hey guys my name is Steven Low and I am the author of overcoming gravity so we finally moved into part two which is constructing your workout routine and chapter seven we're basically going to go over constructing the routine in terms of the different types of workouts that you can do so I'm going to go over your full body workouts as well as your split routines there's mainly four different types of splits and then some of the pros and cons about each of these splits so that you can pick the right one for you so generally
what I like to do with most beginners is help them to understand that frequency matters and specifically frequency with specific exercises and so if you remember back to the first overcoming gravity online part one which goes over linear linear progression and Progressive overload basically the way to gain strength is to understand that you want to repeat exercises over and over and then progressively overload them to get stronger and so when understanding that that means that doing a lot of different exercises is often worse for progression because you're not repeating them often enough to progress effectively
with them and the full body routines tend to allow the highest frequency about three times a week with exercises more than splits which generally range from you know one to three times a week so some splits alternating every day such as like a put pull routine on a 6-1 schedule that would be you know Push Pull Push Pull Push Pull so that's six workouts in a row then a rest at the end do allow frequency as much as a full bar routine but they also don't have rest days and so when you you start to
lack rest days you start to lack the potential recovery from those workouts and you're not actually you know getting full rest so like with push pull if you're doing push exercises one day with like your push-ups and your dips you're still working the shoulder but the next day when you do your pull with pull-ups and your rows you're still working the shoulder like the shoulder is still getting some overlapped with the rotator cuff work so with no dedicated rest days often you're not getting the specific rest of the shoulders which can lead to overuse potentially
so going over the frequency basically higher frequency of exercises often leads to quicker progress like I said before and as you can see with the example there's about you know 50 weeks in the year maybe well 52 but 50 if you have some D loads maybe a little less if you have one workout a week doing exercises basically you're only getting 50 workouts a year with a specific exercise like dips or push-ups whereas if you're doing two workouts a week with 50 weeks a year getting 100 workouts per week with a specific exercise and then
50 weeks times three workouts per week with an exercise you're getting 150 exercises so like I mentioned in the book progress is not linear to how many times you're doing it so 50 times you know you're getting some amount of gains with it to improve 100 times you're also getting some amount of gains but it's not going to be exactly double maybe it's going to be about you know 80 more gains and then 150 workouts you're not exactly getting you know three times the gains as 50 workouts you're maybe only getting like 2.25 so it
would be like 100 compared to you know 180 compared to you know like 225 there there is not a full linear progress but as you can see if you're working out with the same exercises and improving on it then you're usually getting some more progress with these specific exercises you're working on than if you had done it less frequently so often going over full body your frequency can be three to three point five times a week sometimes it can be less if you're running a typical weekly schedule such as Monday Wednesday Friday you're getting three
times a week however if you do like alternating every day you get 3.5 times a week so over the course of a year instead of you know 150 workouts every other day gets you about 180 workouts so you can see how you can even get more frequency with working specific exercises to improve those over time so the pros for this very exceptional for beginner progress since you're working specific exercises often you're getting a lot more practice with them you're drilling the neurological practice and skill with those specific exercises well Additionally you have dedicated rest days
where you're allowing fatigue to dissipate and so you can progress usually almost every workout especially for beginners some of the cons for this is that this specific workout regimen might not work as well with sports or other physical related activities since you're doing a lot of volume on one single day with you know upper body push upper body pull legs and core you might not be able to recover well if you're doing a sport or some type of other activities that you're doing and then for some populations it can be too much so like with
your you know you're older sedentary or coming off injuries high frequency with a lot of volume for the whole body can be a little bit too much to start and so you need to be a bit worried of this obviously you can make some modifications to decrease volume such as you know only doing one to two sets of exercises but you need to be wary about overdoing it with full body for some specific populations so there's four main types of splits these are your push pull your upper lower your bent arm straight arm and then
your three day splits such as PPL or your typical bro splits I'm going to go through all these and point out some of the pros and cons so the the first ones are basically two day splits and they're mainly split in the two and so you can basically do these in two different manners usually about two times a week as I said before you can increase these to 2.5 or three times a week but it is a little bit more risky for overuse injuries so I generally don't prefer three day splits or more like PPL
as doing things like push-pull legs no rest Push Pull legs and then a rest like the six one push pull I described earlier it only has one full rest day but they can work since you're not necessarily alternating upper body every day you have my legs in there to basically spell some spell some time off to the shoulders can work I generally don't prefer it I'll go over why on that specific slide so your push pull split and your standard Push Pull split is usually something like your upper body push exercises with your lower body
push which is your quad leg exercises and your anterior core so basically mostly from the body type of muscle groups and then similarly with your push exercises or pool exercises you have your hip hinge like your deadlift which is primary posterior chain glutes and hamstrings along with posterior core like reverse fabric extensions and so the alternate version of this you can basically group upper body push with legs and then upper body pull with core or vice versa that is an easier way to do it for most people just in understanding lines I mean basically just
group all the leg exercises onto one day with one of the push upper body pushes and then group all the core exercises on the one day with the Pull exercise for my clients I've been deferring to this alternate Push Pull split more often than doing like the standard one that I mentioned in the book so for scheduling you have your Monday Wednesday Friday Saturday this only has two workouts in a row which is fine since you're generally getting some rest between push and pull exercises although there is some overlap with the shoulders there is not
so much that one two two day in a row thing is an issue some other common ones are Monday Tuesday Thursday Friday if you want your weekend's free but generally not as good as the distributed rest days from Monday Wednesday Friday Saturday some other ones that have more frequency are three one two one where you alternate and have less rest days or your sixth one like I mentioned before alternating Push Pull and then having a rest at the end of the six workouts however I don't recommend that pattern because of the overuse injury issues so
push-pull splits tend to be good for hypertrophy mainly because you're stacking all the push and pull exercises on the one day if you divert to other types of splits where you're splitting apart your pushes and pulls for example often you don't get as good of a hypertrophy stimulus it'd be like splitting bicep exercises you know to one every day instead of you know two or three on one day not as good as hypertrophy obviously some of the cons is it can be hard to use with sport specific training namely because the push and pull while
providing exercises if you have an upper body intense intense in a sport then you're not getting you're not going to be getting enough rest between your upper body Sport and having a lot of push-pull days in a row so upper lower splits there standard structure is upper body by itself and then lower body plus core as that balances the amount of exercises so for example with the upper body you have usually your you know dips push-ups your pull-ups and rows and then lower body usually have like two lower bodies such as Squat and deadlifts and
then maybe two core so the exercises are out even and take the same amount of time I'm scheduling a similar to the push-pull splits and that you can do Monday Wednesday Friday Saturday Monday Tuesday Thursday Friday three one two one or the sixth one pattern I already went over the pros and cons for those so the pros for upper lower is that they tend to integrate to most sports pretty well so most sports with a lower body emphasis like sprinting or running you can have the specific lower body days after your sports specific day or
on the rest days so you have adequate rests between your sports specific workouts and your leg workouts and then upper body can usually go either on a sports specific day or rest day to allow your lower body to recover adequately some of the cons for this is that the upper body exercises can suffer because some do overlap muscle groups so like for example your put dips and your pull-ups both use chests and lats as muscles so if you're doing those during exercise if you're doing pullups first you get you know 100 with the pull-ups as
an exercise but if you're doing dips after that usually your muscles are more fatigued and so the quality of your sets drops and it can have a little bit less adaption adaptations for the upper body in the long run so some pros and cons of each for those the strainer bedtime split similar to the previous two splits you can usually do something like bent arm plus legs or straight Enterprise core or vice versa stacking the core with the bent arm and legs with the straight arms likewise with the previous two splits two day splits the
scheduling is very similar you can stack Monday Wednesday Friday Saturday Monday Tuesday Thursday Friday or three one two one or six one generally I like the straight arm before the bent arm and that's because the strainer is more intensive on the connective tissue and so you want that coming off the rest days and so on any of the schedules usually if you do strand first it's going to be after a rest day that allows your connective tissues to be recovered for extreme day and then bedtime day after a straight arm day is not generally as
injurious especially if you have two days in a row so that's not an issue with that specific so if you are going to be using the splits you want to have the straight arm days before the bent arm days especially on consecutive days in a row so the main pros of straight arm bent arm I use this a lot for my athletes who want coaching basically allows them to practice all the straight arm isometrics so get to work towards your goals such as your trainer press handstands your back lover front lover your plants or other
strain arm work and also work the bent arm stuff at once usually having some combo of both straight arm isometrics and bent arm exercises working towards improving strength and hypertrophy for the same muscle groups those will both of those combined provide the fastest progress towards the isometrics themselves and so that is one of the very strong cons of this split one of or one of the very strong pros of the split some of the cons of the split is generally that they can sometimes lead to solar progress especially compared to full body for beginners and
trained beginners and sometimes intermediates namely because of less frequency with the exercises at first and some people when getting into the stream isometrics if they're barely able to hold them even with like yeah implements that can help you hold them better like bands you're not getting good at adaptations and you're better off working mostly movements at first similarly there is a higher risk of potential overuse namely because like the push pull splits you may be often working the upper body shoulders multiple times most multiple days in a row so like if you're doing you know
planche and straight arm pressed handstands and back lever and front lever you're using the shoulders and then the next day you're doing you know your pseudo planche push-ups or planche push-up progression your dips you know you're one of them pull up progression and your rows or front level row progression you're obviously working the shoulder extensively two days in a row so there is a potential overuse injury concerns with those so three day splits I don't like them but they can work effectively for some people your standard PPL will go six times a week in a
row so you would alternate PPL PPL rest this can be split up a bit better with PLP PLP rest so throwing the legs in there to give the upper body a little bit of a break instead of doing both push and pulls in a row that can be effective some of the lower intensity Push Pull splits for example are just doing Monday Wednesday Friday push then Wednesday pool then Lakes Friday so generally not as effective especially since that brings you down to one time a week not I don't like that at all one time a
week is barely enough to progress for most you know train beginners and intermediates can be okay for beginners because you know training just one time a week can be effective for progress but generally not as effective as most you know strength training studies indicate that two to four times a week is optimal for improving on strength in the long run so some of the pros on this is it's more casual and allows people to focus more on body areas like the Bro splits such as like chess and triceps back and biceps core has its own
thing you know legs that's his own thing and maybe neck or isolation training as its own thing so some of the Cons with this obviously the back-to-back workouts with a more frequent six to one schedule can potentially lead to overuse injuries but generally the the main cons are that it has much slower progress than most other splits in general and so I generally don't like three-day splits at all almost never recommend them someone has good progress with them usually I'll suggest sticking with it for a while but eventually moving on to something more frequent so
yeah basically they're my least favorite and I don't like them especially because you can often get Superior progress or adjust a you know a full body or a two-day split to have best progress so for example if somebody is having their best progress with a PPL type of program usually that means the full body or two-day splits have too much volume in in them so this can happen sometimes with somebody coming off injury or they're older or they have a low tolerance to exercise and so usually in those cases a set adjustment down to like
you know one or two sets for a full body uh workout instead of going to a PPL will be much Superior than stacking all of the push exercises on one day and then only having one push exercise the next week or you know doing two of those push exercises a week so you get more frequency you just adjust the workout so that you can do it more frequently and that often leads more progress the reason being that if somebody was doing say two sets or three sets of push-ups and dips per day in each of
their push day splits in a PPL it's better to have two exercises of that or two sets of that three days per week instead of having three of the the sets of that two days per week and the reason for that is after every consecutive set of the exercise you get more and more fatigue so the first set is the freshest like the you know the first exercise order in the routine is the freshest the second set you know quality decreases a bit third set decreases a bit so when you have three different days of
exercise you get a first set and a second set so they're more fresher than doing two third sets of the exercise so I guess to re-explain it if you were doing two days with three sets then the third set you're gonna be most fatigued each day whereas if you split those third sets and put them on a third day with rest days in between them then those sets at one and two they're going to be more fresh than the third set on each of those two other days so that's the reason why splitting out and
modifying a full bio routine or push pull split to higher frequency than a PPL it tends to be more effective in the long run if PPL is working for them some adjustments to those specific splits will tend to ensure faster progress
