How to Know Which Muscles to Train Together - Best Training Split Advice | Men’s Health Muscle - video Dailymotion

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Best Training Split Advice to Train Muscle Groups Together | Men’s Health Muscle

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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)

How to Know Which Muscles to Train Together - Best Training Split Advice | Men’s Health Muscle

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