3 ways to split your workouts with a busy schedule

Everyone wants to train maximally. This is one of the major problems in today’s gym mindset. If you don’t get out on all fours, you shouldn’t even call it a workout.

This is the major reason why people can’t stick to their fitness routine. If they feel like they can’t give 150% effort, they shouldn’t even bother. Big mistake. I say, just keep showing and shut up.

However, it takes a patient and smart trainee to train efficiently. Patience is the mother of all virtues and being tactical in your approach to training is a must, especially in busy times. Textbook says the best way to maximize your results is to train for two days and take one day off.

This split would be for bodybuilding. Work on chest and back on day 1, focus on legs on day 2, then have a break. On the third workout, day go for the arms and finally work on shoulders and everything else on day 4. This is probably the most common split.

If you can train three days a week, it could look like the following.

According to the regular split for bodybuilding, you would work on chest and back on day 1, legs on day 2 and arms on day 3. On a four weeks span, you would repeat each body part six times. If you look at the research you would maximize results, for strength and hypertrophy gains, by training each muscle at least twice or three times a week. How can you do so?

Your workout would be much simpler. You would have compound exercises every training day. Bench-press, squats, deadlifts, pulls, and a few remedial exercises such as leg curls, curls, pulldowns, different kinds of presses and isolation exercises.

Option 1

Option 2

Option 3

You must also look at the dose/response per session. The traditional bodybuilding approach would have a lot of volume per body part, which in this case, wouldn’t be advised since you repeat those muscle groups 2-3 times a week, compared to once every 7-10 days at times.

Coach Eric