Want to add muscle? It could be your training that lets you down?

Walk into most gyms take a good look around, strike up conversation with most gym goers, or just in general whenever I sit down with any potential new clients there is one thing that stands out immediately and that’s training splits.

9 times out of 10 it’s single muscle group training. You know the one, the so called “bro” training; Chest on Monday, Back on Tuesday, Arms on Friday - that kind of thing.

Now don’t get me wrong this can have its place, but if you’re in the early stages of developing your physique, you’re missing one big trick here. 

And it’s... FREQUENCY (the number of times you are training).

Let me explain further. If you’re trying to achieve maximum results in minimum time, wanting to develop a muscle group, reduce your body fat or break past a plateau you might have, why would you only train that muscle group only once a week?

Let me explain something a little further: 

Let’s take a classic training split: 

MONDAY = CHEST
TUESDAY = BACK
WEDNESDAY = LEGS
THURSDAY = SHOULDERS
FRIDAY = ARMS

Now there’s 52 weeks in one year, so that’s 52 potential chances to train each muscle group if you train using a single muscle group split like above and that’s only if you consistently go to the gym every single week of the year. 

No wonder you’re struggling to see results, your potential for growth is always going to be limited and progress can be slow. 

Now imagine you start to think of increasing the number of times per week you train a muscle? 

Let’s say you start training using the following split and training principles:

MONDAY = PUSH (Chest, Shoulders, Triceps)
TUESDAY = PULL (Back, Traps, Biceps)
WEDNESDAY = LEGS (Quads, Hamstrings, Calves)
THURSDAY = PUSH (Chest, Shoulders, Triceps)
FRIDAY = PULL (Back, Hamstrings, Biceps)

Now you are doubling up the times you train a muscle per week, you’re increasing the frequency, you have doubled your chance of strength, size and results. 

What about over training? 

Well contrary to ‘bro science’ training muscle groups more than one time per week is perfectly fine and you’re not going to be over training. If anything, it’s going to increase your chance of growth, increase strength, reduce body fat and just generally all round progression. Think about structuring your exercise selection around a push, pull and lower body split combined with the right nutrition and the rest of your physique will develop much quicker.

Rob
#AJPerformance