what is up guys welcome back to the education Series so the last video that we dropped was a little bit off plan from the itinerary that we posted but I felt it necessary just to kind of put in specifically how to program pull um so if you have any questions on that please refer to that video if you have your questions on how to specifically program push refer to the first edition of the training video that we posted that covered the resistance profiles and whatnot because in that I really heavily discussed how to set up
push relative to a push pull leg split and then again if you have questions on how to set up the legs version that was in the leg training video so I have now covered in detail how to set up pull push and legs or push pull legs um one quick question that I kept getting consistently was why is it always performed in my opinion Push Pull legs and the reason for that is I would never pull before push because Paul would then be a detriment to your procession I would find that you would stall with
your push strength long before anything else sorry it would come about much sooner um so putting it in the order of push-pull with those back-to-back sessions never saw a detriment to Performance in the poll session So that obviously the instrument makes absolutely sense because the goal over a period is to maximize your lift progressions in every single session so now we're going to move on to kind of looking at the setup for split body part training and kind of some of the various setups that I've tried had success with but I explained in the previous
video that for me personally I favored the pushball leg split and I kind of went into quite a lot of detail as to as to why that was one that was just always the best split for me but by Me by all means it is not necessarily going to be the best fit for you and for some of you due to a Time Factor consideration you might not have a choice but to try and split routine like if you only have 45 minutes of gym access realistically you're only going to be able to train one
at a maximum two body parts in that session but it might only be like really like one and a half because you can't even really fully hit the second body part so with that in mind you have to train a split routing so that could be the first reason why you're forced into it the second could be that you struggle to think and focus over a longer period of training so I know a lot of you posted that you can't do two-hour training sessions that's totally fair enough for myself and all of my peers a
two-hour training session is Norm is really normal like all of our systems would be one and a half hours at the minimum and then most of them would be up to two hours and then really like for some of us that are really strong sessions would go two and a half sometimes even three hours which I know sounds crazy and I know the first thing as soon as they say that you're going to be in the comments saying section is saying that's too long that's too long but I I I'm telling you now that's not
uncommon for leg sessions for a lot of big strong guys I I do agree that it it starts to drag on and you do feel it but it's not uncommon I'll put it that way but two hours is a good kind of Mark and that's very consistent but there were a lot of comments of guys saying that that's way too long for them and that's totally fair enough because again train to your needs so when that's the case for you a split body part routine is going to make a lot more sense because if you're
in here and you get to the hour and a half mark and you start to flag mentally that last half an hour is just going to be poor work like I've certainly found this I've changed my goals that it's harder for me to train for longer durations with weight sessions before I was able to keep my focus no problem for three hours in the gym session it literally wasn't an issue for me whereas now it is a lot harder for me to keep Focus for a two-hour session and I much prefer something in this one
and a half hours or even less one and a quarter hours now is probably my sweet spot from for me personally um because my goals are going to be more in line to now with a lot of yours where it's just to look good feel good enjoy training and so I I can I can definitely understand that perspective whereas the previous me would have basically just told you to man up um uh so how are we going to set this split routine up there are endless ways to step this up like this is the biggest
example of there being low right or wrong way to set this up in terms of the order of of sessions through the week where you place your place your rest days and then also the scope for the volume this I will say the split routine is probably why there is so much confusion and questioning what is the best way because you'll see so many variations of this split and the point that I I just wanted to get into straight away was that do not overthink this if you are an individual that has to train as
a split routine out of necessity so if you're someone that has forced you to time scale do not be overthinking okay is does this have to be literally perfect in every way because you already don't have the luxury of it being perfect just because of your time availability so with that in mind then you definitely have to literally do what fits for you and again for some of you there's just some days where you can't train as well some days of the week they're just inaccessible for you so that's going to really dictate with a
certain session that you can do on that day like if if there's one day where you do only have 40 minutes it's probably going to be best that you do an arm day on that day because it really doesn't take any warming up at all you can just do two warm-up sets of a cable curl and then the next thing you do is a working set and within five minutes you've already completed two work sets so that's you're going to be able to Rattle through that really quickly and then if there is a day where
you have a slightly longer day then maybe you get an hour that'd probably be the one that you do legs on or at the very least that might be the one that you do chords um because that's probably going to be the most time consuming session so when I've done this in the past I haven't gone over five days of training a week when it's been on a fixed week to week schedule um I've never trained six days a week I've never been able to do that um so if if some of you can and
you enjoy that again keep going there's no need to change but I personally was never able to do that and I I also wasn't really able to sustain five day we've trained for very long because five day a week training consists when it's on a week to week setup consistently would be three days on one day off two days on one day off but for me when it came to the three day on by the end of the third day I was always flagging always always and that was a real issue for me but how
my initial favorite split routine is set up has something that I called the density day so this is what we're going to cover in this video we're going to cover the density day split setup so how that looked that would be a chest focused push session on the Monday that it would be legs on a Tuesday it would be non-lower back loading pull work on a Wednesday be rest on a Thursday it would then be a shoulder focused push session on a Friday and there would be a density day session on a Saturday now if
I was going to do five day a week training with split body part routine and I had time availability and my recovery was good and I didn't have huge glaring weaknesses in my physique this would be the setup I would choose I believe this to be a really effective way to get in good amounts of frequency and days that can be dedicated to just certain movements which I kind of alluded to in the poll session is going to be important to build muscle in certain areas like for me the goal was always to have a
ridiculous back um so then my training kind of always roughly focused around that because it was something that I really enjoyed training and I knew that I could get very very big and strong so my my kind of evolved around that if um that's a goal of yours then again you can look at this setup if the goal is huge legs which obviously was my goal as well um you can just tweak the exercise selection slightly just as an example so how that looks in terms of volume is again going to be hugely dependent on
your recovery across the week and how one session knocks into the into the next few sessions so for example between your Monday push session and your Friday push session for that one you get four thieves so for that one you can push the volume at the exact same level that you would you would have been doing in your pushball split setup that's no problem to do that same level of volume however on the Friday session you're only going to get three sleeps until you roll back around into Monday's push session again and the problem with
that and I keep calling them processions because that's how I like to approach them because I cluster compound movements together as per my push set up and I like to just get them all very strong so yes Like Mondays would be chest focused and Fridays would be shoulder focused but for me there's still processions so that's just how I describe them but for ease I can call them chest and shoulders um just so I it's maybe not as confusing so you're only going to get three sleeps between your shoulder session and your chest session so
you want to be very careful how much work you do in that Friday session that then doesn't over demand your recovery from your pressing muscles again on the Monday and this is something I see a lot and it really holds people back from getting really super strong which then will determine how big you get provided that your external stimulus equates to the increase in internal stimulus I'll kind of Chuck that caveat back in in every video I do I've mentioned it a lot now in this series so I know for for you guys have been
following the videos all along you'll be 100 aware of what I'm talking about if you haven't I really advise you watch the other videos because we've kind of built this as we've gone so I know that if someone's watched all of the videos they will be they will understand every single aspect of this video and they'll be able to take away more and more from each video as they've gone along um so one the the body part that can handle frequency and volume the least is our upper body pressing muscles they cannot be trained at
high frequency and high volume and really once you start to get strong they actually can't even be trained at low volume and high frequency now they then can only recover every four to five sleeps even on low volume work I've experimented with that extensively not just with myself but with clients that are strong and found that to be a really similar case and then equally when I've looked at high-level power lifters their ability to just as a reference in terms of strength and then ability to progress lifts high level power lifters aren't benching at high
frequency it's very rare for that To Be An Occurrence um and that's simply because just you can't recover from that frequency with those muscles whereas your upper back can your quads can like they have higher recovery capabilities for a little bit more frequency and then your side delts and your biceps really can they can they can recover from tons of frequency and then your calves and your abs it almost feels like that they can recover from everything and anything that you do to them so we have kind of this Continuum which means that we need
to be very aware of what we expose ourselves to volume wise relative to the number of sleeps that we have so that's the the first thing to look at but obviously on that Monday session you're going to pick your movements that bias your chest the most and you're going to do the volume appropriate to that but I would still always include some side note work and some tricep work in that session because you get four sleeps until you push again so that's the one that always wants to be slightly heavier in the total amount of
work the Friday session you're going to pick your shoulder movement as your main movement I would still expose it to some chest work but probably only one exercise because I said you only get three sleeps and I'd probably do something that causes it really minimal damage and fatigue so something that doesn't necessarily overload it massively in the lengthen position because again like I've mentioned a lot that's what accumulates lots of fatigue in the muscle so what I'd probably be doing is like uh cough cable fly something like that something that has very little resistance here
and tons of resistance here which means in the recovery demands from a minimal if you have a prime pack deck you can then put that on a setting like setting four that then overloads to shortened a lot and doesn't the length I wouldn't be doing hard compound movements that overload the lengthened in that session because I absolutely guarantee that you will not recover from them for your pressing again on a Monday and the the problem is is that if this is what you've done from the the beginning you won't even realize that you're not recovering
and you'll think that your strength is just your strength whereas actually you'd be a hell of a lot stronger stronger if you understood how to program um and again this is one of the things why I'm so keen on focusing on that volume to frequency relationship because to me it's the absolute be-all and end-all to getting super strong and then again we'll mention again if the external stimulus equates to the internal stimulus you're going to get massive it's as simple as that and then also in the process you understand when to expose yourself to those
lower rep ranges that might cause more injury risk and when you can go at them to really drive your strength visual practice to play a large role so the leg session on this setup again is entirely fine to have the identical volume to the push-pull leg split so again watch the legs training video take away the exact volume set up I said for that now the back session on the Wednesday that's fine to have the volume that's in the pull session but I would do no lower back loading at all in this session um it's
just not it's just not a need for it and simply as well because you've trained legs and um back back to back with legs first you're going to be fatigued going into that back position so I would then really focus on making sure you're super accurate with your exercises that over the overload on the shortened position and that this is the one maybe maybe you're doing like single arm cable pull downs and single arms machine rows where you're just being super accurate you don't want to be doing a heavy bent over movements in this session
at all so when I say no pulls from the ground I would also I had no low back loading like I wouldn't even do a Barbara like I wouldn't do anything in that sense the only movement that you could do to bump up your low back loading frequency is the Dual bent over dumbbell row and I made a post on my Instagram about that that's how to load your lower back without loading and loading your lower back basically so read that post and I'll explain that there but it's in short it's because the dumbbells you're
bending over with are only going to ever be like 60 65 kilos at most maybe 70 kilos if you're really strong at that movement I think the most I've ever went up to was like 70s um and I don't think I've seen anyone so like 150 pound dumbbells I don't think I've ever seen anyone doing more than 150 pound on those on that movement uh well I'm sure some people have just chucked them around like idiots but uh with proper execution it's not a lot of weight you're bending over with at all really isn't because
when we think it's it's not even three plates on the barber it's nothing so that's like the perfect movement if you did want to bump up your lower back loading frequency so like I said on the Friday session I would only train the chest in the in the shoulder position and I would do the same for the triceps I would keep my volume pretty low um in the triceps and I'd only be looking to do kind of like single armed cuff push Downs but I would Blitz the hell out of my lateral work like and
I'll be more than happy to do um some decent overhead pressing like in that session for me in the past I kind of I I typically stuck on four sets of compound work and that was it but it would be kind of two high incline press movements I remember when I was at my absolute biggest in 2018 I used to start on a Hammer Strength shoulder press first and then I did a high incline Smith second I started with the Hammer Strength because that overloads the shortened the most so always start with a Hammer Strength
piece and then don't do too much work on a Hammer Strength piece if you don't have the ability to adjust the resistance profile like you do on a prime piece so they would get off the Hammer Strength and I would then do the Smith Press which has an even resistance profile that allowed me to be strong on both I remember I'm an absolute strongest in one of those sessions I did five plates aside on the hamstring shoulder press for 15 reps and then I got on the heincoin Smith I did four plates aside after that
for 12 reps and that was like all time Peak strength for me um and that was where again in the rear double bicep you could see my front delts from behind like really clearly in that pose because that whole upper shelf was just so developed from that setup um so that was really super effective to come in and just Hammer that top shelf that's that was a very very effective one now the setup for the density day we're actually going to do an entirely separate video just focused on the density day itself and you can
call this whatever day whatever that you want um I'll identity today because this day will make you super dense basically because it's a day that just evolves around lower back loading essentially within a bit of extra quad and hamstring work chucked in for frequency because you can and if you're hitting legs at twice a week frequency they're going to grow pretty well so from a from a growth potential perspective this split really sets you up to grow because your training body parts are even higher frequency than just the push-pull leg setup and you're focusing days
on just individual things that they need so you basically have just a chest day you basically have just a shoulder day you have basically just a Latin upper back day and then you have a day just to do bent over movements it works very very well and you're going to build a lot of muscle and I was undoubtedly my absolute biggest when I was able to string together a period of recovery that allowed me to do this split I I I stepped forward so much in that 2018 period with size what was really interesting was
that when I tried to revisit that split on multiple occasions in 2019 2020 2021 I couldn't recover from it so that shows the inter-individuality of your recovery capabilities and I couldn't pinpoint why I Revisited my exact same volume my exact same exercises my exact same drug use my food everything but for some reason that I couldn't actually pinpoint so it would have been more external factors like well I could I could pinpoint it we launched our supplement line in 2019 my work needs rocketed dramatically so then even things that you can't control just your subconscious
demands mentally which is way too high for me and I couldn't at all recover from it was in 2018 I didn't have so many commitments it didn't have a warehouse it didn't have staff I didn't have all of these additional demands that then really dictated my recovery so I I know full well that that makes a massive difference um but if you are just a bodybuilder that has focus on just being a bodybuilder you will be able to recover from a lot more whereas we know that if you are someone that has kids a stressful
job time constraints it's not only going to limit what you can do in terms of those time slots it'll hugely limit what you can and can't recover from us as a whole so this is our look at my favorite way to do a split body part routine which again we're just recap in essence is chest legs back rest shoulders density day and like I said we're gonna do a follow-up video where we just focus on the density day so if you have any questions for any of the kind of topics because I've covered a lot
of broad topics again in the video just to try to kind of reinforce certain ideas and then for those that haven't watched any of the videos previously give you small introductions into things that you could learn a huge amount about if you start from the beginning and you work yourself through so hopefully that's helpful guys and I will see you very soon
