Being a personal trainer for the past 5 years, I’ve been able to play around with a variety of different training programs and protocols. I find that most of the clients I get are coming from a body part split training plan that typically looks something like this:
Day 1: Chest/Triceps
Day 2: Legs
Day 3: Back/Biceps
Day 4: Shoulders/Core
I call this “The old bodybuilding style of training” which was made famous back in the 70s by guys like Dorian Yates and Arnold Swharzenagger. Although it may have worked for these guys, we also need to take into account that they were genetically gifted and on a bunch of steroids.
New science and research suggests that in order to train a body part more effectively, you want to hit it more frequently; at least 2-3x a week. Instead of doing 15 sets of chest exercises in one day, It’s probably more effective to hit 5 sets of chest exercises over the course of three different days in a week.
Most people and natural lifters, would benefit from full body splits where your training specific muscle groups more frequently. People who are on anabolics or testosterone have a completely different hormone balance compared to the general population, which makes it easier to recover from intense workouts where your targeting one specific muscle group in a session. In fact, I believe athletes who are on anabolics would benefit more if they programmed full body splits into their routine instead of body part splits.
Not only is this a lot more sustainable for most people, but it will also allow you to focus more on progressive overload. For example, If your doing 30 sets of chest exercises in one day, by midway through the workout your pecs will be fried and you won’t be able to put up much weight on the rest of the exercises that day. On the other hand, If your hitting your chest 2-3x a week with less volume, You’ll be able to put up a lot more weight in those exercises and you’ll recover a lot more smoothly. With that, going to the gym and hitting a full body workout allows you to burn a lot more calories compared to if you were just going to the gym for an arm and core workout. This will lead to you building more functional strength and boosting your metabolism; allowing you to retain more muscle mass and burn off more body fat.
A full body split program would look something like this:
Day 1: Lower Push / Upper Pull
Day 2: Lower Pull / Upper Push
Day 3: Lower Push / Upper Pull
Day 4: Lower Pull / Upper Push
and more specifically like this:
Monday :
a. Barbell back squats 3x10
b. Pull ups 3xAMRAP
c. Leg press 3x10
d. Seated cable row 3x10
e. Ab rollout 3x10
Tuesday:
a. Barbell hip thrust 3x10
b. Barbell bench press 3x10
c. Single leg RDL 3x10 ea.
d. Cable chest fly 3x10
e. RKC Plank 3x20 seconds
Thursday:
a. BB Front squats 3x10
b. Lat Pull downs 3x10
c. Heels elevated goblet squat 3x10
d. Single arm row 3x10 ea.
e. Cable side chops 3x10
Friday:
a. Romanian Deadlifts 3x10
b. BB Shoulder press 3x10
c. 45 degree hyper 3x15
d. Incline chest press 3x10
e. Pall of Press 3x10 ea.
Heres a couple couple of references in regards to the current research on strength training :
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/31188644/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6680702/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30779716/