Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - What's the Best Workout Split?

Episode Date: September 4, 2015

In this podcast I talk all about workout splits--full-body (00:45), upper/lower (21:00), push-pull-legs (27:22), body part (31:32), and more--and how to know what's likely to work and what's not and what's going to be best for you. ARTICLES RELATED TO THIS VIDEO: Get Strong Fast With the 5/3/1 Strength Training Program: http://www.muscleforlife.com/get-strong-strength-training/ The Definitive Full-Body Workout Guide: What Works, What Doesn’t, and What’s Best: https://legionathletics.com/full-body-workout/ The Definitive Guide to Muscle Hypertrophy (Muscle Growth): http://www.muscleforlife.com/guide-to-muscle-hypertrophy-muscle-growth/ The Definitive Guide to Intermittent Fasting: http://www.muscleforlife.com/the-definitive-guide-to-intermittent-fasting/ 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/

Hey, it's Mike, and this podcast is brought to you by my books. Seriously, though, it actually is. I make my living as a writer, so as long as I keep selling books, I can keep writing articles over at Muscle for Life and Legion and recording podcasts and videos like this and all that fun stuff. Now, I have several books, but the place to start is Bigger Leaner Stronger if you're a guy and Thinner Leaner Stronger if you're a girl. Now, these books, they basically teach you everything you need to know about dieting, training, and supplementation to build

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Now, as you probably know, I'm not a fan of the supplement industry. I mean, I've wasted who knows how many thousands of dollars over the years on worthless supplements that really do nothing. And I've always had trouble finding products that I actually thought were worth buying and recommending. And well, basically I had been complaining about this for years and I decided to finally do something about it and start making my own products. And not just any products, but really the exact products that I myself have always wanted. So a few of the things that make my supplements unique are one, they're a hundred percent naturally sweetened and flavored. Two, all ingredients are backed by peer reviewed scientific research that you can verify for yourself because

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about my supplements at www.legionathletics.com. And if you like what you see and you want to buy something, use the coupon code podcast, P O D C A S T, and you'll save 10% on your order. All right. Thanks again for taking the time to listen to my podcast and let's get to the show. Hey, this is Mike from Muscle for Life and welcome to the episode of the podcast. In this episode, I want to talk about workout splits, something that I've touched on here and there, but again, like last week, I kind of dove into cardio and talked all about cardio. Let's talk all about workout splits. Let's talk about full body splits, push-pull legs, upper-lower, body part, and so forth.

legs, upper, lower, uh, body part and so forth. And, uh, yeah, just go over some of the things that you should know when you're evaluating, um, which split is going to be best for you. And even how certain splits are programmed, if they make sense, if you know, they're likely to work or work well and so forth. So let's start first with a full body type of split. So a full body split would be where you're doing, uh, you're training your entire body, usually two or three times a week, because if you try to do more than that, you run into where you're just doing too much. So if you're trying to, especially if you're trying to lift heavy weights, if you're trying to do a full body workout, a heavy full body workout already in and of itself is hard enough to do once, but to do it four or five times a week is just not feasible. do once, but you know, to do it four or five times a week is just not feasible. Um, so full body programs could be like starting strength or the, uh, rip toes, other practical, uh, was it practical strength program, practical programming, I think it's called, um, strong lifts, you know, five by five is another full body program. And, um, these programs are good. Uh, they're, you know, better

there. I would say they're best for beginners, uh there's also, though, you got to keep in mind when you're new to weightlifting, pretty much anything works. And that can be a little bit deceiving because you can see somebody that can actually do quite well on a pretty poorly programmed workout routine. And not that starting strength or strong list. Those are actually well programmed routines, but you know, somebody could just pick up a magazine and do some silly bodybuilding routine, which is like, it's a body part split, which isn't bad in and of itself, but it's like a poorly laid out body part split that just has you do a bunch. It has you doing a lot of reps, a lot of isolation stuff, drop set, super set, very little heavy lifting. You know, you're usually, you're not going to be doing much dead lifting or squatting. You're going to be doing bench pressing

because a lot of people, a lot of guys specifically are concerned with building their chest. But if you're new to weightlifting, and I should know because when I got into weightlifting, that's exactly what I did. I just went and bought some magazines and just started doing workouts really with my friends. In the't like, in the beginning, I wasn't taking it super seriously. It was just, you know, I wanted to get into weightlifting. I grew up playing sports and wasn't playing sports anymore. I wanted to do something, figured I'd get into weightlifting. Sure. Pick up some magazines and give some, you know, give some workout programs to go and just see how my body, just to see what happens kind of thing. So, uh, coming back to the

full body, full body workouts are, are, uh, better, no question, a good full body workout, like starting strength or, or five by five. Um, uh, those are, those are much better. That's a much better place to start than your typical body part split type of workout that you'd find in a magazine. Um, but to that also should just be, you know, um, I would say you also should think with that, um, like my, my program for, for men and women, bigger, leaner, stronger, thinner, stronger. It's like my main programs for men and women are it's, it's kind of a hybrid between a body part split and upper in an upper lower split because you do have body part days. Like you have a chest day, but then you're doing a little bit of additional chest work later in the week. Um, and same thing with your shoulders. That's, that'd be for guys. Cause I'm in the, in the bigger picture, what you're, what you're

going to find is, especially in doing a lot of heavy compound lifting is your lower body, your legs are going to develop faster than your upper body. They just will. Like you're going to be happy with your leg size, uh, sooner than you're going to be happy with your upper body size, just because the legs are the biggest muscle group in the body. They respond. You can really overload them. You can lift heavy. They respond well. And, uh, they grow quickly. Like rarely ever do I hear from a guy that complains that his legs aren't growing fast enough. Whereas I hear regularly from guys that are, you know, have the opposite issue where they're like their legs have, they're, they're already now having trouble fitting in their jeans and they have the leg size that they want, but

their upper body's lagging. So, um, that's just because the upper body, the visual that you want in your upper body as a guy is they're smaller muscle groups and they just take time. Like your shoulders, your arms are, they're just small groups. They just take time. Like your shoulders, your arms are, they're just small muscles and it does, it takes time to get them where they need to be. Um, even, even the, even the pecs, they're not, uh, you know, when you compare your, the pecs to your legs, they're just, they're just small muscles and they take time. Also pecs in particular are a pain because, um, most guys, when they start weightlifting, have no pec development whatsoever because you don't really use your pecs much in your daily life unless you're doing some type of physical labor, manual labor that involves it. But if you're the average person where you're spending a lot of your time sitting at a desk or maybe walking around or whatever, your pecs are just not being used much. So then when guys go from that situation to weightlifting, they find in the beginning their chest is super weak.

And to the point where a lot of guys in the beginning, they don't even feel the bench press. They don't even feel their pecs working. They feel bench press more in their arms, like in their triceps. And that could be a form issue, but it also is not necessarily a form issue. A lot of guys that, that is just how it is in the beginning. Same thing with pulling a lot of guys with, with like barbell rows, they don't even feel their back muscles working because they're so underdeveloped. But then, you know, after let's say three, four, five, six months, they've built some size. Now they've built some strength and they can actually really feel those muscles working.

Um, so anyways, uh, I have a lot of people that are brand new to weightlifting that just start guys and girls. Uh, the girl program, by the way, is a bit more lower body and it emphasizes the lower body more because, uh, the majority of, at least the girls I speak with and hear from are more, their main concern is they want the lower body as quickly as possible. They want the legs and butt, uh, and the upper body though they can wait on. Um, and a lot of girls are not nearly, they're just not nearly as concerned with the upper body development. Like, yes, they want to have toned arms and they want to have good shoulders and they want to have, you know,

they want to look athletic and lean up top, but where they really, where they're really focused is on, is on the bottom half. So the women's program switches up a little bit where it's a body part split, but it's kind of a hybrid in that you're doing a bit of additional lower body work, especially for your butt. And so I have on my website hundreds of success stories from people that started brand new with what I'm talking about, which is kind of this hybrid body part, upper lower split, and have done as good as you can possibly do. I mean, if you look at it, it's hard to judge one program's results versus another, even if you're looking at before and

afters, because there are a lot of unknown factors. A lot of before and afters are fake that are out there. You have genetics that come into play for sure. Some people's bodies respond much better to weightlifting than others, which is why some success stories that I post on most for life, people cry steroids when, I mean, I'll get some occasionally where even I think that drugs were involved and I'll ask and they'll say no, but I just don't post them because I just think drugs are involved and I

don't want to, I don't want to, you know, I just don't want to get people just think drugs are involved and I don't want to, I don't want to, you know, I just don't want to get people's hopes up on, Hey, look what this guy did in three months or something like that. Um, but if there, there definitely are some before and afters that I've posted that might look kind of gray where you're like, maybe drugs are involved. And I can't say for sure. I mean, I do ask if it, if it looks kind of shady. And if the person says yes, then I just don't post it. But if they say no and I can't, you know, it's not completely obvious, then I take their word on it. But what I know for a fact, two things that kind of mess with people, if you don't know, you can go, how is that possible?

You can go, how is that possible? Is if somebody has previous training experience, which you always see, and if you go look at the, go read, you know, when we post the successes, it has their little story. They'll always talk about, you know, if they have previous training experience, that makes a huge difference because muscle memory is real and you will gain muscle back very quickly if you had it previously. There's a permanent, the structure of your muscles have been permanently changed to where you can gain it back much faster. So if somebody was into weightlifting for a while, didn't lift for six months, and then got back into it, the type of growth that they're going to see is as

if they were on steroids. And so you have that, and then you also have genetics. Some people's bodies just respond really well to weightlifting, and some people's bodies don't respond as well. But so it can be hard when you're trying to compare, hey, is this program better than this program or how effective really is this program for building muscle? And I think a better way to judge any program is just look at it in terms of how much muscle you can build naturally, period. So no program is going to give you, let's say, 30 pounds of muscle in your first year of weightlifting. It's just not going to happen.

You'd have to have really like the top 1% of 1% of genetics or something like that for that to be possible. The average person, that's guys and girls, you know, even, well, the average guy can gain, let's say 20 pounds of muscle in this first year is on the high end. And to do that, he's going to have to start out lean. Uh, and the guys I've seen that, that, that can do that. They, they start out lean, they don't gain fat easily. So they're just a leaner body type. Um, and they manage their diet very carefully the entire time. And they keep themselves in a mild surplus. They do not go crazy with their cheating. They really stick to it.

And so that allows them to put on fat slowly and gain muscle over a long period of time. So they're spending a large percentage of that first year in a calorie surplus. And they work hard in the gym. They don't miss workouts. They are always pushing every week to try to beat the last week. You know, they work at it. And those are the people I've seen, guys, that can gain upwards of 20 pounds of muscle. And also, you know, there's a bit of genetics. If you can gain 20 pounds of muscle in your first year of weightlifting, your body responds well to weightlifting.

You have good genetics for it. Girls, half that number. So 10 pounds is really like the upper limit. Maybe you could push it to 25 pounds in the first year of muscle guys and maybe 13-ish for girls, but those are really the top, top. You're not going to get more than that. So if you look at it in that way and you go, okay, so if a program like, let's say my programs, again, I have hundreds of success stories on my website. I hear from guys every week that gain anywhere from 15 to 20 pounds of muscle, uh, in their first year on, on my program. What more do you want? That's

really, that's really like, I don't care how fancy you get with program. I'm not saying my program is the best. There are a lot of different ways to get to that 15, 20 pounds. And there are a lot of, and we'll talk about more other types of splits that can work well as well. But if your goal is to get strong and build muscle and you start with nothing on your weights and then you dramatically increase your weights by the end of year one and you gain 15, 20 pounds of muscle, you're really, I don't care what else you would have done, you're not going to get more than that. You're just not. If we're talking pure strength, then yes, you would train differently. My programs are not pure strength training programs. They're kind of a high, in that sense, they're a hybrid between strength training and bodybuilding because they have you do have you doing a lot of heavier weightlifting, but you know, uh, pure strength training is a lot of, it's a lot of

very, very heavy weightlifting combined with lighter weightlifting to train in, uh, the movement patterns. And just basically like, if you want to get stronger on your, your deadlift, let's say you're going to want to be deadlifting several times a week. I mean, that's just, and that's just a known that's just a known, that's known scientifically, like that's been proven in scientific studies. And we just know that anecdotally from how the strongest people in the world have been training now for decades. Um,

now of course, if you're going to do that, you have to balance your, your, the, the amount of weight that you're lifting and the amount of reps that you're doing, because you can't just go do,

let's say 10 sets of heavy deadlifts three times a week, you will kill yourself. So, um, that's why good strength training programs are also very recovery, uh, focused or recovery oriented where like five, three, one is a good start is a good strength training program. Uh, it's simple. It works. It's great, especially for beginners. And the workouts are relatively short. They're 25, 30 minute workouts. um, generally speaking, and you're working up to your, to your max weight. And then you're taking a deload week and those weeks where you're working

up to your max weight, you're using, you know, it's sub maximal where you're, let's say you're taking 80, 85% of your one rep max, where you could normally do six, seven reps with that. That's actually a bad example. It'd be more like taking something that you normally could do 10 reps with, um, and doing like six reps. So you, it's a wave type of progression. Um, so if the back to back to more, the point is if you are, if, if a program, let's say you're looking at the success stories of a program or looking at results on a program, and you're seeing that guys in the first year of weightlifting are gaining like five, 10 pounds of muscle, then there's probably, it could be better. It could be better. It doesn't mean it's like a terrible program, but if five pounds of muscle in the first year, that's a terrible program. 10 pounds is not bad. That again can depend on genetics. It can depend

on compliance. How are they with their diet? But if you start getting to a program, I'm talking about guys now, girls are just half these numbers. If you see a program where guys are gaining 15 to 20 pounds of muscle in their first year of weightlifting, I mean, you're just, that's about as good as it's going to get in terms of results. Is it possible that some other program might've been able to do, give them 22 pounds instead of 20? Maybe. Um, but again, now we're looking at, you know, very minor, there's just not much of a margin

beyond that, that 20 pound number. Um, so when I, you know, if, if, if you're new to weightlifting, you might be able to get that 15, 20 pounds doing full body workouts. And you know, that's why starting strength is a very popular program. That's why five by five is a very popular program. Uh, but you could also get there using something like my program, which is more of a body part split again, combined with some upper lower work or a straight upper lower type of program. Um, yeah, I mean, you're, you can get there using any of these, any of any of these types of splits and the same then is, well, I guess we'll, we'll talk

about, uh, beyond beginner in a second. So just to summarize, if you're new to weightlifting, a full body workout, uh, can get the job done. I don't, the only thing I don't really like about full body workouts, even for newer weightlifters is as a natural weightlifter, you need to be emphasizing heavy compound weightlifting. You know that. And if you try to do a bunch of heavy compound weightlifting for your entire body in one workout, it gets really hard, really fast. I mean, just go, uh, I mean, you could try it sometime, try, try doing a few sets, three to four sets of heavy deadlifting, three to four sets of heavy squatting. And by heavy,

I mean something like in the four to six rep range, if you can get six reps, you're, you know, add more weight. If you can't get four, it's, it's too, uh, too heavy. And, um, and then, and then try after that some heavy, uh, bench pressing and heavy military pressing. It's just even once you get through the heavy squatting and the heavy deadlifting or heavy deadlifting and heavy squatting, you're already going to be feeling drained. So then when you go into your heavy benching and heavy military pressing, it's just really tough. It is really, really hard. And whatever comes later in your workout always suffers from that, that you just don't have the energy. You're just fatigued. And it also takes a lot of time too, because you have to warm up obviously everything, and then you need to be resting a few minutes in between these sets. So you're going to be in the gym for an hour, hour and a half, two hours to,

to, to do all that. Um, so that, that's my only kind of, that's my, uh, uh, main gripe with full-body workouts. And it becomes more pronounced as you become a more advanced weightlifter because then you really start pushing some heavy weights. And especially if you want to be periodizing your training too, which is something you do want to do as you become a more advanced weightlifter. now working in, you want to be doing some very heavy lifting, like two to three rep stuff, some middle range stuff, four to six rep and some higher rep stuff like eight to 10 or 10 to 12 or even higher, depending on what, you know, depending on what your, what program you're following. So doing that with a full body program just is not feasible. You are not, I can guarantee you, you are not going to be doing some two, three rep, you know, deadlifting and squatting and benching and military pressing and more,

more, more. You just can't get it all done in one workout, in one full body workout. And I guess that kind of actually brings me to one other thing that is tricky with full body workouts is balancing the total weekly, balancing the intensity and the frequency and volume. So intensity is the amount of weight that you're lifting. Frequency is obviously the amount of times that you're working out and volume is the amount of sets that you're sorry, the amount of reps that you're doing essentially. Um, so out of all of those intensity is the least forgiving in that the, when you increase intensity, the other two have to decrease, um, just because you need more recovery time in terms of what it takes to recover from workouts. You can, if you're doing low intensity, low weight,

you can do, you can do quite a bit of frequency. I mean, you can train a muscle group several times a week with, with low weight using, you know, a high volume type of workout, a lot of reps, and you can get away with that. But as you increase the intensity, the other two have to come down. Um, and with, uh, in terms of what the optimal type of range is, um, there I've written articles about this and there are a couple of good, uh, reviews that, that go over, uh, you know, hundreds of hundreds of studies on, on this subject. And basically what the long story short is, if you are emphasizing heavy weightlifting, which you need to be 80, 85% of your one rep max and up, then the optimal number of reps per major muscle group per week is going to be somewhere around 60, 60 to 80 in that range.

And it really depends. Now, that's with the heavy weightlifting. If you were doing lighter weightlifting, you could go up to 150, even 180 per week. And depending on your body and depending on your diet and depending on your sleep hygiene and blah, blah, blah, you can get away with that in a sense. You can make that work. But if you are lifting a lot of heavy weight, which you should be doing, you just have to do a lot less because your body needs more time to recover. And it's not just your muscles that need to recover. It's also your central nervous system.

Heavy compound weightlifting puts a lot of stress in the central nervous system and needs to recover, you know, in the same way that muscles need to recover. Your body systemically needs to recover. So 60 to 80 heavy reps, that's 80 to 85% of your one rep max and up is a good place to start per week, per major muscle group. So 60 to 80 heavy reps for your pecs, for your shoulders, for your legs, for your back. And, of course, there's overlap. I mean, the deadlift, for instance, doesn't just train your back. It also trains a bit of your legs. It's actually very much opposed to your chain exercise. Um, the bench press doesn't

just train your pecs. It also trains your triceps and it trains your lats and trains your shoulders. Um, but when, when you're looking at what, what are those, uh, what are those exercises really emphasizing? Okay. So the bench press is emphasizing, uh, obviously the pecs and there's a bit of overlap. So in terms of, uh, if, if it's hard to, it's hard to really say with that overlap, like, well, how many of those chest reps are being counted as shoulder reps? And you don't, in my experience, working with a lot of people and getting a ton of success stories, you don't have to get so anal with it. Um, if you are again, coming back to, if you're giving each major muscle group around 60 heavy reps per week with an exercise that really targets that area, you're going to do well.

And the frequency is not as important. Really, frequency, you can think of the frequency as a tool for hitting that weekly volume. There are benefits to training just body parts just once a week. One benefit is then you can really just focus on that body part because if you're going to split everything up into, let's say, an upper-lower split, and this is getting into an upper-lower split now, where you're going to do your upper body and lower body twice a week, which is normally how these programs are laid out. Again, this can work well. There are a lot of good upper-lower programs out there, and there's nothing wrong with that approach. The only thing that I personally don't like about it is that means you're going to be doing heavy benching and heavy military pressing in the same workout, and whichever one comes second is going to suffer a little bit. Your performance is going to suffer a little bit in terms of how much weight you can lift. You know, if you, if you would have done, um, the other one first, then that one would have,

you would have been a bit stronger on that. And yeah, you know, that some programs, uh, account for that by just swapping the exercises every week. And that is, so let's say week one, you start with your bench week two, you start with your bench. Week two, you start with your military press. And then vice versa, and it just alternates like that. And that's a way of doing it. And on the lower, obviously, the problem is do you squat or deadlift first? Because whichever one that comes second is going to suffer a little bit. But this is a minor point. I wouldn't say this is a point that makes upper-lower splits bad at all.

And one benefit of increasing frequency is, and I mentioned this earlier is it's, it's better for, uh, strength purposes for pure strength purposes. Uh, you, the more frequently you do the movement, the better you're going to get at it. I mean, that's just like anything, any physical activity, the more you do it, the better you get. That also applies. This is more on a neural neuromuscular level where it's teaching your, your muscles to, uh, get better at your teaching them this movement. And then they're going to improve their efficiency at it over time. And, uh, and it also even, even form, the more you do something, the more you're going to get the form and form makes a big difference. Good form, certain, depending on the exercise and depending on what aspects of form we're talking

about can be the different, you know, you can fix something in your form and jump 10% or 5% in the weight you can lift just by fixing form. Um, so yeah, that's Jen, that's, that's how upper lowers are generally laid out. Um, you know, I, I don't there, I don't know if there are any really popular upper lowers that like, you know, starting strength is the most popular full body. I don't know. Nothing comes to mind. I mean, of course there's like Lane Norton's fat program is a, is a fairly popular, or at least it's a known upper lower and it's a good program. The only thing that I've come across with that program is it's really hard. Like you're doing a lot every week. And I, if you're in a calorie deficit, forget it.

No way. You are not going to be running that program as it's laid out on, in a calorie deficit. Um, and you know, there's a whole school of thought when you're in a calorie deficit that you only need to really lift weights two or three times a week. And,

and I understand that it's actually for, for muscle maintenance purposes, then that's very true. You don't need to be doing more than three workouts a week. You could do three full body workouts. You could do, you know, push, pull legs, uh, or an upper lower with a supplementary day, um, and, and maintain your muscle while you're cutting the, the, and I would say that makes sense. If you're, if you're basically at a point where you're, you have a couple of years of weightlifting in your belt, you're not going to be building muscle and a calorie deficit anyway. And you, um, you know, don't mind. I mean, I enjoy working out. It's like a, just a good way to start my day. So there's a

benefit there, regardless of anything that happens, you know, aesthetically to my body. Um, so if you don't mind, you know, just missing workouts. Um, and also, I mean, weightlifting burns quite a bit of calories too. There's quite a bit of also, I mean, weightlifting burns quite a bit of calories too. There's quite a bit of a, I mean, you're burning calories while you're doing it. And then there's that afterburn type effect. So, um, for, for increasing energy expenditure, I like, uh, just when I'm cutting lifting weights for that reason, because I enjoy weightlifting more than cardio. So if I need to be burning a certain amount of energy. And of course, diet comes into play too, but you only can cut your calories so far.

So there's a point where you have to move more and I'd prefer to go lift weights than go walking for an hour a day or go do more HIIT cardio or something like that. And you can definitely lift weights four or five times a week when you're in a deficit and not overtrain. Again, you just have to keep your reps like I was talking about. You want to keep them still in that 60 range and keep doing your heavy lifting.

And yeah, you'll be fine. And keep your cardio low. Keep it an hour and a half, max two hours a week. I recommend HIIT. And don't have your calorie deficit be too large, high protein dieting, eat plenty of carbs, all that stuff that you already know I always talk about, and you'll do fine. So back to this upper lower, a program like FAT is not made for a calorie deficit, in my opinion. It's made for a calorie surplus. And even then, I've heard from quite a

few guys that have tried to run that program in a surplus and just, it just beat the shit out of them. I mean, they just had by, by after a couple of months, they weren't sleeping well, their mood was all messed up. Um, they were tired throughout the day, just tight, typical type of symptoms of, of, of where they're going into overtraining territory. Um, and yeah, you know, if obviously they can deload, take some rest, let their body recover and they might've been able to run another make it another go of it. But, um, that's the only thing that, that I really have to say about fat is that it's very, very hard. Just know that. Um, and there are upper lowers, uh, that are similar in that you do, you have like a heavy upper,

heavy lower day, and then you have a lighter upper light, lighter lower day. That's the basic layout of most upper lower splits. Um, but just lower volume. That's, that's really the, where, where fat, that's what makes it so hard is their high, high volume workouts, both the heavy workouts and the lighter workouts are very high volume and you're doing a lot of compound weightlifting. Um, so anyways, uh, that's, that's the only, uh, the only downside to upper lowers again, in my experience is, uh, whichever exercise is coming after the first, which as you get, you know, as you get deeper into those workouts, it gets, it just gets harder to do what you need to do. Um, and you have to make sure that you are not going overboard on the, uh, on the volume. If you're lifting, if you're doing the heavy lifting,

um, and, and then, so we have, uh, like, I guess, I mean, a push pull legs split is not really, it's kind of, uh, it's a, it's CF push, which is upper, and then you're splitting your lower into pulling and, uh, squatting essentially for this of what I was – really, it's because of what I was saying is that if you're trying to do your entire lower body in one workout, the further you get into it, the harder and harder it gets to lift as much as you possibly can. So by splitting the deadlifting and squatting into different workouts – I mean, as you know, heavy deadlifting is just really tiring. I mean, it's just hard. Three to four heavy sets of deadlifts, and you're not feeling as energetic as you were just 10 minutes ago. So it's splitting those up.

And, you know, again, there's a lot there. I don't know of any like, ooh, this push-pull legs program. They're't know of any like this push-pull legs program. They're just kind of like the standard push-pull legs out there where it goes push-pull legs, rest, push-pull legs, rest, et cetera, et cetera. In speaking with people that run those types of programs and, you know, I haven't run that program myself. I just know that, again, you can run into overtraining issues. If you're in a calorie surplus and you have, uh, you've been weightlifting for a while and you have good genetics, you might not run into that, but I know a lot of people that have. So then the, the, the little changes, push, pull legs, rest, rest, push, pull legs, rest, rest, or, you know, push pull or, or basically every five days, there are three weightlifting days and two rest days. And it kind of, you know, push, pull, or, or basically every five days, there are three weightlifting days and

two rest days. And it kind of, you can put those rest days in how you want. Um, I would recommend, so you can push and pull and that, and then, you know, back to back and you're fine. I would personally like to have a day of rest in between my pulling and my legs, just to give my legs a break from the deadlifting. So I'm not going straight into heavy squatting the next day. So I would probably go, uh, push, pull, rest, legs, rest, and then repeat. And, um, again, this is, uh, uh, a totally workable split. Um, and you know, I, I wouldn't say it's necessarily better than an upper lower. It does have a little bit of an advantage there and that you are splitting your lower. Um, so, you know, but, but some people, they, they don't mind, uh, the, what, you know, just alternating and working through their upper lower days and moving different exercises. Cause really like the core of any good program is going

to be the compound lifts. And that's really what you want to see progress on, you know, good, good, good weightlifting programs are always built around those compound lifts, squatting, deadlifting, military pressing, bench pressing, dumbbell pressing, stuff like that. And then they have kind of supplementary exercises that you do in addition to that, because you can get a bit more out of that muscle group, you know, than just three sets of workout. I mean, it's not, it's not, it does the, it's not gym. It doesn't, it doesn't progress linearly. It's not three sets of an exercise. They're not necessarily, you know, sets of an exercise are not necessarily three times more effective as one set. But three sets of an exercise is more effective than one set. And six sets for a muscle group, especially when we're talking now different muscles that are involved.

Because the deadlift, for instance, yes, it does hit everything in your back and that's why it's a great exercise. But now you have some individual muscle groups like your lats, for instance. You know, if you want to have good lats, you're going to have to do a bit more very, it's very likely you're gonna have to do a bit more. Like you're gonna have to do some pull-ups, some wide grip pull-ups and some, uh, or, you know, barbell rows are good and things like that to, to, to where you're starting to, I wouldn't say it's

not the barbell row is an isolation exercise, or the wide grip pull-up is an isolation exercise, but it's going to do more for your lats than deadlifting probably will. So I would say both upper and lower and push-pull legs splits are really good for everybody. As you get more advanced, you will find them harder, once again, because of how much weight you're going to be lifting. And especially if you're trying to periodize your training, you're going to find it very hard. You just will.

Even an upper-lower, like I was saying, with full-body periodization, no way. It's just not going to happen. Upper-lower periodization, depending on how you're periodizing, is just very hard as well. So that's something to keep in mind. Now coming to the body part split, which I already talked a bit about earlier, where chest day, back day, legs day, shoulders day. It's not that this split kind of has a bad reputation among the fitness

guru type of crowd. And for a good reason, it's kind of earned that bad reputation because there are a lot of bad programs out there that use body part splits. But the body part split itself is not necessarily bad if the weekly volume is good, if you're lifting heavy weights, if you're doing the right exercises, and if the days are laid out well, there are some advantages. And it is really my favorite approach is, like I said, it's kind of a hybrid. We have a body part split with a little bit of extra work for lagging body parts. So you get a little bit of increased frequency on the body parts that need a little bit more work, but you are primarily focusing on one major muscle group per day. And the reason why I like that is because it allows you to really get as much work done on that muscle group by doing it that way. So like when

you have a chest day, you are going to move the most weight on your bench pressing and your dumbbell pressing, doing it like that, as opposed to an upper body day where your shoulders are also now going to need work. And then any shoulder work you do is going to take away a bit from your chest work and vice versa. And shoulders, another good example, it takes a lot of work to build good shoulders. And you want as much, you could say energy, or you want to be able to move as much weight as possible for each of your major muscle groups. And the body part split has that as an advantage. It also has an advantage when it comes to periodization because you can actually, especially different ways to periodize. You can periodize

literally where you're doing just, you know, let's say you're working in the four to six rep range for a month or two months, and then you're moving up to six to eight and then for a month or two, and then eight to 10 for a month or two, you can do it like that. The only thing I don't like about that is the periods. It tends to detrain the rep ranges you're not working in. So the higher rep ranges are more of a muscle endurance rep range. In terms of muscle growth, there is the cellular fatigue aspect, but the heavier lifting is going to deliver a bit more in terms of muscle growth due to muscle damage and due to progressive overload. It's easier to progressively overload your muscles with heavier weights than it is higher rep weights.

It just is. If you're working a 10 to 12 rep range, going for 13 reps with that weight or 14 reps and then trying to beat that by a rep, beat that by a rep, yeah, you can do that. It's just with the amount of muscle burn and fatigue that you're dealing with. I find it hard to even, it's just, it's, it's, it's hard to know to really, could you have gotten one more rep maybe? Whereas when you're lifting heavier weights, it's very clear. You either are going to get that rep or you're not. Um, so the, the, the heavier lifting is, that's why, um, well, one of the reasons why I just recommend it really, you really emphasize

it. And, uh, so another way to periodize in the, in a way that I like to periodize is where you're training each, uh, rep range in each workout. Some programs train different rep ranges in different days of the week. So you're not going, you know, let's say a month or two without ever doing a two to three rep set or a four to six rep set. And, um, that's, I think that's a good way to prioritize as well. But what I personally like the most, um, is, is in each workout, you're doing some two to three rep work, some four to six rep work, and maybe some eight to 10 or 10 to 12 rep work. So every workout you're training all rep ranges. And so none of no, no rep ranges get left behind in a sense. And when you're training all rep ranges. And so no rep ranges get left behind in a sense. And when you're training like that, a body part, and you want to be training all of your muscles like that.

So you want to be doing very heavy work for your bench pressing, for your military pressing, for your squatting, for your deadlifting. You want to be doing that every week. A body part split lends itself well to that because on your chest day, for instance, good. So you can do your heavy bench pressing and move on to your other stuff for your chest. And you're not trying to in the same workout doing very heavy chest work and very heavy shoulder work, which again, you just run into even more of that issue of whichever comes the further you get into your workout, the less able you are to do it as well as you could if that muscle group, if the muscle groups were separated. Same thing goes for very heavy deadlifting and very heavy squatting in the same workout. It's just very, very hard. And hard is not bad. But in the bigger picture, what we really want to see is we want to see progression on our big lifts. And, um, you know, I, I find

that when you can really focus just on one muscle group, the progression can, especially when you're an advanced weightlifter, when you, once you're in your, you know, you've gotten your first year, year and a half under your belt, and now you really have to grind out. You have to work hard. I mean, as a guy in your, in your second year, if you gain 10 pounds of muscle, you've done well. As a girl, it's half that, five. Year three, if you can gain seven-ish as a guy, half that as a girl, you've done well. And year four and on, you're looking at three to five pounds a year, and that's doing well. If I wanted to, I'm not really trying to just get bigger, but if I wanted to gain another three pounds of muscle, that would mean that

I would start bulking and I really have probably have to drag. I try to run that bulk for a good six months probably. And then I would cut for two months to get back to, you know, around 10%. And then I would, uh, you know, bulk for the rest of the years, but, and then maybe I could hit that three pounds and that's like working hard. Um, so. So, you know, just know that once you get into that intermediate phase, everything changes in terms of the newbie phase. You have to work very hard and you have to be very strict in your diet. Diet becomes very important. Hitting your numbers, making sure that you are seeing the changes that you need to see in your measurements and on the scale. If you're bulking, making sure that you are slowly gaining weight, your

measurements are slowly improving. You are getting stronger. Um, yes, you're going to be getting fatter as well, but it shouldn't be a rat, you know, it's going to be a slow progression of everything. If you're cutting, then again, uh, you don't want to dick around with like a, a small, a small deficit. That's going to mess with your muscle growth. So you're not going to really, you're not going to gain muscle, but you're not going to lose fat fast enough. So then a cut that should have taken two months takes four months because you just weren't really watching your numbers and, or your weekends were too crazy or whatever. Um, so when you're in that, when you enter that phase, then, uh, you know,

that's, that's also where, where periodization, uh, is, is very helpful because now you're strong enough to, uh, well, for a few reasons. One, you should know form well enough now to where you can comfortably handle heavy weights. So you could comfortably do two to three rep squats, deadlifts, bench press, military press, and not hurt yourself. Whereas if you're new to weightlifting and you try to jump right into that, there's a higher chance that you're going to get hurt just because you're not familiar with the exercise yet. You don't know the movements yet. Um, and then with higher rep stuff, you can make better use of it because you're strong. Now you can actually move some weights that matter for those high reps, as opposed to,

you know, little baby weights that, uh, are just not going to do much in the way of stimulating muscle growth. Um, so that's where I think a body part split. Uh, and again, it has to be a well-designed body part split. And again, my programs are not saying they're the best design. I'm not saying the best ever. I don't think there's any program that's like really perfect or best ever, but, um, my programs are sensibly they're laid out sensibly and, and they work. You can just go look at the hundreds of success stories and that's still like bigger than you're stronger. For instance, um, again, you're doing, you have, uh, you have like a chest day and which is a lot of, a lot of heavy, a lot of heavy pressing. You have your,

your back day, which is a lot of heavy pulling. And then you have your arms day, which, uh, a lot of also people will say you don't need to train arms. And I disagree. If you want to build arms, if you want to build your arms, then as quickly as possible, you definitely should be doing some direct, like you need to be doing some sets directly for your biceps and triceps. Uh, yes, heavy compound with lifting will grow your arms, but they will grow faster. And if you also do some work for them, especially if it's heavy work, and then you're doing an upper body day, which is some higher rep bench pressing, some lower weight bench pressing and some heavy shoulders. And, uh, and then you're doing, uh, some leg training. Uh, so you're doing

some squatting. So you're too big, you know, lower body days are your deadlift day and your squats are separated. So you can really, you know, hit both of them as hard as possible and, uh, doing a little bit of extra, uh, shoulder work, uh, for the, particularly for the side delts, uh, because they take a lot of work. They're just, uh, it's a small muscle group that makes a big difference in terms of the visual appeal and, uh, thinner, leaner, stronger is laid out a little bit differently. You're doing a bit of, uh, extra lower body lower body work and butt works. You're doing some additional lower body and butt work on your pull day and you're doing some additional butt work on your legs day. So that type of body part split, when you combine it with proper weights, you're lifting heavy weights, proper exercises, proper weekly volume and proper rest, it works and it works well. Um, so don't, don't, you know,

uh, believe when, when people say that a body part split doesn't work, they're really, I wouldn't say you can't really say that there's any split that doesn't work. There are some terms out there. I mean, there's some programs out there where you're doing one workout every 10 to 12 days. And that's a very high intensity, high volume type of workout. And there are people that will get results from, from that program. You know, I think it's very limited and it's not something you could do forever. And then there are, you know, programs that would have you be doing very low volume workouts very frequently, and you can get results from those too. So there is no program that quote unquote, just doesn't work that flat results from those too. Um, so there is no program that

quote unquote just doesn't work that flat out doesn't work. Now we're, we want to optimize though. We want to get the most out of our time. Yeah. So I think that's everything that you should know about, uh, workout splits and frequency and volume intensity and how they all kind of work together. And, uh, I'll be putting together muscle for life. I'll put together some, some upper lower splits and some push pull leg splits. I mean, I have them kind of strewn throughout, but I think make a good post just to give some examples of different well-designed, you know, a well-designed full body, a well-designed push pull legs, upper lower body part, just so, you know, people can give things, can try things. And that's

really, I mean, there's nothing, it's kind of funny because sometimes people will email me almost, you know, thinking that I would be upset that they, that they're trying this other program. And not at all. I mean, you should try different programs. Absolutely. Again, because you with, well, with programs that are well-designed, it's, it's not really, it's hard to say which one is definitively better. Some of it does come down to what do you like doing more and what do you find your body responds better to. Some people's bodies do respond better to, let's say, higher volume type of where maybe something like I was saying, like Lay Lane Norton's upper lower, where there are, I can remember hearing from a couple of guys that could just get away with crazy high volume, crazy high weights every week, just genetic, uh, genetic freaks for weightlifting. I don't

know what to say. You know what I mean? So that stuff is out there. So, so yeah, look for that, uh, you know, coming up on MFL, put something together and you should find it helpful. All right. So that's today's episode. I hope you liked it. Hit me up. Let me know. Email, social media, you know how to find me.

And I'll see you next week.