What are Workout 'Splits'?

It’s time to clear up some confusion around one of the most common terms used in fitness: workout or training “splits”.

You might immediately think of flexibility — doing the splits — but that’s not what I’m talking about here.

Not the “split” I’m talking about!

I’m talking about workout splits that refer to what you’re training and how often you’re training. Here’s a few examples:

• Full Body, 3 workouts per week
• Upper-Lower, 4 workouts per week
• Push-Pull-Legs, 3 or 6 workouts per week

So, what are these and why do you need them?

What is a Workout Split?

A workout “split” is simply a way of splitting, or breaking up, your training routine.

Of course the next question is, “Why would you want to split up your training routine?”

There’s a few answers for this:

To give your body enough time to rest and recover between workouts

If you trained 7 days a week, you’ll feel very accomplished. You’re doing so much, every single day! But without rest, your body never has a chance to recover.

Splits, such as a 3x/week full body split, allow you to train 3 times a week with plenty of rest throughout the week to give your mind and body time to recover.

To train with enough frequency to get bigger, stronger, and better over time

If your friend complained about not being able to learn how to play guitar but they only played once a week, you’d probably tell them they need to practice more, right?

The same applies to training. Imagine you only trained once a week or once every two weeks. That’s definitely better than not training at all but it’s not often enough to really grow. Splits help us find the balance between too much and too little.

To give yourself a routine that’s practical for your life and schedule

Finally, splits allow us to easily fit a training routine into our busy lives. If you only have 2-3 days to train a week, doing a 6 day a week training split isn’t going to make any sense. It literally doesn’t fit into your schedule.

Splits are basically a template that we can use to make time for training in our lives while balancing our training requirements of frequency and recovery I mentioned in the two points above.

⚠️ If you’d prefer to watch me explain all this in video form, you can watch my full breakdown on YouTube.

Split #1 - Full Body

A Full Body split is the simplest of them all because you train your entire body every time you train.

How often you train is a different question and that depends more on your schedule and goals — anywhere from 3 to 5 days a week would great. You could even go up to 6 or 7 as long as there’s a few easier days mixed in to rest and recover.

Pros

• Great for limited time or very new beginners
• Scales well, 1x/week to 6x/week or even 7x/week
• Can be great for strength gains if you can handle the volume/frequency

Cons

• Easy to overtrain if you’re training hard and often
• More warming up, more exercises to do
• Since you’re training full body there’s naturally going to be more exercises. But not every muscle group can get attention every workout otherwise the workouts get really long. Figuring out what you train on what days can be a concern with full body splits.

Split #2 - Upper/Lower

An Upper/Lower split is another common split. It’s very straightforward — you either train upper body exercises or lower body exercises depending on the day.

It also scales well whether you have a lot of days to train (4 or 6 times per week) or just 2.

Pros

• Logically simple and upper/lower muscles don’t conflict with each other
• Scales well from 2x - 6x per week

Cons

Not all muscles heal at the same rate, both within upper/lower or between All upper body in one session might be a lot, especially at 2x/week

Split #3 - Push/Pull/Legs

A Push/Pull/Legs split is another common split and is one I’ve used for many years. Rather than doing all of our upper body exercises on one day, we split that apart even further into pushing and pulling upper body exercises.

This allows you to train the upper body hard at least twice a week while prioritizing different exercises on each day (push vs. pull).

Legs are given their own training day but it’s worth considering a narrower focus on each day depending on your goals (glutes, quads, hamstrings, calves, etc.)

Pros

1. You can train upper body hard in two separate sessions
2. Training sessions have little to no overlap
3. Gives ample time for recovery

Cons

1. Not all muscles heal at the same rate
2. Harder to scale other than from 3x/week to 6x/week
3. 1x/week or 2x/week frequency may be too little for some muscles

My Recommendation

So, what workout split should you choose?

To be perfectly honest, it’s hard to give an answer without knowing you, your goals, your struggles, and your schedule. Those are all big factors in figuring out what split to choose.

For years, I did Push/Pull/Legs. But right now with the chaos of having a newborn baby, I’ve been doing mostly Upper/Lower splits.

If life gets too busy I can rely on 2 hard training days but if my schedule isn’t as bad, I can add in a few more workout as needed.

If you’re a complete beginner I would recommend a Full Body Split with at least 2-3 training days per week.

You could train on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday which gives you a day of rest between each workout while keeping your weekends free to socialize or relax.

🙋‍♂️ Got a question about training splits? Get in touch with me and I will be more than happy to help!