I remember when I first started lifting weights; my training split was chest and arms 3-4 times a week and the rest of the body 2-3 times a week. I was so motivated I trained pretty much every day and loved it. Only problem was that my gains were not great (I was obviously over trained). Then I began reading muscle magazines in the late 80’s and they were saying you needed to train 6 days a week (Being naïve I didn’t realise these athletes were all on steroids at that stage) so for the next couple of years I persevered with this high volume/ frequency approach with little to show for it. Then when I was 15 I was introduced to some police officers who were into powerlifting. I’d like to thank these two guys, Ray Bloomingfield and Barry Dawson as they gave me my first beneficial training split; they espoused a 3 day a week programme focusing on the 3 big lifts, Bench on Monday, Squats on Wednesday and Dead-lifts on Fridays with auxiliary work after each of these lifts. Finally I began to see some results for the effort I was putting in and I stayed on this split for about 6 years.
Once gains seemed to plateau and I became more interested in bodybuilding I changed my training split: Monday-Chest & Back, Wednesday- Legs, and Friday-Shoulders & Arms. This made sense to me as I still got plenty of recovery and most body parts got a direct hit once a week and an indirect hit once a week too. (Shoulders and arms got hit indirectly on chest & back day and since I dead lifted on Mondays legs got an indirect hit too). This split was effective for me and I used this for the next 15 years with very little variation.
About a year ago I felt that my gains were not where I wanted them to be so I sat down and wrote all the factors I thought I needed to consider.
- I needed a day off after each training session. I have never been able to train two days in a row without feeling fatigued; nervous system fatigue (So that meant training 3-4 days a week at most).
- I wanted to train my body parts twice a week but avoid the aforementioned nervous system fatigue. (I have found that my nervous system requires about a week to recover after heavy training a lot of the time, but individual muscle groups seem to be ready to go again after 3-4 days. Some research has suggested that even after 6 days muscles can begin to atrophy due to being in a detrained state).
- I wanted to train for 45-50 minutes max per session (so no full body workouts).
- I wanted to do a greater variety of exercises over the week for each body part (I could do this if I was training each body part twice a week).
- Incorporate (P.O.F) positions of flexion over 2 workouts.
- Utilise 4X, x-reps, Rest pause, longer TUT (time under tension) & accentuated negatives.
So I settled on a two day split; Back, Chest and Shoulders one day and Legs and Arms the other day with two variations for each workout. This meant that I would train each body part every fourth day. On paper this seemed to meet all my needs so away I went.
Here was my training split near the end of 2011; using 4X one workout and alternating that with rest pause for the other.
Back, chest and shoulders (workout A) Back, chest and shoulders (workout B)
- Deadlift 1 x max Chin ups
- Incline DB Bench DB Bench press
- DB row/BB row Straight arm pull down
- DB incline fly DB Neutral grip fly press
- Omni DB shoulder row Omni DB shoulder row
- DB lean raise Incline bench side raise
- Cable forearm curl BB forearm curl.
Legs (Quad focus) & Arms (A) Legs (Hammy focus) & Arms (B)
- Leg extension 1-leg curl
- BB Hack squat DB stiff legged deadlift
- Squat Leg press calf raise
- Calf-raise Seated calf raise
- DB curls Dip
- Triceps pushdowns Spider curl
- Reverse curl DB pull over ext.
This training split worked wonders and in the first 4 months I made some really good gains. My deadlift went from 140kg for 12 in Dec 2011 to a PB of 160kg for 11 by April 2012 which was cool. Over 2012 I have stuck with this split with only minor adjustments and am presently using training protocols like 4X variations, POF, 5×5 (which I will talk about at a later date) and x-reps to augment it. I have to be honest I have really enjoyed these workouts! If you have been struggling to make gains on the training split you are currently using, make some adjustments by considering your own unique needs and genetic predispositions so you can devise the best training split for you.