In terms of splits, you mentioned splits. And so, for those who aren't familiar with this
term splits, it's really which body parts are you training on which days? Seems like almost
everybody follows a weekly workout schedule, although the body, of course doesn't care about
the week. Right.
There's no reason to think that once every seven days or twice every seven days makes
sense physiologically, just the body doesn't work that. But that's the way life is structured.
I've seen you discuss three days a week, whole body workouts.
Mm-hmm. I've heard of splits like a pushing one day,
pulling another day, legs another day, a day off, repeat. I mean, there are so many variations
on this. What are some general themes that we can throw out there? And in order to avoid the
huge matrix of possibilities, you have some wonderful content that points those and,
in our caption, show notes we'll link out to some of those that different ways to design splits.
But in terms of giving people a logic of how to think about splitting up body parts,
what's governing the split? What are the rules and the logic that dictate a split?
For me, the first rule is, will you stick to it, right? Because I don't particularly like full body
splits. I was actually talking to Jesse about that the other day. Like, I don't necessarily
like to have to train everything. Now, of course the volumes will come down per muscle group. But
if you don't like to do that, and you actually don't look forward to your workout because you're
dreading having to do everything and feeling maybe too fatigued by the time your workouts over. Or
the fact that those generally do take a little bit longer and don't fit into your schedule,
I don't care how effective the split is, a split not done is not effective. So, you need to find
one that fit. So maybe you go into an alternative option like a push pull leg, like you mentioned.
And that could be done either one cycle through the week on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday split.
Or it could be twice in a week, so you're actually training six times where you repeat it. Pull, push
legs, pull, push legs or however you want to do it with either a day off in between the three days or
at the end of the six days. And again, that actually impacts your schedule. I've broken that
down before where it's, you know, if you put it in between the three days, it's good because you're
giving yourself an extra rest day in between. But it starts to shift that day off every week as
we wrap around for those guys that were choosing that seven-day schedule, a lot of convenience in
our heads, you know, it starts to mess with that off day. So, others like to just keep it
predictable, let's say, on a Sunday and train six days in a row. But that's a better way to maybe
group similar muscle actions together, which I definitely prefer that because if I'm going to
be training, pulling movements, at least there's a synergy between them and I feel like I'm looking
to achieve one goal that day. And then, I mean, quite honestly, you can go back to the Bro Split
days and those still work effectively. There's a reason why they worked in the past. Like I think
that science shows that there's smarter ways to do them these days. Like you can come back and hit a
related muscle so you could do, let's say, biceps on one day and then come back two days later and
do back realizing again, synergy between the exercises there, your biceps are going to get
stimulated again. So you can figure out ways to make that work. But the thing that I think
is effective there is that tends to be one of the ones that people like the most, because they can
go in, they get their pump, they feel good. It's solely focused on one muscle group.
Is that the definition of a Bro Split? One muscle group a day.
I see. So, it's very much geared towards strength and esthetics
really maximizing your chest one day-- Probably more esthetics than strength. Yeah.
Yeah. You're just-- Hence the Bro name.
The Bro name, right. Yeah. But, again, like here I am a science guy, and I could appreciate the
benefits of a Bro Split, especially because again, to what end? You know, whose goal are we trying
to achieve here theirs or ours? You know, like, I mean, if, if I'm applying my standards and my
goals or even like athletic ideals, but they just want to get in shape, then it's perfectly fine to
do a Bro Split in that instance, if you're sticking to it again and you're seeing the
results that you want to see from it. But they're able to, you know, really keep their focus on one
muscle. A lot of times people struggle with the way an exercise feels until their second or third
set. Like they don't have that proprioceptive ability to kind of lock in on an exercise. So,
spending a few not only sets in the same exercise, but then doing another exercise for the same
muscle group helps them to dial in a little bit better and get more out of their training.
Yeah, that raises an interesting, I think important question. Early on when I started
Resistance Training, which was when I was 16 in high school, I got in touch with and I was
learning from Mike Mentzer. Me too.
Interesting. That's crazy.
And Mike was very helpful. Very, very helpful. We got to be friendly.
So, I just read his book. I didn't get a chance to be him, so I'm jealous.
Back then there was no internet I paid by Western Union type thing to, to send him some money.
From the back of the magazine. And then. He got on the phone with
me and my mother at the time was like, Why is this grown man calling the house?
And he gave me a very straightforward split, which was shoulders and arms one day. He had
me taking two days off and then training legs and then two days off and then chest and back, etc.
And that's a variation of a Bro Split too, where you're sort of breaking them down that way,
chest and back or chest and bis, you know. Yeah. And it worked very well for me,
probably would have because of my age, I think because I was untrained. I think it would have
grown on many different programs, but it worked very well for me. I eventually just
made that in every other day things, shoulders, arms, day off, legs,
day or two off. Because if you hit legs right, at least for me, I'm not training the next day,
I'm not doing much of anything athletic the next day. And chest and back and repeat and so on.
And the reason I found that helpful is I almost always recovered between workouts. The six day
a week program of push pull legs, push, pull legs to me seems excruciating from two standpoints.
One is, at least with my recovery abilities or lack of recovery abilities, I can't imagine
coming back feeling fresh. And the other one is, if I'm in the gym more than four days a week,
I really start to fatigue about the whole psychological experience of it. Whereas if
I'm in there three or four days a week, in other words, if I put a day off in between each workout,
I really want to be there and I get in there with a lot of fire. And I'm also doing other
things on the off days. So, I think that I love that you mentioned the split that you'll stick to
and that you can bring the intensity to, because I think that that's really important.