sets of deadlifting. That's it. That's enough. You do that long enough, you're going to be happy with your legs. The upper body, however, is going to take a lot more work. You are going to have to do a lot more isolation work for some of these smaller muscle groups that are just difficult. They're just stubborn, like the shoulders. Like for most guys, at least one of the arm muscles. The triceps tend to do better

because they're bigger. They're a lot bigger than the biceps. So many guys have trouble developing their biceps. The lats are notoriously stubborn. And so the body part split is more suitable probably for guys because it allows them to really hone in on those individual upper body muscle groups they want to develop the most. And that also applies to advanced weightlifters who, let's say, really want to bring up their biceps, but because of where they're at, they need to do 20 hard sets of biceps a week, 20 to make progress. And so that's a small muscle group. So you could probably pick one more. So let's say you have an advanced weightlifter. He's like, eh, I want my biceps to get bigger and my shoulders, particularly my side and rear

delts. Those are the main issues on my shoulders. And those are also going to require a lot of volume. A body part split allows him to blast those muscle groups. So he's not going to do it all in one training session, of course. He's going to have to split those up into at least two, if not three individual training sessions to reach that volume. And so what he'll do then is follow basically a body part split where he's going to have like a couple of arm and shoulder workouts per week, and then just enough volume for the other major muscle groups so he doesn't fall behind. And I guess that would apply equally to women too. They might have more emphasis though on their lower body. It might be not just their

legs anymore, but their hamstrings in particular, or their quads in particular, and their glutes. And to get enough volume, they have to follow a body part split of sorts or something that looks mostly like a body part split. Now on the cons side of things here, the body part split does not, and I touched on this, but I'll just say it again. It does not provide the optimal training frequency or allow you to get to the optimal weekly or intercession volume for each major muscle group if you are still able to gain a significant amount of muscle and strength. After a couple of days, two or three days of recovery, if you're an intermediate weightlifter, you can train a muscle group again and you are going to

have to do more weekly volume than you can cram into just one session. And that's what you have to do, of course, if you're following just a traditional body part split. But as I just mentioned, you can get kind of fancy and have a body part split that has workouts that are repeating or muscle groups that are repeating. So you can get around the frequency issue, but you can't do it for all the major muscle groups or you're no longer following a body part split. It just doesn't look like a body part split anymore. Okay, let's move on now to the upper lower split, which divides your training into upper body days and lower body days. And usually these splits are four days a week and you'll do two upper body days per week. You will do two lower body days per week and

you'll have a rest day in between them. So it might go upper, lower rest, upper, lower rest, and then you repeat. And the pros of the upper lower split is that it allows you to train each major muscle group at least twice a week, which means that you get to up the volume. So you can now get beyond 10. You can easily get beyond 10 hard sets per major muscle group per week. And you also can get in a little bit of extra frequency, which is probably good as an intermediate or advanced weightlifter just in and of itself. Most important though, is reaching the volume, the amount of volume you need to do. And of course, increasing frequency is how you do that, right? And so that's

really the major benefit of it. It's also, it is simple. It's easy to work with. It's easy to think with. It's easy to change on the fly if you need to. Downside though is upper lower workouts can get long because of the amount of volume you need to do for each major muscle group to make progress. So for example, in an upper body workout, you might train a lot. You might train your chest, your back, your shoulders, biceps, triceps, ankle, like really your entire upper body. And that's a lot to do, especially again, if you need to do quite a bit each week to make all of those muscles get bigger and stronger. Now in some programs, you'll have like an upper A,

upper B. That's how I prefer to program upper lower. So some people love combining chest and back. I've done it in the past and I don't particularly enjoy it. I would prefer to follow something that looks maybe a bit more like a push pull where like upper A would be chest, shoulders, and triceps, and upper B would be back and biceps and maybe some core work. But that's just a matter of personal preference. I know there is a good argument for why you should do it the other way. And I don't even disagree with that. That may even be slightly more effective. It's just subjective for me. I like a push workout more than a chest and back workouts. And so that's how I've done it. But if you don't prefer one or the other, or you like chest and back more, so you might want to go, let's say chest, back and

triceps or chest, back and biceps on upper A. And then you might want to go chest, back and shoulders on upper B, or you might want to go shoulders, biceps and triceps or back, shoulders and biceps. There are many different ways that you can mix and match depending on where you're at and what you need to be doing and what you're trying to accomplish. And I mentioned that these programs are usually four days a week, but they don't have to be. Of course, you can turn it into a five-day by going upper, lower, upper, lower, upper, rest, rest. You can certainly do that, or you could go lower, upper, lower, upper, lower, rest, rest. If you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my VIP one-on-one coaching service because my team and I have helped people of all ages and circumstances lose fat, build muscle, and get into the best shape of their life

faster than they ever thought possible. And we can do the same for you. Okay, let's move on to push-pull legs, which is a workout split that I have long enjoyed and I've used for a long time, at least some kind of variation of push-pull legs. For example, in Bigger Leaner Stronger and Thinner Leaner Stronger, those really are push-pull legs programs with a little bit of body part work added into them. So they're basically like a basic strength program with some additional body part work, some bodybuilding work thrown in to increase volume selectively in certain muscle groups. And if you're not familiar with push pull legs, it is a workout split where you divide your workouts into push days, which is your pecs and delts and triceps, and then pull

days, which is where you train your back and your triceps, and then pull days, which is where you train your back and your biceps. That would include your deadlifting as well. And then you have leg days where you train your legs, your glutes, your hamstrings, quads, calves. That's usually your squat day. And an example of a push-pull legs, like in Bigger Leaner Stronger, for example, you might do your pushing on Monday, and then you're pulling on Tuesday, and you're squatting on Thursday or Friday to give your legs a couple of days to recover in between the deadlifting because you are doing three sets. I believe it's three sets in Bigger, Leaner, Stronger. It's four sets in Beyond Bigger, Leaner, Stronger of deadlifting in a workout, and that takes its toll on your lower body when it's heavy weight. And the reason why push-pull legs is popular is, of course, these muscles work together. So when you are benching,

as I mentioned earlier, that's direct volume for your pecs, but it is indirect volume for your delts and indirect volume for your triceps. And so you can then do additional volume, essentially direct volume for those muscle groups in the same workout, and then come out from that workout, from that push workout or that pull workout with a good amount of volume for each of those muscle groups when you tally up the direct and the indirect. Another reason push-pull legs is popular is it makes it easy to recover from your workouts because you're not doing a ton of volume for your pecs, for example. You might do, let's say, most push workouts, probably four to maybe eight sets of pressing for your pecs, and then maybe three or four sets for your direct volume for your delts,

and maybe another three or four sets of direct volume for your triceps, and that's it for the workout. So it's a decent amount of volume, but you don't get too sore from it. And then the following day, let's say you pull, now your push muscles are resting, you're recovering from your push workout while you train your pull muscles, and then you'll usually have some rest in between your pull and your legs if you're deadlifting. If you're not deadlifting, you should be deadlifting. But if you're not deadlifting, then of course you could squat the day after you're pulling. But if you're doing several sets of hard deadlifts, you can squat the following day, but you are probably going to do a little bit better if you give yourself at least one day, give your legs at least one day to recover from the deadlifting before you squat. And so for example, if you

are training three days a week, you might go Monday push, Wednesday pull, and Friday legs. If you're training more frequently than that, you could take that basic template of a big push workout, a big pull workout, and a big leg workout, which really means you're bench pressing, you're overhead pressing, you're deadlifting, and you're squatting, back squatting, front squatting, right? Those are the key exercises that you are going to be doing in an effective push-pull legs routine. So you take those basic workouts and then you fit in extra volume on the other days, depending on, again, where you're at and what you are trying to accomplish. So you could look at where the push-pull legs workouts land you in terms of the exercises you're doing and the weekly volume for each of the major muscle groups. And then you could build out the other days accordingly. So those might turn into additional push or pull or leg workouts.

They might be body part workouts. They might be full body workouts. So that's one of the reasons I've always liked push pull legs. I've always found it as a good foundation, a good base for strength training in particular, that then you can augment with additional workouts based on whatever you're trying to do and also to reach your preferred training frequency, which for me is lifting five days a week. I like to lift five days a week. I take two days a week off of the weights. And currently these days I've been doing some cardio every day, just 30, 35 minutes of low, maybe slash moderate intensity, no high intensity right now. And I haven't done any high intensity for the last six months or so. It's just with the lockdown,

I'm no longer driving to the office and I wasn't driving to the gym. So I had that extra time in the morning. So yeah, whatever. I'll hop on the bike, I'll burn some additional calories and I'll read. So I wake up early in the morning, I get in the infrared sauna, I read for a bit, and then I just hop on the bike and drone away for another 30, 35 minutes and get some more reading in. And it's nice. I've lost like nine pounds since the beginning of the cove. And none of that is muscle. Obviously some of it is water and glycogen. It's not all fat, but a lot of it's fat. I'm as lean now as almost as lean as I've ever been. I've been a bit leaner than this for sure for photo shoots, but I'm within probably three or four weeks of like photo shoot lean. And surprisingly, I don't notice any negative side effects.

I don't notice anything in the way of additional hunger or sleep disruption or sex drive disruption. I just seem to be fine at a fairly low body fat percentage, which again, I'm a little bit surprised that because I remember in the past when I had gotten very lean for photo shoots, it wasn't grueling and there weren't any major side effects, but I did notice lower energy levels, higher levels of hunger, lower levels of sex drive, and a bit of sleep disruption. I was waking up more often than usual at night. And no matter what I tried in the way of manipulating my macronutrients, deloading in the gym more often, cutting down on the cardio, the only way to reverse those unwanted effects was to get fatter, was just to eat more food and allow my body fat levels to get to a higher, more healthier level. Now,

again, I'm not as lean now as I was then, but I'm close to that and notice nothing so far, which means that my physiology has somehow leveled up or maybe my normal just isn't what it once was. Maybe that's what it is. Anyway, getting back on track here to push-pull legs. So the pros are mostly it's just simple. It is time-tested. It makes for a good starting point for strength training, and it gives you plenty of time to recover in between your workouts, and it is very customizable.

As far as cons go, the major one is if you're only training three days a week and it's just push-pull legs, then you're training your major muscle groups once a week and you are not going to be able to make progress with that if you are an intermediate or advanced weightlifter, which I already explained earlier in the podcast when I was talking about a body part split. So push-pull legs is limited in the same way that the body part split is limited. However, unlike the body part split, if you are training for five days a week, then you can make push-pull legs work as an intermediate or well, as an intermediate weightlifter in particular. Again, as an advanced weightlifter, you actually definitely can make the body part split work, especially if you want to specialize,

dance weightlifter, you actually definitely can make the body part split work, especially if you want to specialize, if you want to emphasize one or two major muscle groups at a time in each macro cycle, in each training phase. Now, in the case of push-pull legs, because you are able to distribute volume among more muscle groups in each individual workout, you can build it out as an intermediate weightlifter, just following a strict push-pull legs, or then you have additional push-pull or leg workouts to make up the extra day or two. And if you put it in Excel and you look at your volume, you can hit a good amount of volume for each major muscle group with this format, with this template. So there isn't much in the way of downsides. And one other thing worth noting, I had mentioned push legs pull a couple of times in the podcast,

and that's a variant of push pull legs for people who want to emphasize their squat over their deadlift. So the first workout in a push legs pull would be a push workout, and then it'd be followed by the leg workout, and then usually a day or two or maybe even three of rest before the deadlift workout and that setup makes more sense if you want to emphasize lower body development and progression on your squat versus posterior chain development and progression on your deadlift which would be more emphasized in the push-pull legs. Okay, I have saved the juiciest morsel for last, which is the full-body workout. This is something that's getting a lot of attention right now. I'm getting asked about it a lot. I recorded an episode with Menno Henselman's on full-body training that went up, I think, a couple of weeks

ago now, and it is doing very well. And I chose Menno specifically for that discussion because he has been beating the drum for full body training for a long time now. It is his preferred split and it was a great discussion. And I agree with many of the points he made. And I probably will record my own episode on full body training, a new episode on full body training, because I recorded one some time ago and I do think a bit differently about it now. And I'll just summarize my current position here, but probably in a couple of months, I'll record an in-depth episode specifically on full body training. So first let's just define it. A full body workout,

body training. So first let's just define it. A full body workout, technically you'd think it hits every major muscle group in the body in every workout. And yeah, maybe sometimes, but in better designed full body workouts, you're not actually training your entire body in a workout. It almost looks like sometimes it's just an upper lower. And then in some workouts, there actually is a little bit of everything. So you might do a squat and a bench press and a pull exercise, for example, in one workout. And then in another workout, you might squat again and you might do an overhead press and you might do some biceps and so forth. You get the idea where, again, you're not necessarily training every major muscle group in every workout because that becomes grueling and essentially impossible when you are an intermediate or advanced weight

lifter and the weights are heavy and you have to do a fair amount of volume. So you have to choose your muscle groups deliberately. You have to put some thought into, okay, so how many sets can I really do in a workout before I have to leave? Let's just start there. So for me, I have an hour or so to spend in the gym every day. So that means I can get 16 sets or so done as long as I watch my rest times in about an hour. If I'm resting two and a half, three minutes in between each set, if I'm doing some heavy squatting or deadlifting and I'm going to be resting a little bit more, it might take an hour and 15 minutes to get through that. So, okay, if I can do 16 sets in the workout, in addition to my warmups that I need to do. And what does that mean in terms of exercises? Well, in Beyond Bigger

Leaner Stronger 2.0, which is the type of training I'm doing right now, you're doing four sets per exercise. Okay. So I'm doing four exercises. You're doing four sets per exercise. Okay, so I'm doing four exercises. And if I were building a full body workout, then of course, I can't train every major muscle group with four exercises. I can deliver direct volume to, let's say, if I really wanted to split it up four major muscle groups and then get some indirect volume for the others. And then on my other full body workouts, I'd have to then make sure that the muscle groups that were getting indirect volume get some direct volume. And then the muscle groups that in the first workout got direct volume, they might get some indirect volume. Good example of that is if you squat, of course, that's direct

volume for your lower body. Whereas with the deadlift, most people are not going to count that as direct volume for their lower body. They're going to count it probably at 50%. So they're going to say one set of deadlifting is certainly one set of volume for the traps, for example, but they're going to say it's a half a set of volume for the quads and for the hamstrings. I know some people in the evidence-based space go even further and they weight the quads and for the hamstrings. I know some people in the evidence-based space go even further and they weight the quads and the hamstrings differently on the deadlift. I don't need to get that into the weeds with my programming for my purposes and you don't either, but simply understanding that there is a difference between the squat and how it impacts your lower

body and the deadlift and how it impacts your lower body and the deadlift and how it impacts your lower body is useful for programming effective workouts if you are an intermediate or advanced weightlifter. And so then with full body training, let's say you are deadlifting first in the week. Okay. So let's say you do four sets of deadlifts. Well, that's two sets of volume for your lower body. And then a couple of days later, you are now going to do some direct volume for your legs. You're going to do some squats. Let's say you're doing four sets of squats. Okay, good.

Now you are at six sets of volume for your lower body. And although you don't necessarily have to track the volume of it, the squat does train the back. And that includes the upper back muscles if you are squatting correctly. Now, again, I don't track that volume. I don't count my squats as like quarter sets of volume for my back. Some people do. And again, I just don't think it's necessary, but it's just an example of the complimentary nature, the yin and yang relationship of certain exercises when they are programmed this

way. Now, as far as frequency goes with full body training, it can accommodate whatever you want to do, really. If you want to train three days per week, that's a common way of going about it. Kind of like push-pull legs, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, full body workouts each day. If you want to train four or five days per week, you can make that work with full body training as well. Again, particularly because they aren't actually, at least with high quality programs, they aren't true full body workouts. You're not training every major muscle group directly. You're usually just focusing on three or maybe four major muscle groups as far as direct volume goes. And then there might be some indirect volume for others. All right, pros and cons. As far as advantages go for the full body workout split, they make it very easy to hit all of the major muscle groups multiple times per week, which again

is not terribly important per se, but it is a useful tool for getting in enough volume. And so with full body training, it is easy to make sure that you're getting enough volume every week in the major muscle groups, especially the ones you want to emphasize or focus on the most. Full body training also is useful for newbies because it allows them to learn the big compound lifts faster simply because they're doing them more often. And like anything, the more frequently you practice something, the better you get. And this isn't a major point because squatting, deadlifting, bench pressing, overhead pressing, these are technical movements, but they're not hitting a fastball or swinging a golf club or pole vaulting. They're not very

difficult. You learn them pretty quickly and you don't acquire much skill beyond that point. I would say that, and this has actually been looked at in research, the average person is going to get to, let's say 80% proficiency on these lifts, probably within their first six months of lifting. And it could even be as little as three months. And from that point, let's just be generous and say from the six-month point on, they're not going to get much better. There isn't much technical improvement left. There is some, they will get better, but there isn't a major difference in the quality of movement pattern. At least if somebody is, again, your average person and they're in the gym consistently and they care and they're trying to do it right. At the six-month mark, you look at how they're squatting

and deadlifting, bench pressing, overhead pressing, and then you compare that to the six-year mark. They will be more refined. They will be a bit better, but it's not going to be like trying to hit a fastball at six months versus six years. Another advantage of full-body training is it's very malleable as far as scheduling, as far as the programming goes. So for example, if you miss a day, it doesn't make as big of a difference as missing a body part day. Like you missed your chest. Well, now your chest is not going to get trained that week. And it's just going to have to wait until the next week. If you miss your push workout and you're only training three days a week, well, no pushing this

week. Whereas with full body training, if you miss one of your workouts, it's not that big of a deal because chances are you're going to be training the same muscle groups or at least some of the same muscle groups in your next workout on the next day or maybe the day after that. And the same goes if you need to make some changes on the fly in the gym because equipment isn't available or you go to train something and it doesn't feel right. It's just off. And so you can't train it on that day. With full body training, it's not that big of a deal because that really means you're just going to be missing out on probably three or four sets of volume for the week, which isn't ideal, but it's better than with other splits

where missing your chance to train certain muscles might cut the weekly volume in half or it might reduce it even further. It might reduce it to zero, like I mentioned in the case of the body part split. And of course, you can adjust accordingly. You don't have to go, well, I couldn't train chest on Monday, so I guess I'm not training chest. You can make things work by, let's say, turning your shoulder day into a push day. So you are going to get some volume in for your chest. You don't have to robotically stick to the body part split because I said I would follow a body part split. The point though with full body training is you don't have to make any adjustments usually at all. You just kind of carry on and just know

that, all right, this week wasn't perfect because I missed that one workout, but whatever. And so in the final analysis, then I would say full body training is good for newbies if they want to get up to speed as quickly as possible on the big lifts. Beyond that, for newbies, I would say it doesn't offer any significant advantages over really any of the other splits we've discussed. And as far as intermediate and advanced weightlifters go, full body training can certainly work, but so can several of the other splits. So this is one of those subjective points. What do you like? How do you like to train? Do you like full body workouts or do you like push-pull legs or push-legs-pull or upper-lower? If you're an intermediate weightlifter, I probably wouldn't recommend a body part split because it's going to make it difficult. It's just going to be kind of awkward to try to get to enough weekly volume for each major muscle group when you could just follow one of these other splits and make it a lot easier on you. is allows you to pair muscle groups that aren't related to superset them, not in the way that

many people superset, which is back to back. And often people will superset muscle groups that are related. So they'll superset, maybe it's the same muscle group. They'll go from one chest exercise to another, or they'll go from a chest exercise to a triceps exercise or a chest exercise to a shoulders exercise. I actually don't recommend that style of supersets. The style I recommend is called antagonist paired sets, which you could think of an antagonist as a muscle that does the opposite function of the agonist of the whatever muscle that we are contracting. Okay. So let's say we contract the biceps. That's the agonist. The antagonist is the triceps, right? And so what you can do is if you're doing full body training, let's say you're doing some pushing and some pulling, you're doing some bench pressing and some seated cable

rows. What you can do is you can do a set of bench press, and then you can rest maybe 90 seconds or so, a half or about half of what you'd normally rest. And then go over and do your set of the seated cable row, rest about 90 seconds, do your bench press, and you shouldn't see any noticeable decline in performance. And you may actually see a slight increase in performance. Menno talked about this with this pairing in particular with push and pull muscles in the interview we did. But if there is a benefit, it is small and not likely to make much of a difference in terms of results. It's just kind of interesting. What is best about that setup is it just lets you get through your workouts faster. So you can get in your volume,

you can get your work done, you can lift your heavy weights in less time. And so that's it. That's all I have for you in this episode. I hope you found it helpful. And if you are thinking about changing your workout routine, pay attention to the volume. Make sure that you can get enough volume in per major muscle group per week. Make sure that you can get enough volume in per major muscle group per week. Make sure that you're choosing something you like. Make sure that these are workouts you look forward to, you enjoy. Make sure that your workouts aren't getting too long. Don't try to cram too much volume into individual workouts. And also consider changing your routine if you haven't done something different in a long time because

it can just make your training more fun. And that alone can translate into better results because you apply yourself more strenuously in your workouts. You're more focused on your training and you're more interested in trying to hit your rep and your weight targets. And who knows, you might find that you really enjoy a workout split that maybe you once didn't enjoy, or you just haven't done in a while, or maybe you've never done it before. That said, you don't want to make major changes to your workout programming too frequently. So I'd recommend changing your split maybe every 12 or 16 weeks or so, if you want to make a change that often. I don't. I'm

just following the Beyond Bigger Than You're Stronger 2.0 workouts, and I really like the programming. I enjoy the training, and I'm making progress with it, getting my numbers, my strength numbers back to previous PRs. I know I don't really have anything left in the way of muscle to gain, but I certainly can get my big three numbers back to where they were several years ago when I was at my strongest. That was at the end of a lean bulk when I was doing BBLS 1.0 actually. So it's only fitting that BBLS 2.0 takes me to the next level. And yeah, so I like the programming. It is technically sound and I enjoy the workouts. So I'm not inclined to change anything. And you, so I like the programming. It is technically sound and I enjoy the workouts. So I'm not inclined to change anything. And you might find a setup that works equally well for

you, but it's still nice to know that six months from now, 12 months from now, six years from now, whatever, whenever you feel like making a change, you can change and you know that you're not going to be moving backward. Alrighty. Well, thanks again for spending some time with me today to learn about workout splits and make sure to keep tuning in because in the next episode, I have a success story. Brian Miller came on the show to share his journey. And then I have the next Q&A episode. And then the following week, starting on the 31st, I am going to begin the official launch of Beyond Bigger, Leaner, Stronger 2.0. So I will be talking about a giveaway where I'm going to be giving away over $6,000 in free stuff to people who buy the book during the launch period. And then I'm going to be sharing some of the audio book chapters with you here as episodes. So you can get an idea of what the

content is like, give you a taste. I have a couple of Q and A episodes specifically for BBLS 2.0 and more. All right. Well, that's it for today's episode. I hope you found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and you don't mind doing me a favor, could you please leave a quick review for the podcast on iTunes or wherever you are listening from? Because those reviews not only convince people that they should check out the show, They also increase the search visibility and help more people find their way to me and to the podcast and learn how to build their best body ever as well. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then simply subscribe to the podcast and whatever app you're using to listen, and you will not miss out on any of the new stuff that I have

coming. And last, if you didn't like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at muscleforlife.com and share your thoughts. Let me know how you think I could do this better. I read every email myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback. All right. Thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.