Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - The Definitive Guide to the “Push Pull Legs” Routine

Episode Date: November 1, 2017

“Push pull legs” routines have been popular for decades now. In fact, just about every time-proven strength and muscle-building program fits this basic mold, and that’s not likely to change. My bestselling workout programs for men and women are also, essentially, push pull legs (PPL) routines with additional “accessory” (isolation) work to help bring up “stubborn” body parts. The primary reasons push pull legs routines have stood the test of time are they train all major muscle groups, allow plenty of time for recovery, and can be tailored to fit different training goals, schedules, and histories. They’re easy to understand, too. At bottom, a push pull legs routine separates your major muscle groups into three different workouts: Chest, shoulders, and triceps Back and biceps (with a bit of hamstrings as well if you’re deadlifting) Legs And it has you train anywhere from 3 to 6 times per week, depending on how much abuse you’re willing to take, what you’re looking to achieve with your physique, and how much time you can spend in the gym each week. So, if you’re looking to gain muscle and strength as quickly as possible, and if you’re not afraid of a bit of heavy compound weightlifting, then push pull legs might be your golden ticket. And by the end of this episode, you’re going to know exactly how PPL works, who it is and isn’t best for, and how to create a customized routine that’ll work for you. Let’s get to it. 4:30 - What is the push pull legs routine? 8:23 - What are the benefits to the push pull legs routine? 12:27 - How do I make push pull legs work for me? 17:12 - How can I make a push pull routine? 20:59 - What is push legs pull? 23:37 - How do you continue making progress with these routines? 29:56 - Do you recommend any supplements? 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.muscleforlife.com/signup/

by separating your training in this way, your muscles have plenty of time to recover between your workouts and your nervous system isn't being continually pushed to the red line. And that allows you to perform better over the long-term. And it also reduces your risk of injury and overtraining. Push-pull legs routines have been popular for decades now. In fact, just about every time-proven strength and muscle building program fits this basic mold, and I don't think that's going to change anytime soon. I myself have been following variations of PPL routines for years now. And in that time, I have dramatically transformed my physique and gotten my body to a place that I am pretty happy with. That's why the workout programs in my bestselling books for men and women,

Bigger Leaner Stronger and Thinner Leaner Stronger respectively, are essentially push pull legs routines with some additional accessory work, you know, isolation exercises to help bring up stubborn body parts and also to just increase volume on certain muscle groups that guys and girls care the most about. Now, the primary reasons why push-pull legs routines have stood the test of time are that they train all major muscle groups, they allow plenty of time for recovery between hard training sessions, and they can be tailored to fit various different training goals, histories, and schedules. These types of routines are easy to understand as well because at bottom, a push-pull legs routine separates your major muscle groups into three different workouts. You have basically a chest, shoulders, and triceps workout. That's your push.

You have a back and biceps workout with some hamstrings as well. If you're deadlifting, that's your pull. And then you have your legs workout and PPL routines usually have you train anywhere from three to six times per week, depending on how much abuse you're willing to take and what you're looking to achieve with your physique and how much time you can spend in the gym every week. So the bottom line here is if you are looking to gain muscle and strength as quickly as possible, and if you're not afraid of a bit of heavy compound weightlifting of some hard work, then push pull legs might just be your golden ticket. And by the end of this podcast, you're going to know exactly how PPL works, who it is and isn't best for, and how to create a

customized routine that will work for you. This is where I would normally plug a sponsor to pay the bills, but I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead, I'm just going to quickly tell you about something of mine. Specifically, my hugely popular and 100% natural pre-workout supplement, Pulse. It has sold over 250,000 bottles in the last several years, and it increases energy, improves mood, sharpens mental focus, increases strength and endurance, and reduces fatigue without the unwanted side effects that you probably experience with many other pre-workouts

or the dreaded post-workout crash. It's also naturally sweetened and flavored and contains no artificial food dyes, fillers, or other unnecessary junk. And all of that is why Pulse has over 3,100 reviews on Amazon with a four and a half star average and another 500 plus reviews on my website, also with a four and a half star average and another 500 plus reviews on my website also with a four and a half star average so if you want to feel focused tireless and powerful in your workouts and if you want to say goodbye to the pre-workout jitters upset stomachs and crashes for good then you want to head over to www.legionathletics.com and pick up a bottle of Pulse today. And if you're not sure which flavor to get, I highly recommend Blue Raspberry. It's my personal favorite. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code

podcast at checkout and you will save 10% on your entire order. All right, that is it for the pitch. Let's get to the show. Okay, so let's start our discussion at the top, and that is what is the push-pull legs routine? Well, the push-pull legs routine, or PPL split as it's often called, is a weightlifting program that has you do three kinds of workouts. You have the push workout, the pull workout, and the legs workout. Your push workouts focus on the muscles involved in your upper body pushing motions with the major ones being your pecs, triceps, and shoulders, making it very similar to most chest and triceps workouts that you find in other types of bodybuilding splits. Now, in a well-designed PPL program, your push workouts will generally revolve around barbell and dumbbell bench pressing,

overhead military pressing, dipping, and doing various isolation exercises for your triceps. And your pull workouts focus on the muscles in your upper body that pull. And the major ones are your back muscles and your biceps, making it of course, very similar to the back and biceps types of workouts that you find in quote unquote bro splits. Now these workouts usually revolve around deadlifting, barbell and dumbbell rowing, pull downs, pull ups, chin ups, and maybe some isolation exercise for your biceps. And that leaves then the legs part of it. And your legs workouts focus on your legs on the whole. So your quads, hamstrings, glutes, and calves. And these workouts, as you'd expect, generally revolve around squatting, lunging, and doing some isolation

exercises for really each of the major muscle groups noted above. It kind of depends on the programming. So when you get right down to it, the push-pull legs split really isn't all that different from many body part routines. And the reason why I bring this up is these days, body part splits are generally frowned upon, but you should know that they can be just as effective as anything else when they are programmed properly. Just because a workout is called a chest and triceps workout doesn't mean it's a worse workout than a push workout. It really depends on what you're doing in the workout. And then individual workouts need to be considered in the

context of the whole of the routine and how often are you doing these types of workouts? What are you doing in them? And so forth. Now, one reason why the push pull legs template is advantageous is muscles generally work in pairs. So for example, when you pull a barbell off the ground, your back muscles and your biceps are responsible for generating the force while your chest and triceps are kind of just along for the ride. And then on the flip side, when you push a heavy barbell off your chest, it's now your chest and triceps that are the prime movers while your pull muscles take the back seat. Now I know your lats are involved and it's not just pecs and triceps. You also have some shoulders, but you get my point. This is why you can absolutely blitz your biceps one day and then have no issues training

your triceps the next day. And likewise, you can pull just fine when your chest and shoulders and triceps are sore and you can push just fine or you can train your legs just fine when your back and biceps are still recovering. Now, there is a bit of overlap between the muscles involved in each of these workouts, of course. And that's why, again, most well-designed PPL routines give you at least one day off weights per week and one day in between each of your different types of workouts. your different types of workouts. For example, I mentioned earlier that your lats are involved in bench pressing, and that's why you may have experienced some soreness in your lats after a day of heavy bench pressing, especially if you hit a PR. Similarly, your hamstrings are involved

in both your deadlifting and your squatting. All right, so that is what push-pull legs is. Let's now talk a bit more about the benefits. And there are several reasons why these types of routines are a staple among bodybuilders and powerlifters. lot of compound exercises, and these are the movements that involve multiple large muscle groups and require and develop the most whole body strength. For example, the squat involves moving the knees, ankles, and hips, and it requires just about every muscle in your body to work together with the quads, hams, and glutes bearing the brunt of the load. That's why it is a compound exercise and one of the best compound exercises. On the other hand, if you take an exercise like the Russian leg curl, that involves moving the knees and it focuses on strengthening the hamstrings and glutes.

And that's why that isn't considered a compound exercise. It's an isolation exercise. And the reason why compound exercises are so important and why you should be spending so much time doing them is they're far better than isolation exercises for gaining size and strength. Compound exercises are not only more efficient in terms of the number of muscle groups trained per exercise, but they also allow for heavier loads to be safely lifted, which makes it easier to continually progressively overload your muscles, which is what you have to do if you want to continually improve your muscularity and your strength. Now, the downside to compound weightlifting, especially heavy compound weightlifting, is it's very demanding on your body, both in terms of the energy required for the workouts and the amount of post-workout recovery that's required to fully repair the damage and adapt to the training.

And that's why PPL has you split your upper body into two separate workouts. And it also limits the amount of lower body training that you're doing every week. Lower body training in particular is very difficult. It's much more difficult than upper body training, both in terms of doing it and recovering from it. So by separating your training in this way, your muscles have plenty of time to recover between your workouts and your nervous system isn't being continually pushed to the red line. And that allows you to perform better over the longterm. And it also reduces your risk of injury and overtraining. Now, another major benefit of push-pull legs is it can be easily customized to fit your needs and circumstances. With just three basic workouts to choose from,

circumstances. With just three basic workouts to choose from, it's very easy to grasp and then think with on the fly and add, subtract, or shift around workouts each week as needed, depending on what's going on. For example, the most basic PPL setup looks like this. You would push on Monday, you would pull on Wednesday and you would squat. You do your legs workout on Friday. And if you wanted to train just twice per week, you could do it like this. You could push and pull on Monday. So you could train your entire upper body and then you could do your lower body, your legs on Thursday. Or if you really want to push yourself to the limits, you could do something like this. You could go push Monday, pull Tuesday, legs Wednesday, push Thursday, pull Friday, legs Saturday, Sunday off.

Now, caveat, that type of program is very hard. I wouldn't recommend it unless you know a bit about programming so you don't blow yourself up with way too much volume and intensity. so you don't blow yourself up with way too much volume and intensity. And I also would not recommend it under any circumstances, regardless of how much you might know about programming when you are cutting. That is not something you want to do when you are in a caloric deficit. That type of program is for when you are maintaining or ideally when you're bulking, when you're in a slight surplus. Okay. So now, you know, a bit about what PPL is, how it works, why it's good. Let's talk about how to make it work for you. So the first thing that you need to do is decide how many days per week that you want to train.

So I would say if you want to maximize, absolutely maximize muscle and strength gains, and you have the time and inclination, then I recommend that you train four to six days per week. If you are short on time though, or you just don't want to train that frequently, you don't want to spend that much time in the gym for whatever reason, then don't despair because you can do just fine with two to three workouts per week. You can actually make gains with two to three workouts per week. More workouts are better, but you can progress on two to three workouts per week. So once you've decided how many days that you are going to train, the next step is then turning that into an actual routine. And there are many ways

of programming your PPL workouts, but for the purpose of this podcast, I'm going to keep it simple and just give you a few templates to choose from. So let's start there with the workouts themselves, and then we'll talk a bit about how to combine them into routines. So PPL workouts, you can create basically an infinite variety of these types of workouts, but I'm going to share with you here a few of my favorites as you're going to see. And as you would probably expect, these workouts involve a lot of heavy compound weightlifting and they're supplemented with some moderately heavy accessory work. So the first push workout, we can call it push day one, looks like this. You start on the flat barbell bench press, you warm up, and then you do three sets of about four to six reps, which is 80 to 85% of your one rep max. Then you move over to close grip bench press,

do two sets of four to six reps there, and then standing military press, which is a bitch. And you warm up and then you do two sets of four to six reps there. And then you do dumbbell lateral raises, two sets of eight to 10 reps, which is about 70 to 75% of your one rep max. And you can finish with some abs if you want to train your abs. And I would recommend cable crunches, three sets of eight to 10 reps where you are ending one to two reps shy of failure. Another push variation that I like, we can call it push day two starts with the incline barbell bench press where you warm up and then do three sets of four to six reps. And then you move over to the seated military press warm up and do two sets of four to six reps. And then you have the dumbbell lateral raise two sets of

eight to 10 reps. And then the dumbbell rear lateral raise two sets of eight to 10 reps. Moving along, we now have the first pull workout, pull day one, let's call it. Starts with the barbell deadlift, of course, warmup, three sets of four to six reps, barbell row, three sets of four to six reps, the wide grip pull-up or chin-up if you prefer. Chin-up puts more stress on the biceps. Either way, weight it and do three sets of four to six reps or no weight, depending on what you can do. And then you finish with the one arm dumbbell row, three sets of four to six reps. The second pull day template, we'll just call it pull day two, starts with the

barbell row. You warm up and do four sets of four to six reps. And then you move over to the chin up, which is three sets of four to six reps. Again, weighted move over to the chin up, which is three sets of four to six reps. Again, weighted if possible. One arm dumbbell row is next, three sets of four to six reps. And then the barbell biceps curl, three sets of eight to 10 reps. Last but not least is legs, of course. And that starts with the barbell back squat, where you warm up and do three sets of four to six reps. And then you do the barbell front squat, which places a bit more emphasis on the quads and is also a bit easier on your knees and ankles. So after your front squats comes the Bulgarian split squat, three sets of four to six reps,

and you finish with some calf raises. You can do them standing, seated, leg press, whatever you prefer, but three sets of eight to 10 reps. Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say thank you. You can find me on Instagram at muscle for life fitness,

Twitter at muscle for life and Facebook at MuscleForLifeFitness. So that's it for the workouts. I would recommend that you rewind and write down all those because I'm going to now talk about turning them into routines and I'm just going to refer to them by name. So I'm going to say like push one, pull one, push two, and so forth. So let's start with the two-day PPL routine. Now, as I mentioned earlier, you can do well training just twice per week. More training would be better if you're trying to gain muscle and strength as quickly as possible. But when circumstances just won't allow for more gym time, this is a solid two day routine that you can always fall back on to at

least maintain the muscle and strength that you've got. And here it is on Monday, you do push one. So push day one and you do pull one. And then on Thursday you do legs. That's it. Very simple. The three-day PPL routine is really just your basic PPL program. And it's my personal favorite setup when I'm training three days per week. And again, more training

is best for maximizing gains, but this three-day split is a time-proven program for getting big and strong. And here it is. Monday, you do push one. Wednesday, you do pull one. And Friday, you do legs. That's it. Now, the four-day split gets a little more interesting because adding that fourth day allows you to work more on whichever major muscle groups are most lagging in your physique or that you just want to focus the most on. And that's why I'm going to give you two four day routines here. I'm going to give you one for people who want to focus more on their upper bodies and one for focusing more on the lower body. So here they are. The upper body focus routine is Monday,

you do push one. Tuesday, you do pull one. Thursday, you do legs. And then Friday, you do either push two or pull two, depending on whether you want to focus more on your push muscles or your pull muscles. And the lower body focus looks like this. Monday, push one. Tuesday, legs. And the lower body focus looks like this. Monday, push one. Tuesday, legs. Thursday, pull one. Friday, legs.

Yes, it's difficult. But if you want more legs and more butt, it'll give it to you. And now we're at the five-day routine. And this is my personal preferred PPL split because it really allows you to push the limits in terms of volume and intensity while also giving you a couple days for recovery, which as I'm getting older, I am noticing I need a bit more than when I was in my twenties. So again, I'm going to give you two routines here. I'm going to give you one that emphasizes the upper body and one that emphasizes the lower body. So the upper body emphasis is Monday, push one, Tuesday, pull one, Wednesday, legs, Thursday, push two, Friday, pull two. The lower body focus looks like this, Monday,

legs, Tuesday, push one, Wednesday, pull one, Thursday, legs, Friday, push two. The last and most difficult routine here is the six day PPL routine. And if you're bulking or you're just feeling masochistic, then this might be for you. No, seriously, though, as I said earlier, the six day PPL split is in my experience about the most a natural weightlifter can get away with until you really just start to not feel good. I do not recommend doing this if you are in a caloric deficit or if you don't generally feel rested and fresh because that means that your body might be a little bit behind on recovery. So this routine is really best suited to when you are in a caloric surplus and you are really feeling up to the challenge physically.

And here it is. Monday, push one. Tuesday, pull one. Wednesday, legs. Thursday, push two. Friday, pull two. Saturday, legs. Sunday, off.

And yes, take the day off. Please do. Now, one other option we should talk about here is push legs pull. This is a common variation of PPL that gives your upper body more time to recover in between workouts, but it gives your lower body less time, which means that it's best suited to people that are more concerned with their upper body development than their lower body. And there are several ways to set it up. I'm going to give you a few routines. We'll start with a three-day PLP. And this one's going to give your upper body a little bit more

recovery time than the normal three-day PPL because it looks like this. It goes Monday, push one, Wednesday, legs, Friday, pull one. Next is the four-day PLP. And even though push, legs, pull tends to favor upper body recovery, you can still use a few different variations to change its emphasis. So for example, if you want a four-day upper body focus, you can go Monday, push one, Tuesday legs, Thursday, pull one, Friday, push two. And if you want to focus on your lower body, you can go Monday, push one. And if you want to get fancy, you can alternate with push two every other week. So you go push

one, one week, push two the next week, and then back to push one and so forth. So that's Monday. Tuesday is legs. Thursday is pull one. And again, if you want to optimize this even a little further, then you can alternate with pull two every other week. And then Friday is legs. And again, if you want to optimize this even a little further, then you can alternate with pull two every other week. And then Friday is legs. Moving on, we now are at the five-day PLP. And if you want to push your whole body volume and intensity a little bit more than with the four-day, then this one is for you. So the upper body focus looks like this. On Monday, push one. So the upper body focus looks like this on Monday, push one on Tuesday legs on Wednesday, pull one on Thursday, push two and on Friday, pull two. The lower body focus here goes Monday, push one Tuesday legs, Wednesday, pull one Thursday,

push two Friday legs. And lastly, the six day PLP. Now, if you want to work most on your upper body development during your next bulk, and you're willing to put in some hard work, then this really is a fantastic routine. The same rules apply here as in the six-day push-pull legs. I really do not recommend it if you're in a deficit or if you don't generally feel just rested and fresh. It's really best for when you're rested, fed, ready to train. And here it is.

So Monday, push one. Tuesday, legs. Wednesday, pull one. Thursday, push two. Friday, legs. Saturday, pull two. All right. So those are the workouts.

Those are the routines. Let's quickly talk about how to progress in these workouts because progression is the key, not just going through the motions, not just doing reps. And really what that boils down to is something I've said many times, and that is as a natural weightlifter, here's something you can take to the bank. If you want to keep getting bigger, you have to keep getting stronger. And this is especially applicable to people who are past their newbie gains. In the beginning, you can gain some size without really gaining much strength. But once that first six to eight months honeymoon phase is over, you really need to get serious about increasing whole body strength. Doing that is more important than getting a pump. It's more important than maximizing time under

tension. It's more important than incorporating special training techniques, even valid ones like rest pause sets, periodization, and so forth. And the reason for this is the number one rule of muscle building is progressive overload. And what that boils down to is gradually increasing the amount of tension in your muscle fibers over time. Now, you can accomplish this to some degree by just continually increasing volume, the number of reps that you do, but ultimately you are going to need to add weight to the bar, if nothing else, but for practical reasons. That's why the biggest guys and gals in the gym are also generally the strongest. You will not find a guy with small legs who's squatting over 400 pounds. So with that in mind, here are

several guidelines that are going to help you get the most out of your push pull legs or push legs pull workouts. So the first is once you hit the top of the rep range that you are working in for one set, move up in weight. So for example, if you push out six reps on your first set of the military press, add five pounds to each side of the bar for your next set and work with that weight until you can press it for six reps and so forth. Now, as you become more advanced, you may have to move up in smaller increments. So instead of adding 10 pounds to the bar, when you're ready to move up, you may only add five, two and a halves on each side. And you may also need to go for two sets of the top of your rep range, or maybe even three. But regardless, the point is you're progressing to heavier and heavier weights over time.

Now, I also will mention that if you add weight to the bar and then you don't hit at least the bottom of your rep range in your next set, then it's too heavy and you should either decrease the amount of weight added. So go from 10 pounds to five pounds or go back to the weight that you were using previously and work up to two sets of the top of your rep range and then try to move up. And if it still doesn't work, then move up to two sets of the top of your rep range and then try to move up. And if it still doesn't work, then move up to three sets of the top of your rep range and you will be fine by then. In most cases, you're going to be able to hit the top of your rep range for one set and move up and be just fine. So just to make it crystal clear, let's say you press for six reps, you add weight, you get only two or three, you drop the weight

from a 10 pound increase to a five pound increase and then get let's say four okay good but if you did that and you still only got two or three on your next set then it's time to go back to the original weight and work up to two sets of six before increasing so point number two here is rest three minutes in between each four to six rep set and two minutes in between all other sets. Now, if you're new to this kind of training, that might sound a bit excessive to you, but it's important. It's very important that you get adequate rest between your sets so your muscles can fully recoup their strength, which allows you to give maximum effort in each set. And I didn't just pull those three and two minute numbers out of thin air either. Studies have shown that especially when you're training with heavier weights, longer rest periods produce greater increases in muscle and strength over time. Now, of course, there's a point of diminishing returns. If you rest 15 minutes in between sets, that's not better than three, but three minutes, especially when you're lifting heavy is certainly better than one. So the point number three here is deload every four to six weeks. So every four to six weeks,

you want to reduce the intensity and or volume of your workouts. So your body can fully recover from all the work you're doing. There are different ways to deload. Some people like to reduce only the intensity. Some people like to reduce only the intensity. Some people like to reduce only the volume, but keep the intensity high. Some people like to do a little bit of both. I myself like to reduce the intensity, but you can read more about deloading in general if you're not familiar with it. If you just head over to muscleforlife.com and search for deload, I have an article on it. And the last point here is don't go to absolute muscular failure in every set that you do. In other words, you shouldn't be pushing yourself every set to the

point where you absolutely can't do another rep where you actually fail and you need to set the weight down or have a spot or take it off you. Instead, what you want to do is you want to end most of your sets at the point where you're just one or two reps shy of muscle failure of complete failure. If you're new to weightlifting, you're probably not familiar with what this feels like, but the more you do it, the better you'll get at estimating. And this point here that I'm recommending you end most of your sets, you know, that one or two rep shy of failure point is where the weight is moving much slower than when you started. So bar speed is way down and

you're struggling to complete a rep in terms of perceived effort. I'd say it's like an eight out of 10 with 10 being just all out do or die effort. life depends on it, get that bar off your chest. Now, that raises a question, of course, of when should you go to muscle failure? And I myself, I save it mainly for accessory exercises like barbell curls, triceps extensions, calf raises, and ab exercises. And I generally don't go to absolute failure more than maybe a few sets per workout. If you want to learn more about this and why I am recommending these things, then again, head over to Muscle for Life and search for failure, and you'll see an article that I wrote on it.

All right, so that's everything in terms of our workouts. The last thing I want to talk about is supplements, and I saved it for last because quite frankly, it's really just not as important as proper diet and training. I mean, the reality is supplements do not build great physiques, only dedication to proper training nutrition does. That said, there are safe natural substances that have been scientifically proven to deliver various benefits like increased strength, muscle endurance, and muscle growth, more fat loss, and so forth. And as a part of my work, it's been my job to know what these things are and find products with them that I can use myself and recommend to others. That has been difficult though. It's been hard to find high quality, effective, and fairly priced products. And

that's why a few years ago, I decided to just take matters into my own hands and create my own supplements, scratch my own itch, so to speak, make the products that I myself always wanted and just wished other people would create. I don't want to go into a whole spiel here though, but if you want to learn more about my stuff, you can head over to legionathletics.com, L-E-G-I-O-N, athletics.com. So the supplements that I recommend that you take, if you have the budget and inclination, are creatine. And creatine is a substance that is found naturally in the body and in some foods like red meat. And it's probably the most researched molecule in the entire world of

sports supplements. And there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of studies on it. And the consensus is pretty clear. Creatine can help you gain muscle and strength faster. It can improve anaerobic endurance, and it can also reduce muscle damage and soreness. And you might've heard that it's bad for your kidneys, but these claims have also been categorically and repeatedly disproven in healthy subjects. Creatine has been shown to have no harmful side effects in both short and long-term usage. That said people with kidney disease are not advised to supplement with it. So if you have healthy kidneys, then I highly recommend that you supplement with creatine

because it's safe, it's cheap, and it works. In terms of specific products, I mean, I use my own, of course, which is a post-workout supplement called Recharge. And you can learn more about it at legionathletics.com slash recharge. Next on the list is a protein powder. Now, you don't need protein supplements to gain muscle, but considering how much protein that you need to eat every day to maximize muscle growth, which is about 0.8 to one gram per pound per day, uh, getting all of that from whole food can be a bit impractical. And that's really the main reason why I created and used a whey protein supplement. I also have a 100% vegan plant-based supplement as well, if that's more your thing. There is some

evidence that whey is particularly good for your post-workout nutrition, but I'm kind of just splitting hairs there. My products in this case, what I use myself are called Wh plus, which you can learn more about at legionathletics.com slash way and thrive. That's my vegan protein, which you can find at legionathletics.com slash thrive. All right. The last supplement that I recommend you consider to get the most out of your PPL workouts is a pre-workout drink. And I know pre-workouts kind of have a bad rap because while there's no question that they can get you fired up to get to work in the gym, they also can come with major downsides and potential risks. For example, many of these products are stuffed full of ineffective ingredients

or tiny worthless dosages of otherwise good ingredients, which means that they are really little more than just a few cheap stimulants with some pixie dust sprinkled in to make for pretty labels and convincing ad copy. And honestly, many pre-workouts don't even have the stimulants going for them. They're just complete duds. In some cases, pre-workouts are just downright dangerous. For example, downright dangerous. For example, Jack 3D or Jack contained a powerful and now banned stimulant known as DMAA. And even worse than that, there was a popular pre-workout supplement called craze, which actually contained a chemical similar to methamphetamine. And if you don't believe me, just hit Google on that craze methamphetamine pretty bad. So the reality is it's hard to find a pre-workout supplement that is light on stimulants, but heavy on natural

safe performance enhancing ingredients like beta alanine, betaine and citrulline. And that's why I made my own it's called pulse and it contains clinically effective dosages of beta-alanine, citrulline, betaine, as well as ornithine, theanine, and it has some caffeine. And you can learn about it and the science behind the formulation at legionathletics.com slash pulse. Okay, that's it. That's everything I have for our push- legs discussion. And just to summarize the PPL split is one of the simplest and most effective types of weightlifting routines that you can follow. It trains every major muscle group in your body. It allows you to optimize volume, intensity, frequency, and recovery. And it's pretty easy to understand and program. So if you've never tried it before,

then I think you might find that you like it quite a bit more than whole body or body part splits. So give a routine in this podcast to go or use the principles we've discussed to create your own and see how your body responds. I think you will be pleasantly surprised. your own and see how your body responds, I think you will be pleasantly surprised. then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you're listening from. This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also increases its search visibility and thus helps more people find their way to me and learn how to build their best bodies ever too. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then just subscribe to the podcast and you won't miss out on any of the new goodies. Lastly, if you didn't like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at

muscleforlife.com and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better. I read everything myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback. So please do reach out. All right, that's it. Thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon. And lastly, this episode is brought to you by me. Seriously though, I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead I'm going to just quickly tell you about something of mine. Specifically, my hugely popular and 100% natural pre-workout supplement, Pulse. It has sold over 250,000 bottles in the last several years, and it increases energy, improves mood, sharpens mental focus, increases strength and endurance, and reduces fatigue

without the unwanted side effects that you probably experience with many other pre-workouts or the dreaded post-workouts or the dreaded post-workout crash. It's also naturally sweetened and flavored and contains no artificial food dyes, fillers, or other unnecessary junk. And all of that is why Pulse has over 3,100 reviews on Amazon with a four and a half star average and another 500 plus reviews on my website also with a four and a half star average. So if you want to feel focused, tireless, and powerful in your workouts, and if you want to say goodbye to the pre-workout jitters, upset stomachs, and crashes for good, then you want to head over to www.legionathletics.com

and pick up a bottle of pulse today and if you're not sure which flavor to get i highly recommend blue raspberry it's my personal favorite and just to show how much i appreciate my podcast peeps use the coupon code podcast at checkout and you will save 10% on your entire order.