What's the best training split?

Another week, another contentious topic for debate. For decades, gym junkies (and even regular pundits) have been asking, what is the best way to split up your training each week to achieve optimal results - aka maximise your gains!

Everyone will have a different answer for this, and before we dive into it, we must remember that there are many ways to skin a cat. No one particular split may be the best for EVERYONE, as there are a number of factors at play here.

The reality is that we can't train every single muscle with intensity, every single day, for an ongoing period, and expect to recover well enough to see adaptations.

The idea of splitting training days into particular muscle groups came into popularity in the 50's and 60's bodybuilding world, pioneered by a man named Joe Weider. The idea was to improve efficiency and frequency of training while still allowing adequate recovery in order to build muscle.

However, there are, as mentioned, a number of potential factors that need to be taken into account when creating your training split, such as volume and intensity, frequency, work/life schedule, rest days, even what facilities are available to you

At SOF, our group fitness strength program follows a full body split.

Here's why full body splits might be better than upper/lower splits for you.

Frequency is a big factor in any program, it's often the missing link in seeing progress for many. If you're only doing chin ups once a week and you want to get better at chin ups, it's going to take you longer to see results.

So, if you were to do two gym sessions a week, and split them into one upper body/one lower session, you only get one lower body and one upper body stimulus per week. Whereas, split over 2 full body days you will get two of each. There is good research suggesting that, given overall weekly sets are equal, increasing training frequency throughout the week, rather than more volume on singular days, is more effective at increasing strength and hypertrophy (Ochi et al, 2018).

So increasing the frequency can be beneficial, up to a certain point, of course. Doing heavy chin ups 5 days a week may affect your recovery rate and you will leave yourself at risk of hurting yourself or dropping performance.

In a perfect world, research by Schoenfeld et al (2017) suggests that hitting 10-20 challenging sets per week, per muscle group, is ideal for muscle growth - if you can work that into your schedule.

If you're training 4 days or more in a row, it obviously becomes a bit harder to do full body days each time, keeping in mind the recovery rate mentioned earlier. That's where you could potentially choose a different split.

Some of the other common splits we see are:

• Anterior/posterior (front + backside of the body)

• Upper/lower

• Push/pull/legs

• High/low intensity

• Heavy/high velocity

If you play a sport, you may also need to factor in where to best place your training days. For example, how far away from game day you are might dictate the volume/intensity of your lifts, so you can be 'fresh' to perform.

As mentioned previously, in our group fitness strength program, we incorporate full body splits, with a slight emphasis on more 'push' exercises on M/W/F and 'pull' on T/T. 

The different emphasis days help avoid too much double up on muscle groups each day. Also keep in mind, it is a 'general' group fitness plan, designed for people to be able to come any day and still manage to hit most bases in that session. More individualised programming may accelerate your results, as it's tailored to you, but you also miss out on the group environment. Each has their own downfalls, obviously.

So, if you're in doubt, think of a minimal effective dose. Life can get in the way and you may need to adjust things on the fly, but finding a split that allows you to get enough of a stimulus to still improve is key. If you're just managing 2-3 sessions in the gym per week, we would recommend making them full body days and aim to hit the big rocks - push, pull, squat, hinge etc!

Jump into our group fitness program or reach out to us if you need help in this area.