In this instructional video, Eric Roberts critiques the traditional "bro split" (training each muscle group once per week) and explains why it limits muscle growth. He introduces the concept of weekly total volume, citing research that recommends 10‑20 sets per week for large muscle groups and 2‑8 sets for smaller ones. Roberts highlights that performing more than 8‑12 sets for a single muscle group in one session leads to diminishing returns due to fatigue, reduced ability to train near failure, and a decline in muscle protein synthesis. To overcome this, he proposes training each muscle group twice per week, splitting the weekly set target across two sessions. He provides concrete examples of two‑day leg workouts that distribute glute sets (8 sets per day) to stay within the optimal range, and outlines two primary weekly split structures: a 3‑day schedule (lower body, upper body, full body) and a 4‑day schedule (lower A, upper A, lower B, upper B). Both approaches ensure each muscle group is hit twice weekly while allowing varied exercises and adequate recovery. Roberts concludes by offering a free workout program and promoting his online coaching platform, The Clubhouse, as resources for implementing these principles.
Chapters
Monday chest, Tuesday back, Wednesday legs, Thursday shoulders, Friday arms. If you're setting up your weekly workouts like this currently, this is something that we call the bro split. And personally, I am not a fan of the bro split. And let me explain why. And let me explain what you should be doing instead. One of the main issues I have with the bro split is going to be you are only working out your muscle group one time each week. Because if you look, chest once, back once, leg once, shoulders once, arms once. Not that this is inherently bad and you can't see progress this way. I just don't believe you're going to see the best progress this way. And let me explain why. There is something called your weekly total volume. And this is going to get a little bit in-depth, but stick with me. I promise I will do my absolute best to explain it. This just means how many sets per muscle group are you doing throughout the course of the week. And so if I give you an example of glutes, let's, let's say, so let's say you're having a leg day and you're doing a glute day. Let's say you do 3 sets of hip thrust, 3 sets of a deadlift, and then 3 sets of a Bulgarian split squat. That would be 9 total sets for your glutes in that workout. I almost dropped my board. And so if you were only doing a leg day or a glute day once per week, you would only be doing 9 sets of glutes per week. You might be asking, okay, Eric, well, how many sets of each muscle group should I be doing per week? It's a great question. Let me give you the answer. The research shows us somewhere around the 10 to 20 sets per muscle group per week. And these are for your bigger muscles, like think about back, think about glutes, think about hamstrings or quads or those sort of bigger muscles. When you're talking about things like your biceps or your triceps or your shoulders, somewhere around 2 to 8 sets per muscle group per week. Just depending on how else you set your workout program up. Because remember, when you're doing a shoulder press, for example, you are working your triceps in a shoulder press. Or when you're doing a bench press, you're working your shoulders and your triceps in a bench press. When you're doing a row, like a bent-over row or a cable row, you're working your bicep in that cable row along with your back. So 10 to 20 sets for your bigger muscles, 2 to 8 sets for your smaller muscles. So the issue becomes when— Let's again say you are training glutes on the bro split and you're only hitting your glutes 1 time per week. You are going to try to fit in 10 to 20 sets of glutes in that 1 workout. And so let's say to try to get as much as you can, you do a hip thrust for 4 sets, RDL 3 sets, Bulgarian split squats 3 sets, Step-ups, 3 sets, and a glute kickback for 3 sets. That would be 16 total sets of glutes for that workout. And you might be thinking, well, Eric, what's the issue? Because you just said you need 10 to 20 sets. There's 16 pretty much right in the middle. What's the problem? Here is the problem. Although you would need 10 to 20 sets per week for your muscle group, research also shows us that After about 8 to 12 sets per muscle group per workout, you actually start to see diminishing returns. So if you think about like a bell curve, right, it has this point at the top here where it's at the maximum. So let's just say again, this is your 8 to 12 sets per muscle group per workout. After you get past this Almost an inflection point. I'm actually not sure if that's correct, but I think it is. Maybe it's not. If it's not, I'm sorry. But once you get past this point right here, you start to have this point of diminishing returns. So if you end up doing 16 sets for your glutes in one workout, then you are going to start to see diminishing returns, whether it's because of something called junk volume. So when you start doing so many sets of a muscle group in one workout, you might be doing sets, but you're not going to be able to push as heavy and push as close enough to failure as you need to, to be able to produce the muscle building stimulus that you want to produce. And the reason being is number one, you're going to be fatigued. If you've ever actually done like an intense, like 3 exercises of glutes, or maybe let's say you're doing 8 sets of like hard, heavy, close to failure sets of glutes, there's no way you could double that and go to 16. You will be incredibly fatigued. Or what happens is if you know you have 5 exercises to do for glutes or 6 exercises to do solely for glutes that day, you are going to consciously or subconsciously say, I'm only halfway through these 3 exercises. I still have 3 more exercises to go. I got to make sure I try to save a little bit to be able to still push myself when I get to those other exercises. And so the earlier exercises, you don't push as much. And then when you get to the later ladder exercises, later ladder exercises, again, you're already fatiguing yourself so you can't push as hard there either. So you end up doing work without necessarily having the benefits of what you want to see. And there is something that is called your muscle protein synthesis. Which is just— MPS is short for this, right? This is basically what you need to get stronger and build muscle, recover from your workouts, all these great things. Once you get past around this point in your workout for that muscle group, your MPS also starts to decline. It actually, it goes the other direction. So for all these reasons, you won't— you don't want to end up doing usually more than 8 to 12 sets for that muscle group. So if you're trying to get 10 to 20 sets per week for that bigger muscle group, again, whether it's your glutes or your quads or your back or your hamstrings, whatever you are trying to develop, you are now limited. If you're only working out your muscle group one time per week, you're limited to 8 to 12 sets because once you start going past that, there's a negative return. So as opposed to only working out your muscle group one time per week, what if we worked out our muscle groups 2 times per week? So let's say you had 2 leg days, for example, now. And remember, your glutes are only one part of your lower body, right? So we'll stick on glutes, but let's say we have 2 leg days right here, and I'll give you 2 example leg days that we could run through. Let's say on day 1 you are doing your hip Thrust for 3 sets. You are doing your Bulgarian split squat, even though you hate them, for 3 sets. And then let's say you do a step-up for 2 sets, right? And then let's say because you also want to work your quads as well, let's say you throw in 3 sets of a leg extension because, again, you're not trying to just overly hammer your glutes in one workout. So right now you have 8 sets of glutes for this one lower body day, and then you have 3 sets of a leg extension. And again, this is purely just an example, but stick with me. So that's 8 sets over here. For these 8 sets, you are going very heavy and close to failure for all of these sets, which if you've watched maybe some of my other videos about how you build muscle, You build muscle by lifting heavier, pushing yourself very close to failure. So if you have this right here, you'll get the most out of it. Then let's say you come over here and now this day you start off with some sort of Romanian deadlift for 3 sets. Let's say you do a, uh, some sort of back squat for 3 sets. And then let's say you do some sort of, uh, some sort of kickstand hip thrust or single leg hip thrust For 2 sets. And then let's say again, you're trying to work on your quads. So maybe you do a heel elevated squat, or maybe you want to work on your hamstrings there and you would do like a hamstring curl. Again, just depends on what we're trying to work, but hopefully you're getting the idea here. You do a heel elevated squat or hamstring curl for 3 sets. Okay. Now again, over here, you're doing 3 sets of glutes, 3 sets of glutes, 2 sets of glutes. So you're doing eight sets, eight sets over the course of the week. You are now doing sixteen sets of glutes for that week if you're really trying to work on growing your glutes. This eight sets and eight sets split up into two days. You're going to be able to go heavier. You'll be able to push harder. You'll be able to recover better from your workout. Something I didn't mention beforehand as well: when you're doing a lot of exercises and a lot of sets. In one workout, you're like exhausting yourself. I'm sure you probably get done some of those workouts and you're like, you can't walk for 3, 4, 5 days. That's not a good thing. That means you're going too hard. You're doing too much. You're not recovering from your workout. So here you're stimulating enough to do again that 8 to 12 sets that we talked about. You're doing that each time. You're maximizing progress. You're pushing heavier, going closer to failure, and You can still work in some other, you know, quads or hamstring exercises that you would like to work in. But this way, if you split it up like this, you'll actually usually end up seeing better progress. And so now, all right, if we're not doing, you know, chest on Monday, back on Tuesday, legs on Wednesday, what would we maybe do instead in terms of how you would split up your weekly workouts? Here's what you would do. So if you're doing— these are the 2 main ways I personally program workouts Inside of my clubhouse, which is just my online training program. So if you're doing 3 times a week, you would do a lower body day. Again, this is not just a glute day or a quad day or a hamstring day. It's a lower body day that would incorporate all of those, just depending on which one you may want to work more. But you would do a lower body day, an upper body day. So now again, during this upper body, you're working chest, you're working back, you're working arms, you're working shoulders. You can put more volume on the muscle groups for these days since you don't have to put it all on one day, and then you are going to do a full body day on that third day. So you're hitting lower body once, lower body twice. You're doing upper body once, upper body twice, and that way you can hit each muscle group two times per week like we talked about in the previous points. Or if you want to do four times a week, it would be lower body, upper body. Lower body, upper body. Again, you're working each muscle group 2 times per week. And just, uh, yes, these are all different workouts. And so you would do like lower body A, upper body A, lower body B, upper body B. So you're doing different workouts with different exercises on these days. That way you can maximize your workouts the most. But if you follow either one of these 2 splits, I have just seen you will, generally speaking, see more progress that way. Now, This is not to say you can't see progress doing the bro split, but I do think this right here, from the research that we have and from me coaching clients, I do think this could get you some better progress. And then each week you could maybe say Monday lower body, Wednesday upper body, Friday full body. Then on over here you would do Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. And listen, if you want a free workout program from me for 3 times a week or 4 times a week, click the link in the description of this video below. There's going to be a link that says a free weekly workout program, so you can check that out. Or if you would like to, you can also check out my online coaching program, which is called The Clubhouse. Hope this video helped, and we'll chat next time.
