Understanding Training Splits

Training splits are generally whenever your workouts are “split” or divided to focus on specific muscle groups. So what are some of the typical types of training splits? Here is a list along with a brief description of the training split:

---

1.) The Push/Pull/Legs Split-This split involves a day for the push muscles (triceps, chest, shoulders), a day for the pull muscles (biceps, rear shoulders, back), and a day for the leg muscles (quads, hamstrings, calves). When training using this split, you can expect to be at the gym anywhere between 3-6 days a week.

2.) The Body Part Split- Each workout day is dedicated to a particular muscle group (i.e. Monday= Chest, Tuesday=Legs, Wednesday= Back, etc…). This type of training split usually requires five days of exercising.

3.) The Push/Pull Split-All the push muscles are reserved for working out on one particular day (quads, triceps, chest, shoulders), and all the pull muscles are worked out on one particular day (biceps, back, rear shoulders, hamstrings). This training split can usually allow anywhere between four to six days of training.

4.) The Prime Mover and Antagonist Split- I tend to nickname this the “opposing muscles” workout because this split focuses on working on opposite functions of the body (chest and back day together, or chest and biceps day for example). This type of training can range from 3 to 6 days of training a week.

5.) The Full Body Split- Training the entire body every day you exercise. Usually, this style of training will place a lot of emphasis on compound movements- as it is more viable to work out many muscle groups in a few big compound lifts (i.e. the squat= quads, glutes, hamstrings, hips, flat bench press= shoulders, triceps, chest). Usually the full body training split will allow up to 3 days of training in a week.

6.) The Upper Lower Split- All the muscles in the upper body are combined and worked on during one training session, your next training session will combine/work on all the muscles in the lower body. This type of training is generally covered in 4 days of training in a week.

To give you more of a visual for the training splits, I will provide the following sample “week” chart for you to understand where your workouts may lie (within every given split).

---

What’s the best split?

Before we can answer that, lets first think about what defines “best training split”. As with many other things in the world, there are many varying opinions as to which training split is the best. My opinion would be that every single split serves a purpose and can help you achieve goals in physical fitness. For your baseline establishment purposes, it’s good to know that the most common reference point of training is a frequency of at least twice a week for optimal muscle gain/response. Keep in mind however that this does not take into account more athletic type of goals (outside of hypertrophy only training). Regardless, here are some great articles that talk to training frequencies and again, support the baseline frequency of training particular muscle groups at a minimum twice per week:

https://breakingmuscle.com/fitness/optimal-frequency-training-for-hypertrophy- Brought to you by breakingmuscle.com, this article goes into detail of how the actual muscle fiber type should be taken into consideration when determining the actual frequency of training for the said muscle. (For example, biceps/calves/and rear/lateral delts are recommended to be trained 4 days a week according to the article). Although I personally haven’t followed this methodology, I would say the rationale in the article makes sense enough to at least give it a try.

https://www.t-nation.com/training/truth-about-training-frequency- Brought to you by T-Nation.com, author: Mike Robertson- this article again goes into declaring the minimum need of training frequency as twice a week, and also lists the recommendations according to the specific training goal (mass gain, strength gain, fat loss).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDWyqnGhmWY- Coincidentally enough, Athlean-X provided a greatly detailed Youtube video describing training splits and again, speaks on the baseline of two days a week for training frequency.

Answer the Question:

And now (INSERT DRUM ROLL HERE), the best training split in my opinion is……. ALL OF THEM. I would recommend varying your training splits every 2-3 months! You never want to get in the habit of following the same training split and even worse, following the same exact workout, for an extended period of time (duration longer than 3 months), because your body will likely have adapted to the demands from the workout over time and your gains will become greatly minimized. Even when performing the “body part” split, where a particular muscle is focused on once a week, you can still achieve optimal training frequency through the indirect work provided from your other days of training (i.e. back muscles can be exercised on the back day, and indirectly on an arms day by performing some chin ups). One thing is certain, the worse split to select would be one that you can’t commit to, if you know you live a bit of a busier lifestyle and can’t be in the gym 5 days a week, then perhaps the “body part” split isn’t a good choice for you. I personally have tried all of the splits mentioned in this article and have seen results each time. Feel free to share your favorite training split in the comments below!

Author:

Ivan Varela- NASM CPT