In this article we will look into how to divide your training program in muscle groups or types of exercises. The article provides examples along with a few ways to potentially implement this information into your training routine.
There are 650 skeletal muscles in the human body. This number can be intimidating, especially when we want to have a balanced-looking body. One could assume all of these muscles need to be trained. Now luckily there are ways to divide your body either in areas or through movements. Even though we might only choose one area, like the back, we will be training all of the muscles shown here with just 1-3 back exercises.
As you can see trying to focus on each muscle will become an exercise in futility.
When deciding between different ways to split up our training we need to keep the main goal in mind: train all of our muscles and divide our training time efficiently. We can do this in a few ways.
Listed are some options ranging from basic to more detailed:
- Push / pull (you workout either pushing movements or pulling movements)
- Upperbody / Lowerbody ( you workout either Upperbody exercises or Lowerbody exercises)
- Arms/ Torso / legs ( you either do exercises for your arms , torso or legs)
- Chest/legs/back/arms/shoulders ( You divide your routine in minimum 5 workouts where each time you focus on only one main body part)
- Upper chest / lower chest/ quadsriceps ( front of the leg) / hamstrings & glutes(back of the leg)/ calves/ triceps/biceps/ Latissimus ( back width) / Erectors spinae & upperback ( back thickness) ( Same as option 4 yet more sessions are needed since you choose highly specific exercises for just one area)
Options 1 and 2 divide our training around the types of exercises and in 3, 4 and 5 we focus on the specific muscles. The way in which you look at your body and training differs; however, the outcome stays the same: train the entire body!
No one way is per definition better than the other for everyone. All of these options are valuable ways to program your training. To pick the best option we need to consider an individual’s time dedicated to training, development level and their goals. As a general rule of thumb, people with less than 3 years of training under their belt and who might want to train 1-3 times per week are better off with option 1 or 2. On the other hand, individuals with +5 years of exeperience, a desire to push their bodies further and are willing to train 4-6 times per week might be looking at option 4 or even 5.
Practical example
Lets say someone is willing to train twice a week for 60 minutes , we could pick option 1. Push pull
Pull workout
- Latpulldowns 5x10 reps
- Upright Rows 4x12-20 reps
- Dumbell rows 4x10 reps
- Stiff legged deadlift 3x6-8 reps
- Barbell curls 4x10-15 reps
Push Workout
- Incline BenchPress 5x10 reps
- Squats 4x6-8 reps
- Seated barbell Shoulder Press 4x8 reps
- Side raises 3x 12-20 reps
- Ez-bar Skull Crushers 4x 6-10 reps
As a bonus let’s throw a small but meaningful adjustment to this. Most sports literature shows that training a muscle more than once a week is best for almost everyone. However this confuses a lot of people. They ,understandbly, assume you need to do a complete workout for that muscle more than once, but luckily this doesn’t seem to be the case. We see great results changing over one exercise from one workout to the other. This will still give many of the benefits we are looking for when training a bodypart more than once per week. If this sounds confusing let me make it clear within our previous example
Pull Dominant Workout
- Latpulldown 5x10 reps
- uprightrows 4x12-20 reps
- seated barbell shoulderpress 4x8 reps
- Stiff legged deadlift 3x6-8 reps
- barbell curls 4x10-15 reps
Push Dominant Workout
- Incline Benchpress 5x10 reps
- Squats 4x6-8 reps
- Dumbell rows 4x10 reps
- Side raises 3x 12-20 reps
- Ez-bar skullcrushers 4x 6-10 reps
Strictly speaking, the workouts are no longer a pure pull or push. Nor did I add volume. However we get all the benefits of dividing it equally in this manner AND most muscles are getting stimulated at a higher frequency, which the literature shows us are all important. We call this a pull dominant and push dominant workout.
Let’s do the same thing for the Upperbody Lowerbody split. And immediately implement our frequency trick.
Upper Body
- Benchpress 5x10 reps
- Barbell rows 4x8reps
- legpress 5x10 reps
- Dumbell shoulderpress 4x10-12 reps
- triceppushdown 3x10-15 reps
Lower Body
- Squats 5x 6-8 reps
- Sumo Deadlifts 3x6 reps
- Incline Dumbell Press 4x 12 reps
- Walking lunges 4x12 reps
- Hip Thrusts 3x 10 reps
Practically its very convenient to structure your workouts like this. Lets say you set the goal to train twice per week. Even if you miss one or have a week where you want to train 3 times , you can rotate these sessions without needing a whole new program. With this approach you go workout 1, workout 2, workout 1, … no matter when you train.
Go kick ass, have fun & progress!