Effective Reps and Exercise Variety Options

Training
1

Coach Thibaudeau, I’m doing a split of hitting a muscle directly 1 time per week.

Sun- Off
Mon- Chest/Biceps
Tue- Legs
Wed- Off
Thurs-Shoulders/Triceps
Fri-Off
Sat-Back/Traps

  1. How many effective reps would you recommend per muscle in this example?

  2. How would you suggest variety with the exercises?
    -Example for chest if you recommend 20 effective reps that would be about 4 sets total (I do 6-8 reps to positive failure)

Would you recommend 4 sets on 1 exercise and then switch to a different exercise after that stalls…or would you recommend more variety, something like 2 sets flat bench, 1 set incline, 1 set decline?

Thank you in advance.

2

Essentially Dorian Yates’ split.

1 Like
3

20 to 30

1 Like
4

I personally use this set-up for most exercises:

Set 1 = 10 reps warm-up with around 50% of your planned work weight (no effective reps)

Set 2 = 6 reps feeler set at around 80-90% of planned work weight (probably gives you 3 effective reps)

Set 3 = 6-8 reps to failure (5 effective reps), heavy work set where I try to apply progressive overload

Set 4 = 8-12 reps to failure, back-off set with around 80% of set 3 (5 effective reps)

That gives me 13 effective reps.

I do 2 exercises per body part this way for a total of 26 (roughly) effective reps.

I personally use a push/pull/legs/arms split (I do one biceps exercise on pull days and 1-2 triceps exercises on press days but my arms are my week point) but it can be applied to your split.

But with your spit you could actually do 3 exercises per muscle. In which case I’d use the set-up mentioned above for the first two then do 1 set using an intensifier (combo set, drop set, range of motion drop set, rest/pause, etc) on a 3rd exercise (maybe do 1 warm-up before).

I change exercise when I cannot progress in load for 2 consecutive workouts.

1 Like
5

Thank u. I will give this a try.

I’ve always wanted to try a push/pull/legs split but never knew how to set it up properly to stimulate chest shoulders and triceps because there is so much carryover with those muscles I dont know how to count effective reps.

Example doing sets of bench press and overhead press would use a lot of shoulders and triceps so how to count effective reps for those muscles always confused me and so I just always use this Dorian type of split…

Is there any examples of push pull legs splits u have?

6

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.