3-Way Split Frequency

Bigger Stronger Leaner Competitive Bodybuilding
21

All of these are very similar to the split I’ve been using for ages, and have had good luck with. over the past 10 months or so, I’ve been prioritizing my legs, and thus wanted more volume (twice a week legs). My split has been as follows -

week 1
Mon - legs
tues - push
wed - pull
thurs - off (light cardio)
fri - legs
sat - push
sun - off (light cardio_

week 2
mon - legs
tues - pull
wed- push
thurs - off (light cardio)
fri - legs
sat - pull
sun - off (light cardio)

basically, I’m lifting five days a week, hitting legs twice a week every week, and hitting push x 2/pull x 1 alternating with push x 1/pull x 2. I’ve been very happy with the balance I’ve achieved with lower body vs. upper body.

22

For those who have been using this split with a frequency of twice a week, do you use the same exercises the second time around or different ones?

23

Dude, don’t be afraid of high frequency, as long as volume is low.

I did sumo DLs 3 days ago, front squats 2 days ago, and back squats yesterday, hitting PRs on all 3 lifts all 3 days.All about knowing your body.

24

Newbie here. I was planning to do this split, hitting legs 1x week:

1-Push (2nd week: Pull)
2-Off
3-Pull (2nd week: Push)
4-Off
5-Push (2nd week: Pull)
6-Legs
7-Off

In this type of split, where do you put Deadlifts (conventional’s) ? In Pull days or Leg day ? I don’t think that doing squats and DLs in the same session or doing DLs 2 times per week is a good idea.

Sorry for my english, i’m from Chile.

25

[quote]Gonza.lo wrote:
Newbie here. I was planning to do this split, hitting legs 1x week:

1-Push (2nd week: Pull)
2-Off
3-Pull (2nd week: Push)
4-Off
5-Push (2nd week: Pull)
6-Legs
7-Off

In this type of split, where do you put Deadlifts (conventional’s) ? In Pull days or Leg day ? I don’t think that doing squats and DLs in the same session or doing DLs 2 times per week is a good idea.

Sorry for my english, i’m from Chile.[/quote]

It’s up to you, really. You can DL on your pull days and, say, back squat on legs day, or DL on legs day and then hit the Leg Press or Hack squat machine or some shit.

With that said, you need to be careful. If you do the deadlift on your pull days, you better not squat the next day. Be smart.

Entiendes, muchacho?

26

Most find it’s good to train muscle groups roughly twice a week.

The older “traditional splits” used to be an upper/lower split done about 4 times a week, so if you did that, you could do squats on one lower day, and deadlifts the another.

e.g.

MON - Lower (e.g. Deadlifts)
TUE - Upper
WED - OFF
THU - Lower (e.g. Squats)
FRI - OFF
SAT - Upper
SUN - OFF

Many usually progress onto a more split routine after this when more specialisation/recovery is needed. There is ways of mixing in push/pull and lower body similar to your routine, but I can’t think of any off the top of my head…

27

[quote]knee-gro wrote:

It’s up to you, really. You can DL on your pull days and, say, back squat on legs day, or DL on legs day and then hit the Leg Press or Hack squat machine or some shit.

With that said, you need to be careful. If you do the deadlift on your pull days, you better not squat the next day. Be smart.

Entiendes, muchacho?
[/quote]

Si entiendo! Thank you very much for your help. I’ll take your advice and i’m going to try not squat and deadlift on consecutive days.

And thanks for your opinion too, its_just_me. I’m very weak right now, so I think I should focus on training with a little less volume but more frequently, in order to improve my strenght as fast as possible, and follow that Upper/Lower routine seems a good idea.

And again, sorry for my limited English, I need to improve that too.

28

Thanks for bumping this thread.

After being on the ‘bodybuilding style’ split for a few months, I began to notice that the muscles that training the muscles only 1x every 7 days was leading to them becoming very fresh the next time around. As in, they were recovered 2-3 days before I even worked them again.

I think I’d be better off just splitting my workouts into about half and doing something like:

Push-legs+abs-pull-off-push-pull+abs-off.
or

Push-legs-pull-push-legs-pull-off. With abs split between the pull days.

Something to consider.

In addition to not deadlifting the day before doing back squats, I’d like to add that doing abs the day before back squats/deads isn’t the best idea and also, if you’re doing deads and back squats on the same day, always do squats first. Or you could just do front squats instead.

29

[quote]ridethecliche wrote:
Thanks for bumping this thread.

After being on the ‘bodybuilding style’ split for a few months, I began to notice that the muscles that training the muscles only 1x every 7 days was leading to them becoming very fresh the next time around. As in, they were recovered 2-3 days before I even worked them again.

I think I’d be better off just splitting my workouts into about half and doing something like:

Push-legs+abs-pull-off-push-pull+abs-off.
or

Push-legs-pull-push-legs-pull-off. With abs split between the pull days.

Something to consider.

In addition to not deadlifting the day before doing back squats, I’d like to add that doing abs the day before back squats/deads isn’t the best idea and also, if you’re doing deads and back squats on the same day, always do squats first. Or you could just do front squats instead. [/quote]

I used to find the same thing when training muscle groups once per week (muscles returned to homeostasis…that is, “involution” occurred). It’s very personal, so I wouldn’t say that you MUST train muscle groups every 6 days or so (an effective method for me).

Relatively high frequency and brief (low volume), intense workouts work best for me.

30

How many exercises per body part do you guys typically follow?

31

[quote]Bingbeast wrote:
How many exercises per body part do you guys typically follow?
[/quote]

It depends how my muscles or system feels (unmotivated or stiff etc). I tend to be quite conservative as regards number of exercises. If I feel like doing more, I will. If I don’t feel great, I may only do 3 exercises in a session (one of which is a smaller one). I’d rather do 3 full effort exercises, than 6 half assed ones. My training is pretty high intensity, so I can “get away” with less volume.

Generally, it’s about 2 exercises per body part. Lower body and back gets more.

32

I’ve always felt something like this feels “right”

Chest/Back
Legs
Arms/Shoulders
OFF
Legs
Upper
Off

or:

Chest/Back
Legs
Off
Chest/BAck
Legs
Arms/Shoulders
Off

or:

Chest/Tri
Back/Bi
Legs/Shoulders
Off
Upper
Legs
Off
*I don’t like this one…never really wanted to do anything else on leg day but legs.

or

Chest/Shoulder/Tri
Back/Bi
Legs
Off
Upper
Legs
Off
*didn’t like this one either…too much going on Monday.

6-8 exercises total per session, about 3 per body part, 2 per for arms. Arm/Shoulder days get more because those muscles are smaller and so the accumulative fatigue is less. I also think the shoulders are much more dynamic that most give credit (Ie: Shoulder Press, Upright row for the big compound movements, then a lateral raise and rear delt raise).

Alan

33

This is what I’m about to try;

Legs
Chest
Back
OFF
OFF
Legs
Chest
Back

Only four exercises per day but volume will increase if I get bored.

34

[quote]its_just_me wrote:

I used to find the same thing when training muscle groups once per week (muscles returned to homeostasis…that is, “involution” occurred). It’s very personal, so I wouldn’t say that you MUST train muscle groups every 6 days or so (an effective method for me).

Relatively high frequency and brief (low volume), intense workouts work best for me.[/quote]

I’m a newb and I’ll admit it.

When I first started lifting late last year, I was doing workouts with like 14 exercises. It was fine for then because of how weak I was. Now I’m doing like 8-10, and realize that everyone else was right and 6-8 is a good number. I still like all the exercises that I picked, so instead of doing them all in one day I might split them into 2 days with some overlap.

Plus, now that I am actually lifting a little more weight, some of those workouts would end up being 2 hrs, which is straight up stupid. Sometimes you gotta learn a lesson for yourself for it to make sense.

I’m not sure what my goals are at this point. I might want to start adding in some biking to see how my knee feels, but maybe not.

[quote]bradden wrote:
This is what I’m about to try;

Legs
Chest
Back
OFF
OFF
Legs
Chest
Back

Only four exercises per day but volume will increase if I get bored.[/quote]

What exercises are you thinking of using. I think you might not be hitting everything enough doing only 4 unless you’re basing each of you workouts around a compound movement?

Will you hit tris with chest? Bi’s with back? Abs with legs? Etc etc.

35

[quote]ridethecliche wrote:

[quote]its_just_me wrote:

I used to find the same thing when training muscle groups once per week (muscles returned to homeostasis…that is, “involution” occurred). It’s very personal, so I wouldn’t say that you MUST train muscle groups every 6 days or so (an effective method for me).

Relatively high frequency and brief (low volume), intense workouts work best for me.[/quote]

I’m a newb and I’ll admit it.

When I first started lifting late last year, I was doing workouts with like 14 exercises. It was fine for then because of how weak I was. Now I’m doing like 8-10, and realize that everyone else was right and 6-8 is a good number. I still like all the exercises that I picked, so instead of doing them all in one day I might split them into 2 days with some overlap.

Plus, now that I am actually lifting a little more weight, some of those workouts would end up being 2 hrs, which is straight up stupid. Sometimes you gotta learn a lesson for yourself for it to make sense.

I’m not sure what my goals are at this point. I might want to start adding in some biking to see how my knee feels, but maybe not.

[quote]bradden wrote:
This is what I’m about to try;

Legs
Chest
Back
OFF
OFF
Legs
Chest
Back

Only four exercises per day but volume will increase if I get bored.[/quote]

What exercises are you thinking of using. I think you might not be hitting everything enough doing only 4 unless you’re basing each of you workouts around a compound movement?

Will you hit tris with chest? Bi’s with back? Abs with legs? Etc etc. [/quote]

I dont have my log book with me right now so I dont remember how exactly each day goes. But yes I do base each workout around a compound movement.

My leg day goes as follows;
Hack squat
Calve raises
Lunges
Leg Extensions

My Hamstrings are a strong point for me so im not doing another lift for them, my calves and quadriceps are weak though.

I am hitting tris with chest but I’m not hitting biceps with back, only reason being; my biceps are a strong point so they can have a break.

Its pretty personalized, I’ve basically based it around compound lifts but my goals are correcting strength imbalances as well as gaining some over size and strength.

36

Today was the first day of this, my leg day felt good so far, but I like to make changes if things dont work for me.

37

Ohh man taking deadlifts out of the workout allows you to get alot more days in working out

38

[quote]donovanbrambila wrote:
For those who have been using this split with a frequency of twice a week, do you use the same exercises the second time around or different ones?[/quote]

I find the body adapts better, and I see more results when I change up the exercises. It lets me enjoy some of the ones I prefer, but also makes me use the ones that are harder, and work better.

39

[quote]Avominion wrote:

[quote]donovanbrambila wrote:
For those who have been using this split with a frequency of twice a week, do you use the same exercises the second time around or different ones?[/quote]

I find the body adapts better, and I see more results when I change up the exercises. It lets me enjoy some of the ones I prefer, but also makes me use the ones that are harder, and work better. [/quote]

Ditto.

Same rep scheme/different exercises OR different rep scheme/same exercises. There’s no wrong way to do it as long as you’re progressing.

I once did a program where I did 5 rep sets on day 1 and 20-50 rep sets on day 2. Squated my bodyweight for 50 reps without racking the bar…that was cool. Followed that with 20 rep leg ext and leg curls. I actually increased my squat max after that.

Alan

40

so what kind of rep schemes are you guys using? Surely you couldn’t be lifting heavy (less than 6 reps) twice a week for all muscles. I’d like to hear some experiences.