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1 - Don't Use "Bodypart Splits"Here are two big problems with bodypart splits: 1) You limit yourself to relatively ineffective exercises. For example, if you have a "hamstring day," you can't really do squats of any kind, or deadlifts of any kind (The most effective hamstring exercises), because both involve not only hams, but also quads, low back, and core stability, among other things. On a "chest day" you can't do any form of bench (The most effective "chest" exercise), because it involves delts and triceps as well as pecs.
2) Which leads to the fact that: of course you can arrange things differently, but anyway you slice it, you're training 6-7 days a week, using inefficient exercises. A somewhat better "compromise" might be to have 2 "upper body" days and two "lower body" days. Now your weekly split looks something like this: Monday: Lower body A schedule I prefer even more is to involve as much of your body as possible on every workout. This requires a bit more creativity in order to avoid redundancy (see point # 3 below), so here's an example to get your started: Monday: Back Squat, Bench Press, Low
Cable Row With these last two examples, you have 3 days off, plus you can do the best exercises: squats, pulls, Olympic lifts, rows, lunges, presses, etc. 2- Use A Weekly CycleBy a "cycle" I simply mean a recurring or repeating unit of time into which you place every exercise you think you must or should do. Using my last example, you obviously wouldn't (or actually couldn't) try to back squat, front squat, lunge, step-up, chin, row, bench press, etc., etc., all in one day. You've gotta spread them out into a cycle. If your cycle is too small (compressed) you won't be able to recover from all the work you've placed into it. On the other hand, if the cycle is too large (expanded), you'll get too much recovery, meaning, you'll be starting from scratch on each new cycle. The trick is to make your cycles just long enough to be able to achieve a full recovery, but not so long that your fitness levels recede back to the starting point with each new repeat. The smalles possible cycle (in my opinion) is about 4 days. This would assume that you accomplish all desired work in two training sessions. The upper body-lower body split described earlier is one example. Using this, here's what your 4 day split would look like: Monday: Upper Body Or, the 2 sessions could be distributed toward the front of the cycle, and the rest days placed at the rear: Monday: Upper Body Either of these two cycles could be repeated over and over with a good degree of success, for an indeterminate length of time. The problem I have with this split however, is that modern Western civilization is based on a 7-day week. It only makes sense therefore, to align your training cycle with your work/life schedule, which happens to be a 7-day cycle. For this reason, I think you're best off using a weekly split. Using the last example, it might look something like this: Monday: Upper Body 3 - Seek Maximum Diversity And Minimum RedundancyIf you look back at the earlier example of a "whole body" split, you'll notice that although there is a repetition of fundamental movement patterns, there is minimal redundancy of specific movements. Here's that split again so you don't have to scroll back up to find it: Monday: Back Squat, Bench Press, Low
Cable Row So again, you'll notice that we've covered pretty much every major movement pattern: vertical and horizontal pressing, vertical and horizontal pulling, squatting, lunging, etc. 4 - If A Movement Pattern Hurts, DO SOMETHING About ItTypically, if a lifter has a particular movement scheduled for a workout, and then the initial warm-up sets for that movement cause pain, the typical response is to simply skip the movement and hope it feels better the next time around. Bad idea. The solution is beyond the scope of this article, but let me suggest getting some medical advice for anything that hurts more than a week or so (as opposed to a year or so). Until you get a diagnosis, you don't know what you're dealing with. And you can't fix a problem if you can't define the problem.
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