Basic Concepts for Lean Mass Gains – Training Splits/Frequency

I’ve looked at and tried just about every type of training split ever introduced to bodybuilding. People always ask, “Which one is best?” While I don’t think any single type of split is the Holy Grail, I do think what works for you is the one that you should follow. The problem is everyone has different levels of recovery, energy and time available. These factors all need to be given consideration.

In the late 60’s almost every major bodybuilder trained 6 days a week. Then Arthur Jones came along and suggested everyone revert to 3 days a week on a total body program. I tried both with little success. Some bodybuilders where splitting their body into two groups and training 4 days a week. Personally, I finally started making appreciable progress when I learned to split the body 3 ways and followed a 3 days on one day off for rest routine followed continuously.

The split was:
Day 1 Chest/Back/Abs
Day 2 Quads/Hamstrings/Calves
Day 3 Shoulders/Traps/Biceps/Triceps
Day 4 Rest
Day 5 start cycle over

Later I added an extra day of rest after 2 workouts and found this to be more effective because you end up training body parts 2 times every 8 days.

The split was:
Day 1 Chest/Back/Abs
Day 2 Quads/Hamstrings/Calves
Day 3 Rest
Day 4 Shoulders/Traps/Biceps/Triceps
Day 5 Rest
Start cycle over

I recently started splitting my body 4 ways training 2 days on and one day off. This seems to be working well.

Day 1 Chest/Back
Day 2 Biceps/Triceps/Brachialis
Day 3 Off
Day 4 Quad/Hamstrings
Day 5 Shoulders/Calves
Day 6 off
Day 7 Start cycle over