Training Splits - Is there a ideal split?

“Variety is the spice of life”

The above cliché could not be more apparent in the world of training, no matter what your goal. Achieving constant gains in the gym is all to do with varying your training and trying to avoid the all too familiar training “plateau”.

There are four very important changes that you can make to your routine to avoid this:

1. Change your exercises. Try things you have never tried before.
2. Change your sets / reps. Have you constantly been doing 3 x 8 in search of hypertrophy?
3. Try 5 x 5, 2 x 15, 4 x 12.
4. Obey the 3 laws, Training, Rest and Nutrition. If one of these components is lagging behind, fix it. They are all as important as each other.
5. Attempt a fresh training split.

 
Number four is where we shall focus our attention for now.

Some people train their whole body — every major muscle group — in a single workout. Others divide their muscle groups up so much that every other Friday is "gun day."
But talk to most experienced trainers and they'll tell you the same thing: there is no best split!

The Full Body Split

This first split, well, isn't. Basically you just train the whole body in one workout session. Typically, you take a day off, then do it again. So it looks like this:

• Monday: Full body training

• Tuesday: Off

• Wednesday: Full body training

• Thursday: Off

• Friday: Full body training

You can then keep the sequence going, taking Saturday off then starting over on Sunday, or you can take the weekend off.

The Upper/Lower Split
A standard upper/lower split would look something like this:

• Day 1: Upper body training only (chest, back, shoulders, arms)

• Day 2: Lower body training only (legs and sometimes abs)

• Day 3: Off or cardio

• Day 4: Upper body again

• Day 5: Lower body again

One nice thing about the upper/lower split verses a full-body split is that legs get a day all to their own. Lower body training is taxing and — if you're doing it right — pretty damn brutal. Hit your legs hard enough and you won't have much energy left for upper body work. The upper/lower split solves that problem for many.

The Other Two-Way Split
You can split your body two ways without using the old upper/lower routine. Here's an alternative:

• Day 1: Chest, shoulders, and triceps

• Day 2: Legs, back, and biceps
• Day 3: Off

• Day 4: Repeat

The Opposing Muscle Group Split

• Day 1: Chest/Back

• Day 2: Quads/Hams

• Day 3: Biceps/Triceps
• Day 4: Off

• Day 5: Repeat

Calves can be tossed in on leg day and abs can be trained on the less-taxing biceps/triceps day. Or you can do both on your "off" day... which kinda means it's not an off day, you gym junkie you.
Shoulders are tricky with this set-up though. Some prefer to train them on chest/back day, others prefer biceps/triceps day. And a few believe that not much direct shoulder training is even needed since the delts are hit pretty well with the other muscle groups. Folks from this camp often do a few sets of lateral raises and call it a day for shoulder training.

Primary/Secondary Mover Splits
Primary movers and secondary movers are old-school terms that are useful when describing these splits. To illustrate, when training chest, your pecs are the primary movers. They should be doing most of the work. The triceps help out though, so they're the secondary movers.
With back training, the various muscles of the back do most of the work a s primary movers; the biceps would be the secondary movers.
Simple enough, but why is it important when considering your split? Well, as noted in the examples, the arms are secondary movers for chest and back. That gives you two options:

Option #1:

• Day 1: Back/triceps
• Day 2: Chest/biceps

• Day 3: Legs, shoulders, abs

• Day 4: Off or repeat

Option #2

• Day 1: Back/biceps

• Day 2: Chest/triceps
• Day 3: Legs, shoulders, abs

• Day 4: Off or repeat

With this option, you purposefully pair the secondary movers with their primary movers. After all, if you're already fatiguing the arms from training chest and back, you may as well "finish them off" with direct work. As with most of these splits, we wouldn't say one is better than the other, just different. So choose one that best fits your needs or pick the option you've used the least if you need a rut-breaker.