PPL is dead. Now what?

no split is actually dead that's a horrible way to look at things all splits technically work Push Pull legs would just be less efficient and more error prone especially For Less experienced people which is why most Fitness people have started writing it off including myself but that leaves the question what the heck do I do now for most of you you'll probably get better results using an upper lower split I used to be a push pull legs connoisseur but switching to an upper lower split it placed restrictions on me that force me to learn how

to design workouts better and get more out of them plus I have extra days to recover and do other [ __ ] you don't have to live in the gym bro and I'm here to guide you on how to run the upper lower split plus give you a free workout program plus teach you all the modifications you can make to improve the split's weak points because it's not perfect the upper day usually takes way longer than the lower day plus your arms usually get left behind to fix this you also have to unlearn some of

the pre-existing Notions you have about splits so stick around let's get into it the upper split conventionally is just a four times a week split meaning you go to the gym four days out of the week half of those days will be upper days where you train the upper body muscles minus the ABS and lower back usually the other half will be lower days where you train all the lower body muscles including the ABS and lower back which are generally just hit by your other exercises I think you can already see a problem the upper

body has like 10 billion more muscles than your lower body so that day will take longer to do especially if you really care about the individual muscles on your upper body for some people this isn't a problem otherwise if if you need more evened out days the modifications I'll show you later have you covered the schedule I recommend looks something like this the day you start on doesn't really matter just as long as you have one to two days of rest in between the workout days I recommend 5 to seven exercises per day with two

to three sets per exercise this is a general recommendation but will 100% get you gains which you can build off of from there to suit your needs I would recommend starting the workouts with a horizontal press a Vertical Press a row and a pull down in any order you like as long as you altern a between pull and push movements like so the other lifts can be whatever arm workor you want I personally use curls tricep extensions lateral raises rear delt raises Etc the specific equipment doesn't matter I personally use free weight barbells and dumbbells

first pro your frequency is good with hitting your muscles two times a week and you can still train very intensely every session since you still have an entire 3 days to rest you can use the weekends and the day in the middle to run errands second Pro your recovery is basically guaranteed your upper body won't interfere with your lower body's recovery and vice versa but this gets trickier with other modifications which is why you need to see how it's properly done the third Pro you have a lot of extra days dedicated to other types of

training methods I basically train almost seven times a week however only four of those days are lifting training and this has allowed me to progress in other aspects of Fitness like stamina and conditioning the only cons I can really think of is that one sessions can take extremely long even in their bare minimum form and two room for weak point training will be too Limited without making smarter modifications than just adding sets of a muscle you want to bring up so now let's fix that [ __ ] the first modification is just simply moving your

back and bicep work to your lower day this is what I recommend for most and this will do two things even out your training days in terms of volume as well as up your back frequency while maintaining recovery which gives you more flexibility with your back volume you can essentially train your back up to four times a week and get more out of each movement since you're fresh why does this work first you need a mindset shifts with how you look at training splits all a workout is is just a base guideline for arranging muscle

groups for each day you lift it is not set in stone it can change if you are smart about it upper body muscles can be trained with lower body muscles second you need to understand that the back isn't just the back it's a bunch of muscle groups that have varying functions that you can differentiate between so by default you need more back work to stimulate all of those muscles this also means you can do more work back to back while continuing to recover but you have to make sure the back movements you choose are different

enough to vary which muscles of the back you are targeting here is how I would structure it rows and shrugs on my upper day and vertical poles in rear delts on my lower day this way you're doing different back movements that don't overlap as much also your lower body day will usually have a lot of spine loading movements like squats and deadlifts and so having exercises like pull-ups and lat pull Downs will be beneficial for limiting low back fatigue and plus decompressing the spine after doing those lifts will feel nice the only con to this

is that now you can't run your split in Reverse so you can't start with with a lower day and then go into an upper day because the bicep fatigue can carry over to your upper day but that's about it also it's still going to take some getting used to you may notice your traps especially are more sore than they used to be but that's normal your back just has to adapt to this change in frequency how about arm prioritization next up this is one of the Lesser known modifications probably because most don't have a name

for it some people consider it a different split and that's fair it's basically an upper lower split except you take all the direct arm work from your upper day and move it to the start of the lower day this essentially gives you a higher frequency for arm training three to four times per week compared to two times per week your upper day becomes your torso day as you're now only training torso muscles and your lower day becomes your limb day arms and legs why does this work now that you take out the direct work for

your arms on your upper day your arms will still get worked but not directly stimulated meaning by the time your lower day rolls around they will be fresh enough to hit again directly this literally gives you almost two extra arm days to work with allowing you to do direct arm work fresh as the first exercises of the day rather than done after a bunch of other work for your torso then because arm workor has almost no fatigue cost you can train your legs just fine it is important that on your torso day you emphasize your

torso muscles with your compounds so there's less fatigue carryover but you can experiment and see how your arms recover with this many people have been able to make it work you can put arm Focus compound exercises on the limb day but I would only recommend this after trying out this modification for a a bit just stick with arm isolations at the start of your limb day an extra modification you can add on top of this is to also move your lateral raises onto your limb day the premise is the same you hit your side belts

less directly on your torso day to allow recovery and then Hammer them on the limb day a second time for maximum stimulus while fresh this split works very well if you want to prioritize arms but don't want to do a separate arm day alone I know it sucks having to drive to the gym just to hit a few sets of curls but now that issue is fixed this split is very compact the only con really is potential recovery issues for some people and that you can't run the split in Reverse that's about it other than

that great option next up this one's probably the most popular option which is just adding an extra day to your split essentially after your cycle of Upper and Lower days you will go to the gym a fifth time usually with an arm day for most people this arm day allows you to get fresh arm workor and also opens up room to hit any other muscles like say the side delts there's also the plus side that you can order the days in pretty much any way you want as long as you don't run your upper day

after your arm day the only con really is the extra time investment you may not always want to go to the gym five times a week especially just to hit arms so there will be people who maybe missed the arm day like every other week to that I propose two solutions either you switch to a more compact torso and limb split or you can purchase some adjustable dumbbells at home to get your arm workor done there instead meaning you won't have to spend extra time getting ready and driving this is this is a no-brainer if

you already have a home gym next up last up we have a modification that can be applied to basically any upper lower split with any modifications super setting super setting is simply just doing two exercises back to back with only around 1/3 of your rest time in between each exercise it sounds like it just over fatigue you and it would if you're just hammering the same muscles over and over because the rest time is basically non-existent however what I propose is having the two exercises be either unrelated or opposing muscle groups the point is the

exercises themselves serving as part of the rest time for each other this allows you to get almost twice the work done for basically no recovery cost the only thing you would have to look at is your conditioning if you haven't been doing any cardio then Super sets will probably gas you out at first but that is actually a good thing even if it lowers your set quality temporarily it will improve your capacity to tolerate more productive work in the future so how do we implement this first you need to choose two exercises to superet here

are my two criteria as I said you need to be targeting opposing or unrelated muscle groups within a session so like biceps and triceps because they do the opposite things or mid delts and triceps because their actions essentially don't overlap lastly you have to make sure the two exercises aren't very heavy compound lifts where you wouldn't want any extra cardio fatigue as it could pose injury risks like squats and deadlifts and that's basically it using this criteria you can suet almost your whole upper and lower workouts normally with exercise ex sizes I will do a

set then set my stopwatch timer to go until around 3 minutes or until I'm recovered with super sets it's not much different you do your first exercise then set the timer for 3 to 4 minutes and in that time you do your other exercise once the timer is up then you do your first exercise and repeat this for however many sets you need it's that simple the only con with super sets is that you can become an equipment hog so I'd only recommend super setting between bigger pieces of equipment at home but a pull a

bar dumbbells or an easy bar those would be fine to take EXT EXT ra of since they are smaller pieces of equipment that's about all so to recap with the upper lower split you can move your back and bicep work to your lower day while still recovering and making even better gains you can also move all of your arm work to your lower day for better arm emphasis you can introduce a new day to your split to easily bring up weak points like your arms and your shoulders lastly you can superet basically all exercises in

your upper lower split to cut workouts in half hope you found this helpful if you want me to make you a personalized program that's best fit for you we can have a Chatman with the first link in the description for sticking around you can find the free sample upper lower body workout in the second link in the description where you can join the free community and find it if you can't just DM me if you like this breakdown of up or lower the next video I'd recommend watching is my other guide on explaining lifting splits