Programming for training is crucial to ensure you are reaching your goals. If you do not program correctly, you may be missing out on progress in the gym. There are many ways to program your workouts, it all depends on your goals. I’ll be breaking down some of the most common workout splits and some information to help you decide what to choose!
There are many workout splits out there so how do you know which to choose? There are some things to consider before you choose your workout split.
- Time: Time is valuable and people are busy. You need to decide how much time you want to dedicate towards the gym. If you can only do 2 days a week, it would not be smart to pick a split that requires 4 days of training. Find a split that you can dedicate your time to and have quality workouts.
- Experience: Beginners require less volume and intensity in their training programs than more experienced lifters. As the body adapts you want to slowly add more volume and intensity.
- Goals: This is a word you will hear often in the fitness industry for a good reason. Everyone has different goals and when choosing a split you need to identify what your goals are. Are you trying to maintain fitness or grow your body in size? These are questions you need to ask yourself.
Workout Splits
Full body split: This is where you focus on training your whole body or one exercise per muscle group. One of the primary reasons the volume is kept intentionally low per muscle group is that the primary adaptations for beginners come via the nervous system. You teach your body to activate and utilize more muscle fibers, rather than physical gains being from fiber size and strength.
Upper/Lower: which focuses on training upper body one day and lower body the other training day. This is a step up from Full body because now you can increase the intensity and volume to a more specific area usually 2 exercises per muscle group. This is typically 4 days of training followed by 3 days of rest.
4 day split: This is what most experienced lifters start doing because it allows you to really increase intensity and volume. You typically pair a larger muscle group with a smaller muscle group. For example, chest and triceps. One rule you usually want to follow is training the larger muscle first followed by the smaller one. The main reason is the smaller muscles, for example the triceps, help assist the chest when you are performing bench press. So if you were to fatigue or train the smaller muscle first, you would have decreased performance when doing bench press.
Once you have the knowledge you need to begin your fitness journey! The next step would be to put these things to the test to see what works best for your specific goals! If you’d like to work with a coach 1 on 1 to ensure you are programming your workout routines correctly, book a FREE consultation with us here at 3D Fitness and we will show you the way! Link Below!
