The BEST Workout Split to Build Muscle (According to Science)

What is going on, everybody? And welcome back to the Built With Science podcast. You're here with your host, as always, of course, me, Max Coleman, that is Coleman et al. And of course sitting in front of me as always is Daniel Plotkin, AKA the Plots, Danny Boy Glutes, AKA Danny Boy. And today we're going to be talking about workout splits. What we think are the pros and cons of a bunch of different popular splits. How we kind of think thinking about workout splits in the typical way that people often think about them is kind of misguided. And then we're even going to touch on how we generally go about programming for ourselves and for our clients. So where should we start, Benny Boy? You want to talk about what makes a good split?

Yeah, I think starting with what the themes of what make a good split is probably a good idea. So you want to jump in or should I jump in? Sure.

I'm sure that I'll say stuff and you'll tell me how wrong I am, as is as tradition on the podcast. But generally speaking, regardless of which split you choose, and we're going to kind of talk about how very few splits and iterations of splits are kind of better than others. Obviously bro splits are kind of dogged on within the evidence based community, but even bro splits kind of have their positive attributes in my opinion. But just generally speaking, things that you kind of want to look out for when deciding upon which split you're going to choose are routines that kind of allow you to get the most out of your sessions and weeks. Right. So things that allow you to stimulate your muscles very well workout to workout, but also allow you to recover workout to workout. So you're kind of keeping that stimulation to each muscle you care about pretty high throughout the week. Right. So basically they the their splits that allow for good stimulation but also allow for good recovery between things. Right. We also think that you generally want to choose splits that kind of allow for some degree of flexibility. Most people are not like Danny Boy and I, where training is kind of the first thing we think about in the morning and it's kind of the thing we look forward to most in the day. For a lot of people, training is just something that they have to do or something that they get to do and life gets in the way of that oftentimes. So choosing a routine that kind of allows for the or is, is a little bit forgiving with respect to life and, and time and training, where if you miss a day here, it's not super hard to make up A later day in that week or something like that. And then, of course, you should also choose a split that this is. Goes without saying, but you enjoy something that you look forward to doing. If you're someone who hates the idea of training legs six days a week, don't choose a full body routine, obviously. But with that out of the way, or actually before anything else, you want to add with respect to what we should consider before choosing a split.

Yeah, I think just putting some numbers on it might be helpful to give sort of context for the conversation. So I think what you were saying there is essentially you want good session quality, good weekly training quality, and then you want to choose something that fits within your life that you can do consistently and enjoy. And so that's the overarching theme. But then more granularly, like, what amount of sets do you want to do per muscle group per session? And then how frequently do you want to hit each muscle group? I think we'll operate under a framework, based on the evidence we have that the upper end of what you want to do per session, per muscle group would probably be around 9. Like going above 9, not the best idea. But can you do it?

Sure.

Especially during certain phases, certain splits, which we'll talk about. But decent framework, upper end nine, lower end three. So three to nine sets per session and 10 to 20 sets per week, which would end up leaving you in a situation where you would want to do at least two sessions per week per muscle group. So as long as we are onto the same page with that framework and we can agree on that, then we can say, all right, which split can facilitate this and which split doesn't sort of allow for as much wiggle room when it comes to that sort of as our baseline framework.

Cool. Yeah, I think that's a. That's beautifully said. So what split are we going to choose that allows you to flexibly get in the number of sets that you want to get in for the week for each muscle? Right. So, yeah, I think that was a really good cover of frequency there. So let's start with the bro split. Shall we start with. We'll go. We'll go through some popular splits, talk about the. The. The positive attributes and obviously the negative attributes of each one. But we'll start with everyone's favorite, which is the bro split. We're hitting chest on Mondays and we may make it to legs by Saturday, but who knows? So go ahead. Let's talk about some of the things that you actually like about bro splits, because obviously we all know that bro splits aren't the best because they don't allow you to train like your major muscle groups twice a week. But talk about the things that you do actually enjoy with respect to bro splits.

Yeah. So probably to start, let's define what a bro split is. So a bro split, at least my understanding of the bro split, although it's maybe it's morphed over time, is that you hit one muscle group per session, so you come in, you hit chest, done. You come in the next day, you hit back, done, and so on. So one muscle group per session. So this is considered the bro split. Probably. Probably. Because bros like to just absolutely smash one muscle group and then get out of there. It gets you a good pump, it feels great. You know, it sort of cleanses the soul. So I think that is definitely a pro in that you're not leaving anything on the table and it feels really good, at least for that session. Right. So I think one, the two big pros for bro splits, and these are probably the only pros that I can think of, is one, it's very enjoyable, generally speaking, especially if you're a bro. So. So it's aptly named. And two, people who are worse at training hard, for lack of a better term, probably aren't leaving a lot on the table for that muscle group, at least for that session. Like if you split up chest into two sessions and you said you were going to do three sets each on those days or six sets each on those days to get to that 12 number, if the person is half assing all of those sets, you might get less stimulus overall from that than just smashing it, for lack of a better term, with a bunch of lower quality sets in one session. So maybe for a complete beginner who doesn't really know how to push hard, who may not necessarily benefit a ton from two times per week, and you just want to get them into the groove of things and feeling good and whatnot, that might be an okay split. Like, it's definitely not something that's completely off the table. So those are definitely two pros. I think the biggest con is that it's basically impossible to do two sessions per any, any muscle group. So you just can't hit any muscle group twice per week, which, in order to get to that 10 to 20 number you would have to do. So major con when it comes to bro split is that you just can't get to the frequency that would allow you to get a bunch of quality sets for a muscle group.

And I, I think that you know, aside from the biceps and triceps. Because your biceps and triceps are, are getting very stimulated depending on obviously the movements you use for chest and back. So your arms are getting hit twice a week, but obviously your legs aren't, obviously your shoulders aren't, your chest and back aren't. And so if you only care about arms, then yeah, bro split's probably a good idea. But it's, it's. Exactly. So there's. Go ahead.

Sorry. That's actually something I put, put here. If you were really running a bro split appropriately, you would just do flies for chest and just do basically only isolation movements. So you could truly only hit that muscle group. But typically how bro splits are done is, is, you know, there's obviously pressing and rowing and all that kind of stuff on back days. So they're freaking lying about chest only and whatnot.

So you know what's really interesting about that is that these super isolation movements that we do for our chest and back, right, Flies, straight arm pull downs. Right straight arm pull downs hit your triceps pretty well and flies actually hit your biceps pretty well. In my opinion that you get a gnarly bicep pump depending on the fly machine. So if it's one that like the, the pad is here, obviously you're not gonna get a bicep pump, but if you're holding something, you get a pretty gnarly like stretch mediated bicep pump.

So yeah, I was gonna say you would have to modify the exercises to be really good and it would still be hard to do obviously, even for. Yeah, I mean like you would have to work hard in order to truly isolate the muscle group per day.

In general, we can get into a whole tangent about over people overemphasizing isolation and stuff, but let's not do that, right? So yeah, we kind of even covered the cons while talking about the pros of bro splits, right? So bro splits are really fun. It's a good point that if you are 15 sets into chest in, in one single workout, even if you're someone who kind of stays like, you know, three to five reps away from failure, your chest is still getting annihilated that day. Even if you, even if you're not really giving it your all, there is something to be said about the fact that you were just sequestering plenty of metabolites or whatever it may be, right? That's, that's, that's leading to some sort of insane pump. Even if you are training a little bit further away from failure. But yeah, like you said, the evidence that we have, the, the best evidence that we have suggests that we probably shouldn't be training a muscle once a week. And bro splits kind of just force you into, into training a muscle once a week. Right. We also have some, but not super conclusive evidence that you probably, like you said, don't want to be doing more than, than 10 sets, ish, nine sets ish per workout. So avoiding bro splits is probably your best bet if you have the option to do a different type of split, like for instance, an upper lower split. So an upper lower split, super straightforward. I'll actually define this one, even though I forgot to do the last one. But an upper lower split just basically you go in on Monday, you're hitting your upper body, you're hitting your chest, your back, your shoulders, your biceps, your triceps, whatever it is, right. Tuesday or whatever the next day is only legs, calves, hamstrings, glutes, quads. And then of course, to be honest, anterior. You want to make, want to make sure we're hitting all the big boys and then you just alternate. Usually that's something that's like a four day a week or six day a week split. Right. So you want to talk a little bit about the pros and cons of upper lower splits.

Yeah, So I think upper lower splits probably allow for a lot of flexibility into what actually goes into the session because you've broadly categorize them upper and lower. You can do a more chest oriented upper day or a more posterior chain oriented or hamstring oriented lower body day. And then you can oscillate that depending on how you want to prioritize things throughout the week. So I think that's a big pro a con that comes to mind that's like only if you're gonna do things very rigidly. You would have to do three, like let's say you were gonna do six days, you would have to do three days of lower. If you were doing three days of upper. And many people probably prefer, since there's more muscle groups and it's easier to recover from a lot of those muscle groups, many people would probably prefer doing three upper body days and two lower body days. But if you were super rigidly following the upper lower, upper lower split, then you would have to do another lower body day. I and we'll talk about this later on, I don't think you have to do that. So you can obviously just structure it in a way where you're doing three upper and two Lower. And I think that's a good way to do, do things. But it is a con if you actually try to follow the oscillating pattern of upper, lower. I think those are like the two main ones.

Yeah, I think that. So when we're talking about these splits, y', all, just for the first couple, when we're actually going through the split, we're talking about them as if you are adhering to the split very strictly. Right. So that's an issue with. And I probably should have said this earlier, when we choose a split, right, it forces us into a certain number of days that we have to be into the gym. Right. So if we're doing a bro split, we have to be in the gym five days a week. We have to be there for chest, back, legs, shoulders and arms. Right. And if we do an upper lower split, we have to train four or six days a week. We don't really get a choice there. Assuming that we're trying to stimulate each muscle at least twice a week. Right. So I think that that is kind of an overarching con with choosing a split in general is that regardless of the flexibility of the split, it. The very nature of trying to rigidly adhere to a split of any kind, it kind of precludes you from being any more flexible. Right. So, sorry, I just wanted to throw that out there. The. The number of days is going to be largely. The split you choose is going to be largely predicated on the number of days you can train. And then also the number of days you can train is going to be largely predicated on the split you choose, assuming that you're trying to strictly adhere to that. So, yeah, my, my apologies.

But yeah, so that's exactly, exactly what I was getting at there with. You essentially are constrained to if you're doing upper, lower, two, four or six days, if you're truly following that paradigm. So definitely a con there. But pro wise, splitting them up is many times psychologically useful to people. So many times, anytime, like somebody has like a squad or a deadlift while they're doing upper body that can take away from their upper body exercises, it could fatigue them. You could, of course, put it in a different portion of the session. So there's things you can do to get around them. So we're not definitely saying it's a categorical con to do that. There's pros to doing that too. But if the person prefers having them separated and knows that they're super fatigued from those lower body exercises, that's the framework that most aligns with that. So definitely a pro there for those who prefer that type of training. You got anything else for that?

I got a big con for upper lower in that you're. I was joking about tibialis interior. Your lower body is big, basically, your glutes, hamstrings, quads, and calves. Right. But your upper body is your back, your chest, your biceps, your triceps, your shoulders. There. Basically, there's a lot more muscles of the upper body in general that you're trying to squeeze into a similar number of days as your lower body. Right. And I think we've largely moved away from that. Like, oh, I'm hitting legs today. Like, I'm hitting. I'm hitting legs today. So I'm doing squats that'll cover my hamstrings and like, what? Right. So people oftentimes misapply volume to their legs because they assume that each leg exercise hits all of the muscles of the leg. But we obviously don't approach that for the upper body. Anyway, that's the. That's. In my opinion, that's the biggest con of. Of upper lower is that it's kind of preferentiates the lower body to a certain extent because it's much easier to split lower body muscles and try to get adequate volume for the entire lower body in like two or three days. But trying to do that for the upper body can be a lot more difficult. Right. So. So I think that's the biggest con, in my personal opinion, is that you're generally sacrificing a certain freshness for a lot of your upper body muscles. Right. Cause if you're trying to hit delts after you've already hit your chest, back, biceps, and triceps, you're probably limiting the amount of stimulus that you're able to provide to them. Right. So overall, yeah, upper lower is certainly not a bad split by any means. And I think that a lot of people, like you were saying, can really enjoy, like, getting all of their leg work out of the way like in. In one, in one or two days or. Or something like that. Right. Where that they only have to worry about hitting their legs and they don't have to worry about doing any like, ab stuff or shoulder stuff in line with that either. But yeah, I mean, I don't have a whole lot to say about that upper lower in general.

Sweet.

Cool. Yeah. Push pull legs.

Yeah.

Action. Let's hear it, bro. What are your. What are your. Some pros and cons that you have about push pull legs?

Yeah. So I think push pull legs solves the problem of essentially we were talking before about there being a whole lot of upper body muscles. So now the upper body split into two different portions. Push being mostly chest, tricep, anterior delt and pull being back rear delt, bicep. The most part you can argue about some tiny muscles, but I think the, the biggest con here is that we've ignored completely all of the abduction exercises. You probably saw this in the outline and we're like, this guy's just being annoying and pedantic, but it's there. Glute meat exists. You know, lateral delts exist or middle delts, depending on who you ask. But very important that you don't leave out whole groups of people or. Oh, said people by accident, because this is what I'm talking about. This is the slippery slope. You leave out muscle groups, then you. This is why racism exists, folks, because of.

Of push pull legs.

Of push pull legs. That's.

Push pull legs is the root of all conflict that exists in, in the world. Yeah. So obviously push pull legs, like, requires you to train six days a week. And yeah, it, if we want to get really pedantic, all muscles pull there. There's not a muscle in the body that doesn't pull. So if we really want to get annoying with it, we can. But I, I think that regardless of, of, of racism and, and, and the, the, the root of all evil that push pull legs causes the. This is the split that allows for the least flexibility. You have to train six days a week and if you miss a day, that's not good. Like you just, you can't make that up later in the week. Really you can, but you have to shift things around. Right. It doesn't allow for any flexibility whatsoever, which I think is the biggest issue in general. Right. Um, but overall, pushbow legs is a totally fine. All of these are totally fine splits. Generally even the bro split can be modified to be a little bit more optimal, quote unquote. Right. So yeah, I, I think that with respect to pushbowl legs, it does the opposite of upper lower where it does give the entire upper body and all of the muscles of the upper body kind of the attention that they deserve. Except, yeah, I don't know when would you put lateral raises for a push pull legs split? To me, they, it feels more like pulling than pushing for some reason.

Yeah, I mean you could literally put them on any. I prefer actually to put them on legs. So I'll, I'll do it like between. As a super Set with like seated hamstring or a leg extension. So I mean, it could literally go on any one of those days just fine. But I think as long as it's not like super weirdly put, like supersetted with like an overhead press, it could really fit anywhere. Push, pull or legs.

Cool. Yeah. So push pull legs just like the rest of them, it's fine. But that's probably not your best bet when talking about what split you should choose in general. So last one before we start talking about, like the more principal nature of this episode. Full body, true full body splits, where we're going in and we're hitting each muscle every single day we train. What do you think about those?

Yeah. So true full body I'd probably put into a similar category to bro splits in that I would lean away from a true full body split. Generally speaking, it has some upsides for people who. Let's say you're training one time per week, definitely do a full full body split where you're hitting every muscle group or giving some love to every muscle group. Right. But trying to hit every muscle group in one session is probably a really bad idea. Like you're super tired, you hit every muscle group ostensibly, and then you're like, ah, crap. Really hit calves now I gotta think. Or I didn't really hit lateral delts. Like trying to hit every single muscle group every single time you go into the gym is just not super feasible. And it's also likely not what people are actually doing. Even when they say they're doing a full body program, they just mean their overall hitting many muscle groups that don't really fall into one category. So that's why we have our. Do you have anything to add on that one before we go into like a modified full body program?

Yeah, because modified full body is basically what everyone actually does.

Right.

But. But with respect to full body, I do think that generally if you're doing. If we're strictly. If we have to choose a split, right. If we have to choose full body, push, pull legs, upper, lower, or a bro split. If you're training less than four days a week, you don't really have a choice other than full body, in my opinion. You can start modifying things and be like, oh, we're doing upper, lower and then full body one day a week. But generally speaking, if you're training three days a week, you probably want to choose something that looks very similar to a full body. Similar but not perfect, I. E. Modified full body, which is kind of going to probably be the bulk of what we're going to talk about. So, yeah, let's go ahead and move away from splits. But just as a quick little summary, the split you choose, assuming that you want to stick to a rigid split, should be predicated on basically the number of days that you're training with, you know, 4 and 6, kind of allowing for upper, lower, push, pull legs, you have to be in there six days a week, bro splits, you kind of have to be in there five days a week. And then full body, generally, if you're training less than three days a week, you probably should choose that, but you can technically do full body up to six days a week as well. We're going to kind of talk about that here with. With modified full body. Right. So kind of the overarching theme to this entire podcast, right, is that basically all of these can be modified to quote unquote, like break the rules, right. And turn it into a modified version of any one of those splits. So like Danny boy was kind of saying, with push, pull legs, like, I may do my lateral raises for on my leg day, does that mean that it's no longer a push, pull legs? You know what I mean? So, yeah, you want to. You want to kind of take it away from here and talk about modified full body splits in general and kind of how we generally go about programming for ourselves and for our clients.

Yeah. So I think modified full body is kind of what a lot of people sort of veer toward as they start to get to know themselves. So I think one thing that we didn't mention about these splits is that using them early on can be a really good tool to figure out what works for you. You can sort of see that, oh, at this frequency for this muscle group, I feel like I can get a little bit more out of each session and still recover well. So that's where modified full body comes in. Where, okay, if your triceps recover super well and you barely feel like you hit them from, you know, six sets per session, then maybe they can tolerate nine sets per session. So you might do tricep at a lower frequency and a higher amount of sets per session, and you might do hamstrings at a higher frequency and a lower amount of sets per session. So depending on how you recover what you prefer, you would set things up to facilitate hitting the muscle when it's fully recovered and what allows for the best training weeks compiled over time so you don't have to follow any sort of rigid framework where if you have an upper body day, even if you want to call it an upper body day. It can be mostly upper body with some calves and even one hamstring exercise that you know you recover well from. So not only does it allow you for less rigidity for which muscle group you're hitting, but once you get to know yourself better, you also get to know which exercises you recover very well from as well. So it could be that you want more volume for a particular muscle group and you do well with very high frequencies for that muscle group. But you know that if you do this particular exercise, let's say an RDL for the hamstring on this day, it'll absolutely ruin your hamstring day the next day or the day after. So you'll do something like a lying leg curl on this day, recover just fine, even if it's the day after for a more hamstring oriented day. So not only are you flexible in which muscle groups you hit, which exercises you hit for the particular muscle group, and now you have essentially an unlimited amount of iterations of how you can do things for yourself. And the problem with that is, is that if you aren't experienced, if you don't really know how your body reacts, you can try to catch too many rabbits at the same time and end up with a weird mummy looking program. And you could also end up in a situation where you're under recovered a lot, where if you set things up inappropriately and tried to do too much with your program, like, ah, crap, you know, my hamstrings are still feeling it and now I'm trying to hit the muscle again and again and again and you just end up being fatigued and not able to give as much love to the muscle group within that particular session. So definitely not the holy grail if not done appropriately. But I think when done appropriately, with a good training history, it can definitely be the best way to go.

Yeah, I think the, I think the biggest flaw or the biggest con to a modified full body is that when people come up to you in the gym and say, hey, what are you hitting today? Oh, I'm hitting chest, quads, calves, forearm extensors, triceps and biceps. It's just, it's just a weird, it's, it's a joke, obviously, but you just, it doesn't fall, it's not neat. No, it doesn't fall into a nice little neat day where you're going to the gym and doing things right. But I think that, yeah, with respect to full body in general, like modified full body, if you don't Know yourself well and this is exactly what you were getting at. You can, you can bury yourself into a hole very easily. So approximately like three or five years ago, Eric Helms was on his big like full body, full body training, I don't know if you remember that, where he was literally hitting every muscle each day of the week, right? And I gave it a try just cuz I, I like trying stuff out and yeah, it hurt like my joints were killing me by the end of the month. Like I just wasn't giving myself enough time to recover, set to set or, or work out to workout, right. And if you don't know what your limitations are, you can get yourself in that situation very quickly if you, if you don't know what you're doing right? Which is one of the nice things about splits in general is it kind of regardless of which split you choose, it pretty much ensures adequate recovery for specific muscles, right? So one thing that I don't love about these splits is that nine times outta 10, you have to give 48 hours to each muscle, right? Which ensures that that muscle will very likely be recovered. Assuming you're not doing something like an rdl, because that can have you sore for week, like up to a week, obviously, right? But for instance, like I can train my biceps four or five times a week, but if I do that, that means that at some point during the week I'm going to have to train biceps two days in a row, which would be impossible with a, a non modified full body split, right? Or I guess I suppose you could do full body in general. Uh, but I think that's kind of like one of the biggest issues with splits in general is that they lock you into things that might not necessarily be ideal for you, you the person, right? So this is kind of what I was talking about before the pod, but Alberto Nunez had a really good video about why asking what split should I choose is kind of the wrong question. And unless you have anything else to add, I think that can kind of lead us into how we generally go about programming, right? How we generally go about what's the first step and where do we go from there with respect to how we set up a, A, a quote unquote split for ourselves, you know what I mean? Does that make sense?

Yeah, for sure.

Cool. So we might not do this necessarily the exact same way, but generally speaking, the first question I ask a client or myself obviously is how many days a week do you want to train? And usually what I say is, what's the least number of Days that you are 100% positive on your worst week, you're able to get into the gym, right? Just because that makes things very simple and very straightforward, just having a specific number of days. But you can also have workouts where you have like some weeks where you're able to get in four days a week, and some weeks where you're able to get in five days a week, and you can modify from there. But just for the sake of simplicity and for this conversation, we'll, we'll stick to a set number of days, right? And then once you know how many days a week you're training or your client is training, it's very easy to fill in the rest, right? You, you fill in how much volume do you want for a given muscle and then you see how you can best split up that volume based on how you respond to different frequencies and as well as what you enjoy more. So, so for me, let's say I want to get 10 sets of quads in a week, right? I would much rather do, you know, four sets here, three sets here, three sets here, 3 days a week, rather than 5 sets, 5 sets, 2 days a week. Just because I hate training quads. It's a, it's, it hurts and it's miserable and I don't like it. So I think that a lot of this is, you'll, you'll, you'll come to find is, is basically predicated on preference. What is it that you enjoy more? Because I, I think I've said this on this podcast a lot, but not all roads lead to Rome, but most roads lead to Rome when it, when we're talking about hypertrophy. So ultimately the split you choose should come down to what you enjoy the most, right. Assuming that the split itself is allowing for an adequate amount of volume and frequency for the, for that person. Right. You got anything you'd like to add there?

No, I think that was good. Yeah. I, I start with amount of days per week that they can train, same as you, essentially. Allowing for flexibility is always the ideal. So either allowing for an optional day or the program allows for like repeating a day within a, within a week, it usually works. Well then which muscles they want to prioritize, because a lot of the time you're constrained by how many days per week they want to actually get in there. So some muscles won't be twice per week, which is totally fine, but the muscles that they are trying to prioritize, it'll be kind of like a full body esque thing with that muscle. Showing up twice and the other muscles showing up a bit less. I usually ask if they prefer to do. To smash a muscle group. Like, do you like getting sore afterward? Do you like, like, really finishing off the muscle and so on? Especially early on when you don't know what they react well to and you haven't seen them over the course of time, you just kind of let them choose. You know, like, giving some autonomy is useful in that regard as well. And then based on that, exactly what you said. Like, if they're like, yeah, you know, I prefer to just get legs out of the way. I don't want to, like, think about hitting legs every single time I get in there. Then obviously I'll do that all on one day. And I think psychology really does play into that. So, like, when you were talking about the fact that, yeah, I just, like, don't want to just go in there and psych myself up for a leg day. Many people, it's the exact opposite where, like, they'll really want to just psych themselves up for that one day and then get that out of the way. So I think we're pretty much exactly in line with how we sort of start the framework and then kind of build from there. Where. How I'm putting each exercise, specifically exercise, into each day, is where I go next with it. So now that you've sort of settled on, all right, this many sets per session and how you're splitting it up, you're like, okay, now that I'm doing these particular exercises for this muscle group, I'm gonna put less fatiguing exercises for that muscle group on this day. So that way I can get the best quality session for whatever it is, the full body esque. That's. This is the problem with speaking about it where it's not really a day, quote, unquote. Bow. Whichever muscles you're leaning into, a lot of the time the other muscles are going to get less fatiguing exercises. And then that'll sort of oscillate as you go through the week. So trying to get the best weekly quality and trying to get the best session quality, which sort of lends into themselves. Mm, yeah.

I think the taking into account, like, the recoverability of each muscle. So, like, you have an individual come to you and they're like, I train. I wanna train five days a week. It's possible that you can have them training, like, a certain muscle. Like calves, they could train four days a week. Right. Which means that at some point they can be training calves on Thursday and Friday. And you can say the same for like delts, right? They come in on Thursday, they hit delts, they smash delts, but by Friday their, their delts aren't sore and they, they're fine to keep going. Right. So I think that taking that approach and not trying to lock yourself in super early allows you to not only be more flexible, but, you know, I hate to use this word unironically, but a little bit more optimal. Like, I think it's silly for me to force myself to rest 48 hours for my calves because 16 hours after I'm done training my calves super hard, I'm. I'm basically back to baseline. Right. And so forcing myself to rest a little bit longer might be a waste of time. Right. And also just not, not as enjoyable necessarily. So I think that kind of finding out what your client or you want out of a program and then going from there is much better than picking a split and trying to make that work for what it is that you want. Right. So we can talk about how like, for instance, like, specialization phases are not an option with respect to, to choosing a split. Right. So let's say that you have a client come to you and they say, hey, look, I want to grow just in general, but I really want my chest to grow. Like, I re. That's what I really care about. I think it's a lagging body part for me and I want to really emphasize my chest in the next couple of months to see if I can get the most out of it. Right. That's not an option with push, pull legs, full body or anything like that. Right. So if someone does that, it makes it very, it's. It makes it very easy to, to set up a program around having a chest specialization phase in general. Right. And if you want to touch on specialization phases in general or, or anything like that, or, or delve a little bit deeper into that.

Yeah. So I think this lack, lack of flexibility thing is, is, is definitely important and I think the mindset also. So just to harp on specialization, I guess. So specialization phase is essentially just a phase that allows you to prioritize a muscle, which usually means you're doing more volume for that muscle and less volume. So you'd be hitting that muscle with, generally speaking, higher frequencies and higher volumes. And having the rigidity of any sort of split that's not a full body modified split would not really allow for you to do that. So I think a lot of the, a lot of the times how I go about programming for people who are Constrained by the amount of times that they can train is sort of like an oscillating mini specialization. So I never really take things down, down, but I'll do a little bit more for chest, tricep, lateral delt on one program and a tiny bit less on everything else for this particular individual. And then I'll oscillate that back and forth where, all right, now those three go down, other ones go up. That way you can sort of prioritize and deprioritize things through the year. And I think that allows for one. Psychologically, people can have a shift like, oh, now I'm focusing on these. And, and that sort of really makes people motivated to train and see the results go in the right direction. And it also allows for, even with relatively low amount of days per week trained, you can still get portions of the year where you're training more close to what we would consider to be putting you in the sweet spot for optimal growth. So I think that's, that's a really good point with specialization phases and sort of how I think about putting things together for clients, especially in the real world, where many times you're gonna get people who just training two times a week, three times a week, they don't really have the flexibility to train six times a week or, or around there. And I think the other thing about just being in that rigid framework of which split is the best is people end up blaming like, because they're only thinking about splits and that is like the main thing that they modify. They blame their split on lack of results. And the first question they ask any sort of influencer or scientist is which split should I be doing? Instead of choosing exercises that make sense for you, instead of making sure you're doing all the right things outside the gym, making sure that you're actually working hard on those particular exercises, it can definitely be something where you see individuals really, really care way too much about that. And I'm not saying that you shouldn't care. I'm saying that if it's the thing that you care about, it's just not more important than all the other variables. And one might even argue that it's probably lesser. As long as you're in the ballpark, it's less important than many of the other variables, such as just, you know, being consistent, working hard in the gym, and making sure that the amount of sets per week is reasonable.

Yeah, I was gonna say the, the same thing, like the split you choose. So let's, let's get something outta the Way, assuming that you're training each muscle about twice a week with around 10 to 20 sets per week for that muscle with a close proximity to failure. Once we've got those three things outta the way, the split you choose literally does not matter at all. All, it quite literally is inconsequential. Assuming that we take enjoyability out of the conversation. Right? So assuming again you're training twice a week, 10 to 20 sets per muscle per week, and you're training close to failure. The, the split you choose, choose it based on what is seems the most fun and the most sustainable for you. So yeah, I think that's, that's really beautiful. And then with respect to specialization phases in general, I feel like this should, that we should, we should say this. It's not like there's data on specialization phases. So it's not like they're studies that Danny boy and I can reference with respect to specialization phases being like an ideal or optimal way of going about training. But you can use logic to see that they're probably not a bad idea. They may not, they, they may not be anything magical, but they're definitely not gonna harm you in any way because we do know that the amount of work that it requires to maintain muscle is very low. So if you wanted to focus on, let's say your chest and back, you could take your leg volume down to 3, 4, 5 sets a week for each muscle and that takes up a total of what, 20 minutes for the entire week essentially. And we, we can be pretty confident that the, the muscle on your legs is not going to fall off while we're taking the muscles of your upper body and kind of pushing that to, to see if we can eke out a little bit more growth. Right. So again, not something that's super empirically based, but it does make a lot of logical sense. And we can be pretty confident with the empirical data that we have that it's not gonna cause any muscle loss to the muscles that you are putting on maintenance. Right. So I just think that that that needed to be said.

Yeah, I mean, just to clarify that what I was talking about with specialization phases, a lot of the time actually turns into just getting people up to the sets that we would consider to be, you know, within reasonable amounts, like optimal, quote, unquote. So 10 to 20. Many times when people talk about specialization phases, they're talking about 18 plus sets for a particular muscle group. So just to sort of reiterate, like in people who are super low amount per week trainees, the amount of Sets that they're gonna be doing in that specialization phase would actually end up being within that 10 to 20 bounds. So that would be squarely within what would be considered to be, like, evidence based. While I still think specialization phases, like. Exactly. Agree with your point about, like, the super high volumes, but with the people who are really constrained, I think it actually ends up being that you're just trying to get them to closer to that optimal range for the given muscle groups.

Right.

Yeah.

Right. Yeah. Cool. I feel like we. We're. We're pretty much rounding out here. Is there anything else you'd like to say before we tie a bow on this?

Yeah, there's a lot. There's a lot to say. I never, I never miss an opportunity to just get on my soapbox. So.

Yeah, let's hear it.

Splits, they signify how cool you are as an individual. And when you put something down on paper that's really neat, it's sort of like, have you heard of the Berlin Conference, late 1800s, where the powers that be split up Africa and they just drew really neat lines. So it's aesthetic to draw really neat lines around a whole continent, but the problem is you create warring nations that are now in the same state and so on. So creating a split that looks aesthetic and neat can many times constrain you in ways that leads to war. So don't do that, folks. And create splits based on recovery. Wow.

Yeah. Okay. I got nothing else to add to that. Yeah, well said, well said. So what do we say? The bro splits are the cause of all racism in the world, and splits in general are likely what's led to all civil wars that we've seen happen throughout the course of human history.

That's what I'm trying to say. Exactly.

Good. Well said, well said. Okay, all of this out. No, we won't. To sum up what we've talked about, right. Ultimately, the number or the split that you choose should be decided upon based on the number of days that you're able to get into the gym. And this is assuming that you want to stick to a specific split. Right. So if you're someone who just enjoys going in the gym and smashing each muscle and you're able to train somewhere between like four and six days a week. Yeah, a bro split's probably not gonna kill you. It's probably not ideal. But if it's. It's what takes what it takes to get you in the gym, do it right up. Or lower. Again, if you're training four to six days a week, it's probably a good idea, but anything outside of that is. Is likely not ideal. Right? You don't want to be doing one lower body day for your two upper body days or anything like that. Right? Push, pull, legs, kind of okay. But it forces you to train six days a week, which is likely not ideal. And then full body. If you're doing a true full body, where you're going in and you're training each muscle every single time you train, you probably don't want to be doing that more than three to four times a week at most. Right? So ultimately, the split you choose, assuming that it's one of it's. It's not one of those. Right. Should ultimately be chosen based on one. It allows you to train each muscle with around 10 to 20 sets per week. It allows you to train each muscle about twice per week, but more if possible and if preferable, and allows you to recover, workout to workout, while still getting a close proximity to failure on almost all of your sets. Right. Basically, any of the splits you choose can be kind of modified into what Danny Boy and I have termed here. We didn't come up with the term, but I've called a modified full body. Right? Where what's likely ideal when choosing a split is you choose the number of days you're able to get into the gym and then you just choose the. The. You try to make the number of sets that you want to hit for each muscle and the frequencies you want to hit for each muscle fit into that week in a semi neat but not too neat way because we don't want to lead to any civil wars. Right? And then with respect to specialization phases, they can be a really good way of targeting muscles that may be a little bit lagging or just muscles that you care about more in general. But again, it's not like we're saying that that is a necessary thing for maximizing growth in any way. Anything else you want to say with respect to our bow?

Sounds beautiful.

Cool. Well, as always, thank you guys so much for listening. And if you want to hear us cover a different topic that we haven't discussed yet, please feel free to reach out to us on Instagram @builtwithscience. And as always, thank you so much for listening. Peace.