6 day split
For major movements I’ll be doing 10, 8, 8, 6 and for accessories I’ll be lowering to 10, 8, 8. On days labeled with core I’ll be doing the listed core exercises at the end of the post.
Shoulders
Seated Bent Rear Delts
Seated Lat Raise
Seated Front Raise
Dumbbell Press
Cable Lat Raise
Face Pull
Legs 2/Core
Bulgarian Split Squat
Front Squat
Leg Press
Goblet Squat
Walking Lunge
Core
Pilof Press
Hanging Leg Raise
Reverse Curls
Flutter kicks
I’ll be throwing deadlifts in once I get my back to a place where I can deadlift with a manageable amount of pain. This is close to what I did on my 2024 deployment and I saw good results. If you see any glaring issues with this format please let me know.
You have good mornings on a back day, but those are a hip hinge exercise rather than a back exercise. I’d feel more appropriate placing that on a legs day. Especially so given that, the day after your back day, you’re asking yourself to do some manner of squat and a deadlift. Doing that the day after good mornings, back extensions and (what I assume are bent over) rows would mean coming in with a fair degree of lower back fatigue to me, and either open me up to some sort of injury or, if nothing else, overtax the area.
Which, actually, in that regard, a solution could be to make your legs 2 day your legs 1 day. You’re picking less lower back intensive lifts there. It could be a bit more survivable that way.
I don’t envision the dumbbell press going well on your shoulder day. You’ll have smashed every head of the delt prior to that moment, and be coming it with fatigued triceps from your arm day.
I don’t se any core work on your chest/core day. That’s a LOT of flyes though, which would wear the hell out of my delts, and I’m not quite sure I see the training benefit of so many fly variations.
I don’t ever do muscle group splits, so that’s worth keeping in mind, but these are my observations as an outsider.
Awesome. I will 100% swap leg days around and look at maybe getting rid of good mornings all together. I started doing accessories before shoulder press because I have crunchy/injury prone shoulders so I use it as an extensive warm up prior to the heavier push.
Also I just threw my core options in at the end to show what I would be doing on those core days.
@TrainForPain I’ll be doing 3 days on 1 day off. As far as volume I’ll be doing 10, 8, 8, 6
@howie424 Just because it worked well doesn’t mean it couldn’t work better and there is a wealth of knowledge availible on this site.
I would start with 6 sets. If you are progressing, you are getting stronger, you are building muscle.
I personally do not like this type of split where you hit 1 muscle a day. Your arms are going to be getting more volume than every other muscle. You are hitting them on chest, back and shoulders.
That was my point of suggesting that you revisit your previous log and adjust.
For me personally, that’s too many exercises. But that might work for you and that’s okay. I’ve got ADD brain, so I will often go through periods of focusing on literally 3-4 total movements (sometimes 1) and repeat them daily. So Easy Strength, Wisconsin Method/Bulgarian Lite, High Frequency Strength Work (CT), that sort of mind-set. And then there are times I will scale that upwards into cycles of 5/3/1 or a CT program (but I typically don’t like anything longer than a 3-5 week cycle).
What you’ve presented looks like something out of Muscular Development, which again, is totally fine. But I’d just try Doggcrapp or something. Reign the focus in but still have plenty of (mandatory) variety.
Oh I see what you mean. I’m only going off a 6 day split because I’ll be stuck on a ship for 6-9 months and I need routine to help time go by, like prison.
You could take one of Wendler’s books with you and repeat his programs throughout. Many of his programs end up being 6 days of training when you factor in the cardio. Alternating Boring But Big, Building the Monolith and Easy Strength as an Anchor/Realization period and you could damn near train every day of 6-9 months.
Ironically, the huge amount of variety in your program would bore me to death (not to mention it would increase the likelihood of me being distracted by a squirrel, or in your case, an albatross).
EDIT: The comment above mine looks solid too, and is basically what Cephalic Carnage recommended to me as a youngster. I would ramp to a top set of a given exercise for 6-8 reps. If I didn’t make the 8 reps, he’d have me do another set of 4-6. If I did make the 8 reps, I wouldn’t do the extra set, and I added weight next time. Then there were some high rep exercises like pinwheel curls, tricep pullovers, Kroc rows, and Widowmaker squats or leg press, and occasionally rest-pauses. My exercise selection was much more consolidated though.
This is your 2nd Leg Day…..
Bulgarian Split Squat
Front Squat
Leg Press
Goblet Squat
Walking Lunge
BACK DAY
Barbell Row - 135x10 185x10 205x10 205x10
Dumbbell Single Arm Row - 90x12 95x10 100x8 110x6
Lat Pulldown - 140x10 150x10 160x8 170x8 180x6
Single Arm Lat Pulldown - 100x12 110x10 125x8 125x8
Cable Lat Extensions - 50x10 60x8 80x8 70x7
Banded Hyperextensions - 80-120lb band 2 sets of 10
I am going to get on my soap box for a moment. When I see a workout plan based on PPL, I cringe. Psychologically the plan places Legs as the lowest priority. Of almost all the pics that I have seen posted on T-Nation, Legs should be the highest priority. After my first Bodybuilding contest I moved Legs as the highest priority of all my workouts from that point on.