2024.03.21 – More on Training Splits

Following up on Monday’s email, this one will have a little more info on training splits.

To start with, some number of years ago (probably at least 15) a lot of the best minds in the strength & conditioning field started to be vocal about a different take on strength training compared to the classic body part split.

They advocated for thinking more about movements rather than muscles.  So instead of a “leg day” you might have a hinge movement, a squat movement, and lunge / unilateral movement that are spread out over the course of the week.

Instead of organizing workouts by chest, back, arms, and so on, you might organize by horizontal presses, vertical presses, horizontal pulls, and vertical pulls (or similar categories) and spread them out over the course of the week.

If you have trained with us, you know that this is almost exactly how we organize our training.  We find that over the course of the week we’re able to get in a higher amount of high-quality work compared to a bodybuilding split.

This gives several benefits, including:

• Since the overall quality of work tends to be higher, the level of safety is higher too
• Also since the overall quality is higher, the strength gains are substantially more
• You tend to get significantly less sore compared to a bodybuilding split, which is a big deal if you do other activities like jiu jitsu, cycling, running, or rock climbing
• Because you are spreading the work out over more days of the week, each muscle group actually gets trained more frequently, which usually leads to favorable and more reliable adaptations

You could organize your training week in countless ways, and listing 1,000 examples would probably not be particularly helpful.  But, I do want to provide at least one for you:

Let’s say we have someone who can commit to 2x weekly training.  One example of how we might organize their strength program could be:

DAY 1

• Bilateral lower body (squat or deadlift variation)
• Horizontal press (push up or bench press variation)
• Vertical pull (chin up variation)

DAY 2

• Unilateral lower body (split squat or lunge variation)
• Vertical press (military press or TGU variation)
• Horizontal pull (row variation)

Of course there are many more variables than just that which go into a training program.  Things like specific exercise selection, load of a given exercise, load distribution within the week and month, tempo of movement, exercise variation / rotation / specialized variety, what other attributes are also being trained (power, endurance, etc.) and more.  But, hopefully this gives you a little bit of helpful information when it comes to planning your strength training 🙂

-Tony