Hey guys, Sean Nalewanyj here of BodyTransformationTruth.com.
In this video today I want to discuss bro splits, whether they’re effective for natural
trainees and how they stack up against other popular higher frequency routines like a full
body, an upper/lower or legs/push/pull.
So for those of you who don’t know, a typical bro split is where you split your muscles
up over usually 4-6 weekly workouts, and then you train each individual muscle group once
per week.
So something like back on day 1, chest on day 2, arms on day 3, legs on day 4 etcetera.
Now over the last few years, bro splits have gotten a lot of criticism in the bodybuilding
community for being a “waste of time” with most people saying that a natural lifter
will see faster progress using a program that hits each individual muscle group at a higher
overall frequency.
And all in all, this is basically true; hitting each muscle group directly only once per week
is probably not going to be the optimal approach for the average lifter who wants to see progress
at the fastest possible rate.
And this is because a given muscle just simply doesn’t require a full week of rest in order
to fully recover from the previous workout.
In most cases, 3-4 days will probably be enough for full recovery and growth to take place,
and at that point the particular muscle group could be trained again.
So by using a once-per-week bro split training approach, you basically leave your muscles
“idle” for several days out of the week where they could be trained again and a new
“growth period” could be stimulated, but instead they just rest.
For example, if you trained your chest twice per week using like a basic upper/lower split,
you’d end up with 104 individual “growth periods” over the course of 1 year for that
muscle, in comparison to 52 growth periods that you’d get by only training it once
per week.
And this is why I generally recommend either an upper/lower split done 4 days per week
or a legs/push/pull split done 4-5 days per week for most people.
That type of routine still allows for enough total volume and “focus” for each individual
muscle group in a given workout, but it also lets you comfortably hit those muscles at
a higher frequency of somewhere around once every 3-5 days.
So, we’ve established that a typical “bro split” is probably not going to be the optimal
approach for people who want to build muscle as quickly as possible, however, the fact
that it isn’t optimal doesn’t mean that it isn’t effective and it doesn’t mean
that it doesn't work.
When it all comes down to it, ANY bodybuilding approach that lets you train a given muscle
group with enough volume and intensity and that allows for progressive increases in weight
over time is still going to produce consistent gains in muscle size and strength, and a typical
bro split will definitely still accomplish that, and a lot lifters (myself included)
have seen perfectly reasonable gains from week to week using this exact type of approach.
Now again, a bro split likely won’t have you building muscle at the same rate as you
would on a higher frequency program, but you’re still going to make impressive gains either
way.
For a lot of lifters out there, a 4-6 day per week split is just a more enjoyable way
to work out, because a lot of people find that it just leaves them feeling more motivated
and more excited to train.
And I fully get that, because there definitely is something fun about being able to just
go into the gym and really “pump up” just 1 or 2 muscle groups with a wider variety
of exercises and more total volume, and the truth is that if this workout style maximizes
your overall consistency and you just prefer it because it’s more fun for you, then I
really don’t see anything wrong with using it, even if it’s just for temporary cycles
of training.
I’d also make the argument that even though the differences in overall progress between
someone using a bro split and someone one using a higher frequency routine will probably
be fairly noticeable in the initial stages of the training program, they'll still tend
to level out over time, and this is because there are very steep diminishing returns in
muscle growth the longer that you’ve been training, and there’s only a limited amount
of muscle that a natural trainee can gain in the first place.
So even though something like an upper/lower split or a legs/push/pull routine would almost
certainly give you faster gains right "out of the gate", after maybe 4 or 5 plus years
of hard training and proper nutrition, the differences between that and a standard bro
split in terms of pure muscle growth would probably be fairly small because both approaches
are still going to ultimately allow you to make gains close to your genetic potential
over the long term anyway.
So, in my opinion, the 2 key points to take away here are, number 1, if your goal is to
make the fastest and the most efficient muscle gains possible regardless of the specific
routine, then a bro split is likely not going to be your ideal choice.
And instead I'd recommend that you go with something that hits each muscle group closer
to around twice per week, so an upper/lower done 4 times per week or a legs/push/pull
split done 4-5 times per week, or even a full body routine done 3 days per week.
And number 2, if you just prefer a bro split because you find that it makes your training
more fun and it's more motivating for you, and you're also aware of the fact that it
probably won't be optimal for building muscle at the fastest rate at least in the short
term, but you’d just prefer to use it anyway, then the choice is completely up to you.
There's really nothing wrong with using a bro split and you'll still make significant
gains following one, but it just might take you a longer period of time to see the same
gains in comparison to somebody who is using a higher frequency routine.
So thanks for watching this video lesson, I hope you found the information useful here
today.
To learn a ton of other science based, no B.S training, nutrition and supplementation
information to maximize your muscle building and your fat burning progress, make sure to
head over to BodyTransformationTruth.com and grab my complete “Body Transformation Blueprint”
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