Understood
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The Classic 4 way split is pretty good.
Some kind of upper body. Maybe “chest.” Or some combo of chest/shoulders/tris.
Some kind of lower body. Maybe “legs.” Or quad focus.
Some kind of upper body. Maybe “shoulders.” Or “arms.” Or some combination.
Some kind of lower body. Maybe “back” with some deadlift or hinging. Or hamstring focused leg day.
You can do it “Powerbuilding Style” with a clear focus on big, compound Main Lifts. And then lighter assistance moves. Like Ed Coan.
Or “BodyBuilding Style” with 3-4 lifts you really like per body part. With each lift equally important and pushed equally hard. Like Dorian Yates.
If you count “Overlap”, like the hamstring work you get from squatting and leg press, or the tricep work you get from bench presses and shoulder pressing, as Half A Workout you get pretty solid 1.5 times per week per bodypart frequency. 90% optimal. Whatever that means.
And if you count “Indirect Sets” like the work your biceps get from rows and chins as half a set, and “Direct Sets” like the work your biceps get from curls, it’s Easy to accumulate 12-15 sets per body part per week. 90% optimal. Whatever that means.
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Hamstrings aren’t worked during a squat or leg press…it’s the adductor magnus you’re feeling
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Do some leg curls before squatting.
Squats will feel nice. And if you believe that squats don’t hit hamstrings you’re still in Optimal Territory and don’t have to fret.
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Squats don’t work hamstrings
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What do we mean when we say “work” here?
Hamstrings work 50% as hard in the squat as they do during a leg curl or stiff leg dead. So (ergo?) a set of squats is half a set of hamstrings.
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Not to derail, but this was an awesome point. I don’t think I ever cared about “bodybuilding” so much as if I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it. You writing it out made so much sense. It’s either on or off.
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Thanks man.
It’s not a method.
IT’S A MINDSET!
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Info from an actual bodybuilder.
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Upon review, I have NOT ran that version. Just the TB Grey Man.
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Ah yeah, world’s apart, despite same name. Lotta room for isolation work
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Interesting in that some of these aren’t available. I found some of the programs named but received black screens after clicking them.
Unfortunately I think some of them may not have made it with the site updates.
@Andrewgen_Receptors, when you started TBJP, did you follow the upper/lower schedule of:
Upper Off Lower Off Upper Off Off?
And performed one set 6-9 and 1 10-12?
Curious.
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updated Building a bigger yoke for 2 cycles as leaders, then the original building a bigger yoke as anchor. My wife told me it was the best I’ve ever looked.
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Building the Monolith. It was the only program in the last 10 years where fellow lifters really took notice.
Running Full body 17 right now. Effective, but dreadfully dull.
It may boil down to semantics, but I’m going to disagree with you here. Conditioning and diet aside, I’d argue the 5x531s, BBS, and widowmakers are the meat of it (semantics being I’m grouping the supplemental work into “main lift” here since it’s the same exercises). In the article he even says something like the first three exercises are the ones that count (big 4 and chins/rows), and the rest are just window dressing.
The meat of it to be sure, but the main work sets are there to maintain strength from my experience. Concur on the widowmakers (I consider those high rep rather than low rep).
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Yeah - I figured we were splitting the hair different.
I actually respond pretty well hypertrophy-wise to those sets if i remember. I’d have to look back at my log and it’s been a while, but I phoned in the dips, shrugs, curls etc and the main push/pull/leg exercises actually drove quite a bit of growth for me.
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I believe i started with full body every other day. This was too difficult for me to recover from while on a deficit, sleeping 5hrs nightly, working 40 hour weeks and attending school full time.
I think i backed down to upper lower for a bit, but ultimately had to regress to PPL. I stuck with PPL for a long time.
Eventually i was able to move to a Push/Pull split, which is effectively his Upper/Lower, but separated by muscle function. This was manageable at a mild deficit.
*i chose this because my lower days were so taxing i could not recover from them, but splitting leg movements made it doable. It’s worth noting that I’m a bit of an outlier here, though. Even with 531 i couldn’t do squats and deads in it same week without regressing.
JP advocates adjusting training stimuli frequency to the individual’s recovery factors.
In order of highest > lowest recovery demands:
Full body
Upper/lower (or Push/Pull)
PPL
Bro Split
I’m running a modified version of his PPL now as I’m in a significant deficit so recovery isn’t great.
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Updated as of when?
Was it the version of 10x5 assistance at increasing percentages starting with 70%?