The Best Training Splits In History

Training Splits, What Are These?

Training splits are quite important. A training « split », is a training program. Often-times, training splits refer to training programs in the weightlifting community which can help individuals reach their physique goals with the time they have.

Training splits are even very important because they allow you to track your progress in order to try and surpass your previous performance the next week, they reduce uncertainty and therefore boosts your productivity at the gym (the famous « what do I do today » question that comes up in people’s mind when they have no program), and they often enable one to gain more muscle than he or she could otherwise.

The most common training splits are the full body split, the bro split and the Push-Pull-Legs split. That is, for the bodybuilding community. For powerlifting, most training programs are full body splits, and not really « bro splits ore push-pull-legs splits ». You’ll understand why whilst reading this article. So, let’s get started and let’s see which training split you should have.

Keep in mind that a training split should enable you to train your muscles with enough volume for the week (enough sets and exercises, so enough amount of work) whilst fitting to your time schedule and giving you at least 48 hours of rest for a same muscle (if I train my biceps on Monday, I need to wait 48 hours, so up to Thursday, for it to recover fully and be at peak performance).

So, let’s get started, shall we?

Full Body 3 Times A Week

This program is one of the best programs out there, especially for powerlifters and beginners alike. This program is great for a few reasons. First off, it’s very intuitive for beginners and advanced people alike. You don’t have days where you need to train specific muscle-groups and all that kind of stuff, just do the basics, three times a week. By training your whole body, you also gain time because you can use more « big compound lift » such as deadlift, therefore adding stress and tension on multiple muscles instead of one or two.

One of the main things that this programs build is general muscularity and strength, especially. You don’t do a full-body-3-times-a-week program to gain muscle in the purest of the bodybuilding forms. Often-times, people will need at least 4 days a week, and if they don’t need 4 days a week, they need to spend a ton of time in the gym in order to catch up with the amount of volume they should perform to gain muscle.

So, if your goal is to develop some muscularity, if you’re a beginner, and if you also want to gain strength, go with this program and do in majority compound exercises with some isolation exercises. For your information, if you’re a beginner at the gym reading this, compound exercises are exercises that utilizes many muscles, and isolation is when it focuses on one muscle. For example, a bicep curl is an isolation exercise, because you only work the bicep (and yes, the forearm to a certain extent), but a squat is a compound exercise, because you use your glutes (your butt), your calves, your quadriceps (the front of your legs) and your hamstrings (the back of your legs).

This program is also great because it respects the « 48 hours rule », if you space it out correctly. One good way to space it out would be, for example, to go to the gym on Monday, then to train on Wednesday-Thursday, and then to train on Saturday-Sunday. In this way, you can get optimal amount of rest, recover well, give your muscles the break they need, and still train hard at least 3 times a week. You could even add cardio sessions in between, which makes it a complete program.

Generally, a full-body training session can last up to 2 hours. Doing deadlifts, squats, bench-presses, and isolation exercises in between or at the end can be quite complicated to fit in an hour, and even impossible. So, just for your information, you can count around 2 hours in the gym, three times a week. It’s not enormous for the amount of work you’re doing in these only 3 days, but it’s great.

The Bro Split

The Bro Split is one of the best programs out there too. The bro-split works like this: you have a specific day for chest, back, legs, shoulders, and arms. Basically, you take the biggest parts of your body, and you train them one by one. One day chest, one day back, so on and so forth.

I’ve personally used the bro split for at least 6-10 months, and it gave me the best results on my physique. What is interesting with this training split, is that it’s great for building muscle. One of the key things to build muscle is to train the same muscle 2x a week, which is not respected here in this program. BUT, this is in theory, because in reality, a bro-split is absolutely awesome for your physique. It’s a bodybuilding focused split, so made to build a ton of muscle and some strength.

Don’t worry, you’ll probably develop a lot of strength in the process, but what I’m trying to say is that compared to a full body, it’s often times less focused on very fatiguing exercises such as deadlifts, and it’s more focused on isolation exercises, making it better for bodybuilding and less for powerlifting.

One key thing with this program too is that it develops the arms muscles particularly well. Since you have a dedicated day for them, you can give them all the attention they need and really focus on building quadriceps instead of arms. The same can be said for shoulders, by focusing a whole day on it, it can enable you to build this muscle area that is often not worked enough or neglected by most weight-lifters out there.

What is also interesting with the bro split is that if it’s well spaced out, you can get 48 hours between training a specific muscle and training it again. This enables for optimal or near optimal rest for a specific muscle. You can do arms two days after you did back and/or chest, so as to make sure they recovered from being used in these workouts.

But the major problem of this program, according to science, is that it doesn’t train the same muscle twice a week, which is not optimal for muscle-growth.

For the bro split, you’re looking at training 5 times a week, for an hour and ten-twenty minutes each. At least these are my general estimates when it comes to training on a bro split, from experience.

Push-Pull-Legs

Push-Pull-Legs is the last program we’re going to speak about in this article. I’ve personally began training at the gym with a push-pull-leg split, and it enabled me to gain some amount of muscle, but this program, I wouldn’t recommend it at all for beginners.

If you’re a beginner, train with a bro-split or a full body split, but not with a push-pull-legs split.

The push-pull-legs split is a split where you train your « push muscles », your « pull muscles », and your « leg muscles », in push, pull, and legs workout, two times a week.

The push muscles are the chest, triceps and shoulders, the pull muscles are the back, the biceps, and the rear shoulder, and the leg muscles are the… legs. And, you do this training program, twice a week, meaning you can train the same muscles twice a week, enabling for « scientifically optimal training ».

In reality, even tho push-pull-leg is great, I don’t think it’s the best training split out there. It just depends on your body, for some people it seems better for them to train a big muscle group once a week such as in a bro-split, and for beginners, it’s better to go and do deadlifts and squats three times a week instead of bothering for « optimal » training programs like the PPL (push-pull-legs).

Doing push-pull-leg only once a week, meaning a 3 day training program instead of a twice a week, 6 day training program, would be even worse. Make sure that if you do push-pull-legs, you do it twice a week if you're searching for optimal results.

Scientifically, PPL is the best training program for bodybuilding and muscle growth. For strength, PPL is the worst of the three, in my opinion.

However, even tho it’s great for bodybuilding, one big problem with PPL is that I feel like it doesn’t put enough emphasis on the arms, and therefore it causes often « lacks » in the arms and some other areas of the body. What could also be interesting would be to do a PPL three-times a week and then do a dedicated arm day on another day. This could be great for your body, because oftentimes people tend, as I’ve said before, to lack muscle development in the arm region during a PPL compared to people with a bro-split, for example.

If you want to choose a PPL split, you’re looking at training 6 times a week, for around an hour each training session. If you’re missing on time, this might not be the best training split for you. If you have the time and want to invest into your physique a lot, it could be a great option to go for the PPL split.

Conclusion

So, which one to choose? Well, it all depends on your goals. Ultimately, each training programs have their pros and cons. Want strength? Full-body? Want optimal bodybuilding? PPL. Want to build a ton of muscle and strength? Bro-split. It all depends on your goals and your schedule, and the time you can therefore invest into the gym every single week.

For beginners, I would recommend a bro-split or a full body split. You can also search up on the internet for a ton of other splits, because these are the most famous but there is a ton of other training splits out there that can work quite well for you.

To conclude, it all depends on our individual problems, timings, and strengths, as well as your level of experience and your lifestyle. I hope this article was helpful for you, and I’ll see you next time. Bye.

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