Skip to player
Skip to main content
Skip to footer
Search
Connect
Watch fullscreen
Like
Comments
Bookmark
Share
Add to Playlist
Report
How to Know Which Muscles to Train Together - Best Training Split Advice | Men’s Health Muscle
Men'sHealth
Follow
02/02/2024
Best Training Split Advice to Train Muscle Groups Together | Men’s Health Muscle
Category
🥇
Sports
Transcript
Display full video transcript
00:00
From biceps to triceps to chest to shoulders to abs to glutes, the list of
00:05
muscle groups you may think you need to train is endless. And if you're chasing a
00:09
perfectly complete physique, it may seem impossible to get it all done in one
00:14
workout or even in a few workouts. But that's why veteran gym goers adopt
00:18
something called a training split. And this is almost exactly what it sounds
00:23
like. Instead of training everything on one day, we are splitting up what we
00:27
train on to different days. This lets us focus on different muscle groups in each
00:31
workout and that can help us increase the intensity with which we train each
00:35
muscle group. And that intensity is often even more important than the reps and
00:39
the sets and the durations of a workout. To produce the adaptations we need for
00:44
increased size and strength, we need to find ways to challenge our muscle groups
00:48
and then let them recover from that challenge. And the right training split
00:51
will facilitate that. Before we dive into the best splits, let's first understand
00:56
the muscle groups that we need to train. And I like to divide this into major
00:59
muscle groups and secondary or accessory muscle groups. Our major muscle groups
01:04
are the largest muscle groups in our body, the ones that are capable of
01:08
generating the most force in most of our movement patterns. These major muscle groups are
01:12
our chest, which drive all pushing motions by drawing our arms across our
01:17
body, our back, which governs our ability to pull our arms toward our torso and
01:22
behind our torso. This includes your lats, rhomboids, and your trapezius muscles. And
01:27
our legs. Legs are often viewed as one muscle group but there are three
01:32
distinct major muscle groups we train when we attack legs. You have your quads,
01:35
which straighten your knees, your hamstrings, which bend your knees, and
01:40
your glutes, which also power hip extension. The secondary or accessory
01:44
muscle groups aid many of these processes. Your triceps and shoulders
01:49
help the chest drive those pushing motions, your biceps help our back drive
01:53
the pulling motions, and your core muscles help stabilize your spine while
01:57
also letting it flex and bend. Additionally, we have a few smaller
02:01
muscle groups that are almost always active in nearly every single strength
02:05
building workout. These include your forearms, which help you grip any load
02:09
you're using, your calves, which play a major role in every step, and your traps,
02:14
both upper and lower, which help maintain scapular stability. Your first obligation
02:19
in your training is always to train those larger major muscle groups. In part
02:24
because if we do that well, we will tangentially train our secondary muscle
02:29
groups and our minor muscle groups. If you have extra time, add in secondary and
02:34
accessory muscle group exercises. And if you have even more time after that, or
02:39
you have specific goals, spend time training your minor muscle groups too.
02:42
Still not sure what to do? Here is a super simple guide to picking the best
02:48
workout plan. The first and simplest is the full body split. And in this split
02:53
you'll train every single body part every time you do a resistance workout.
02:57
Now how are we gonna get that done? You'll almost solely focus on training
03:01
only those major body parts, choosing exercises that hit only those muscles. An
03:06
ideal full body split workout would have you doing a row pattern, like a dumbbell
03:11
row or cable row, a horizontal pressing pattern, like a bench press, and a lower
03:16
body pattern, like a goblet squat, in one workout. The best part of this split is
03:21
its simplicity, which makes it really great for beginners. No matter how you do
03:26
it, you'll get plenty of chances to get better at the exercises you're doing.
03:30
This is also time efficient, focusing on the most critical movement patterns your
03:35
body is capable of. The downside of this approach is how much it relies on large
03:40
movement patterns that challenge multiple muscle groups. If you're going
03:43
hard in these workouts, the moves you're doing early on in the workout will leave
03:48
you fatigued for the exercises you do late in the workout, and that'll keep you
03:51
from moving your heaviest weights to really push for muscle and strength gains.
03:55
You also likely won't spend much time training your accessory muscle groups
04:00
like your biceps and triceps. The other downside is fatigue between workouts. If
04:04
you've trained your entire body hard on a day, then the next day you're likely
04:09
going to need to rest and recover. And depending how hard you've gone, you may
04:13
need two days to rest and recover. This is great for anyone who wants to train
04:16
just two to three days a week, but if you're pushing for more frequency than
04:20
that, you'll find it hard to recover effectively. Another popular training
04:24
split is the upper-lower split. In this split, you'll train upper body on one day
04:28
and then lower body on another, and you may repeat this idea one, two, or three
04:33
times a week. Now we're starting to get more nuanced, and because we're no longer
04:37
training the entire body, we can add in more accessory motions. This is naturally
04:42
a great split for anyone who wants to train four days a week. You may lead off
04:46
the week with the lower body workout that includes Romanian deadlifts,
04:49
followed by goblet squats, followed by an isolation leg exercise that targets a
04:54
key point of emphasis or improvement, like a leg extension for your quads or a
04:58
hip thrust for your glutes. You could also do another multi-joint exercise
05:03
like a walking lunge. Suddenly we're able to train major muscle groups more
05:07
completely, and we can add in exercises that do more than hit the basics, maybe
05:11
even move in multiple planes with exercises like lateral or curtsy lunges.
05:16
You then follow with an upper body session, and you'd want to again
05:20
challenge your main movement patterns, then add in some accessory work. A nice
05:25
example of this would have you leading off an upper body day with a dumbbell
05:29
row or cable row. You might follow with a push movement like an incline dumbbell
05:34
press or a push-up, then you could throw in a super set of dumbbell curls and
05:38
triceps press downs because now you have a little time to hit those accessory
05:41
ideas. You might take a day off after that, then repeat the entire upper lower
05:46
cycle. The greatest upside of this approach is how the upper days provide
05:50
you a rest after a tough lower body day and vice versa. We're able to increase
05:55
the frequency of training as a result while still giving our muscles adequate
06:00
rest time between tough workouts. If you want to spend a bit more time training
06:04
your arms and attacking accessory motions, then you might consider an even
06:08
more nuanced split, the push-pull leg split. This is great for anyone who can
06:13
get to the gym five to six days a week, and it'll let you really attack the
06:17
muscle groups you're training each day from all angles. You'll devote one day to
06:21
your upper body muscles that you use to pull anything towards you, so mostly
06:25
your back and biceps. You'll want to do at least three exercises in every
06:30
workout, doing something for your horizontal pulling like a row, something
06:34
for your vertical pulling like a pull-down or a pull-up, and something for
06:38
your biceps like a hammer curl. You'll follow that with a day full of upper
06:42
body pushing exercises, moves that help us straighten our arms away from our
06:46
body. You'll need at least three exercises here, a horizontal push move
06:50
like a bench press or a push-up, a vertical push move like an overhead
06:54
press, and a triceps move like a skull crusher. The day after that you'll train
06:59
legs, and you can treat this leg day much like the lower body day from the upper
07:03
lower split. This split leaves more time for you to go hard on accessory motions,
07:07
and it offers more time for each body part to rest and recover between
07:11
sessions, which also sets you up to go harder when you are working those body
07:16
parts. The bro split. The most controversial split is the so-called
07:21
bro split, which has you training five days a week and training exactly one
07:26
muscle group on each day. So you might train chest on one day, back the next,
07:31
arms the next, legs the day after that, and then shoulders on day five. Each
07:37
workout lets you hammer a muscle group with multiple exercises that challenge
07:42
it from multiple angles. Then you get nearly a week to recover before you
07:47
aggressively target that body part again. Of the splits, this is the one most
07:52
reserved for one particular population, bodybuilders. There is nothing wrong with
07:57
the bro split per se, but in general most of our muscles can recover from a
08:02
session in less than a week. Pretty much only the bodybuilding crowd pushes hard
08:06
enough to need a full week of recovery between sessions. So this one likely
08:10
isn't for you unless you're ready to fully commit to crushing your muscles. So
08:15
which split is the best? They've all been shown to be effective, so don't
08:19
overthink this one based on muscle or strength goals. Instead, consider just two
08:24
factors. How many days a week do you want to hit the gym? And how hard do you want
08:29
to push each muscle group? If you can only train two days a week, the decision is
08:34
basically made for you. You'll need to use the full body split so you're
08:37
hitting your key movement patterns more than once a week. If you can train three
08:41
or more days a week, then any split could work, but ask yourself how hard you
08:46
really want to go. If you want to push each muscle group to the limit to truly
08:50
spark growth, you want to consider a push-pull leg split or maybe a bro split.
08:56
If you're not sure you're ready to seriously push your limits, veer towards
09:00
the upper lower split or even stick with full body. No matter what, you'll still be
09:05
training every single muscle group on some level. And really, that's all you'll
09:09
need to gradually build the strength and muscle that you truly want.
09:15
(upbeat music)
Recommended
10:53
|
Up next
Best Workouts To Build Inner Chest Muscles | Men’s Health Muscle
Men'sHealth
22/11/2022
10:30
These Are the Best Forearm Workouts | Muscle Musts | Men's Health Muscle
Men'sHealth
14/06/2022
6:07
Muscle Confusion Is An Ineffective Way to Train | Men’s Health Muscle
Men'sHealth
25/01/2023
8:00
Top Exercises to Build Massive Calves | Men’s Health Muscle
Men'sHealth
14/12/2022
7:39
How to Make the Most of a 5-Minute Workout | Path to Gains | Men’s Health Muscle
Men'sHealth
05/03/2024
4:16
How To Train Around Knee Pain | Men’s Health Muscle
Men'sHealth
08/09/2022
13:42
5 Must-Do Exercises for Better Rowing Machine Workouts | Men’s Health Muscle
Men'sHealth
22/03/2023
7:52
How to Do the Machine Press | Men’s Health Muscle
Men'sHealth
28/01/2023
7:13
You Can’t Train For Muscle Tone | Men’s Health Muscle
Men'sHealth
03/01/2023
6:00
Train Around Low Back Pain With These Exercises | Men’s Health Muscle
Men'sHealth
24/08/2022
7:11
How to Do the Cable Triceps Kickback the Right Way | Men’s Health Muscle
Men'sHealth
21/09/2023
10:19
These Are the Best Overall Back Workouts | Men’s Health Muscle
Men'sHealth
30/06/2022
4:42
Strengthen Your Core Muscles With This Ab Workout | Men's Health Muscle
Men'sHealth
28/03/2022
10:11
Properly Train the Turkish Get Up | Men’s Health Muscle
Men'sHealth
13/12/2022
7:31
Try Eccentric Overload Training For Serious Gains | Path to Gains | Men’s Health Muscle
Men'sHealth
23/05/2024
12:48
These Are The Best Exercises To Build Strong Glutes | Men’s Health Muscle
Men'sHealth
19/10/2022
2:44
How to Bench Press for Your Goals | Men’s Health Muscle
Men'sHealth
19/05/2022
10:29
How to Do the Leg Press | Men’s Health Muscle
Men'sHealth
10/01/2023
13:43
How to Do the Zercher Squat to Build Lower Body Strength | Form Check | Men’s Health Muscle
Men'sHealth
17/04/2024
14:10
The 5 Best Core Workouts to Get Six-Pack Abs | Men’s Health Muscle
Men'sHealth
06/10/2022
11:47
Hit These Shoulder Workouts To Build Your Delts | Men’s Health Muscle
Men'sHealth
25/04/2022
12:10
5 Exercises to Improve Your Deadlift | Men’s Health Muscle
Men'sHealth
07/03/2023
5:20
Don’t Do Box Jumps In Your Workout | Men’s Health Muscle
Men'sHealth
27/04/2022
8:08
How to Do the Close-Grip Lat Pulldown Correctly | Men’s Health Muscle
Men'sHealth
09/03/2023
10:42
5 Must-Do Exercises for Stronger Pullups | Men’s Health Muscle
Men'sHealth
15/03/2023