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Picking Your Workouts Splits

Writer's picture: Muscle NationMuscle Nation

In the gym, splits aren't a disco move by John Travolta. We're talking about how you divide (or split) your exercises based on muscle groups.

We split up our workouts because to effectively work each bodypart requires tremendous effort and to recover from our workouts takes significant energy. As a result, working out every body part per workout would yield little beneficial results because of the energy conservation required throughout the workout and the nutrients needed afterwards.


Also, you'll note that we're not starting this discussion by picking specific exercises and building up. Instead, we're starting at a higher level and then working our way deeper.


There are a number of traditional splits that you can do. The basic principles behind these splits are that we want to make certain we're getting the best workout possible for each workout and that some muscle groups require help from supporting muscle groups for a full and effective workout.


For instance, when you use your chest or shoulders your triceps are often engaged. With the exception of doing a fly movement, any time you push you're also using your triceps. Similarly, when you do a back workout your biceps are significantly involved. These supporting muscle groups also need their own workouts, however, we don't want our supporting muscle groups to be sore or depleted of energy when it comes time to use them. It's a bit like a puzzle.


But how do you know which splits-routine to do? The basic answer is to determine how many days you'll have time to workout each week. And yes, you can change these up depending on your schedule should you know how much time you'll have.


Let's take a look at a number of the basic splits.






These are just a number of the options. And as we move ahead we'll begin diving deeper into the splits by looking at exercises for each body party.


Keep an eye out in the upcoming weeks (as gyms start to re-open) for Muscle-Nation.com's YouTube channel.


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cynthia.kellam
Jun 05, 2020

I'm a runner and also like to do extra work on my leg strength so prefer taking the 3-day split (option 2) and adding a second leg day for a 4-day split and running in between on my days off. Sometimes I just do all upper body together instead of splitting back/biceps and chest/shoulders/tris... which probably compromises my strength growth a bit. Anyway, great educational post!

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