I’m having trouble with the weighting of standard upper lower, in that after my heavy compounds, then doing my arms makes them feel like an afterthought, and I can’t bring the intensity I need. On the flip side, doing them at the start of the workout significantly hampers my back and chest training.
I’ve been looking into torso/limb instead, where you put your arms in with legs. It seems like a great choice for splitting things up, but how does it work when you’d be training your arms two consecutive days in a row?
If you did Mon-T/Tues-L/Wed-Off/Thurs-T/Fri-L/Sat-Off/Sun-Off, then your arms are being hit relatively hard by back and chest movements on the torso days, and then intensely on the limb days.
I was always under the assumption that you shouldn’t be hitting each muscle group two consecutive days like this. I’m someone who likes to train to failure as well, so the arms do take a beating with pressing and pulling at 0-rir and 12 sets a week.
With the standard upper/lower, you’re getting two full days of recovery between sessions, which works out nicely.
What am I missing? Thanks!
EDIT: Apologies for the double title - don’t know what happened there.
Can you explain this a little? Is “torso Tuesday” ™ like bench and press, then limb Wednesday is curls and pushdowns. Then torso thursday is squat and limb Friday is left extensions and leg curls or….?
I guess, give me a better understanding of what you’re actually doing and what your goals are.
Agree with everyone here - if it doesn’t make sense, don’t do it.
You could reduce your frequency, so you have rest days in there (like a DC split), you could do PPL or a true Push / Pull (the “best damn” series on this site used that), or just put an arm day anywhere.
Do you have any specific goals/ metrics you’d want to use to evaluate if your new split is hitting the mark?
Thanks. It makes sense to me from an organizational standpoint. I was just unsure about a couple of aspects – mainly the notion of training the same muscle groups, even if one of those days is indirectly, twice in two days. Though traditional bro splits did that, I suppose. The other concern was that it seems a little iffy from a tendonitis perspective, given that you’re basically doing those similar movement patterns four days in the week. Thanks for the suggestions on the other splits.
Regarding specific goals/metrics, my main concern with upper/lower was that I could never really hit arms that hard after six sets of pulling and six sets of pushing. Coming in fresh it’s way better, but then you can’t reasonably hit back hard, for example, when your bices are fatigued from doing arms first. I’ve only just started this upper/lower routine (two weeks in), so in fairness, I don’t know that my arms will suffer long term - I guess I’d just have to see if my curl and extension strength improved - I was just wondering if there was a better way of setting things up before committing to it.
In fairness, I have only been doing the upper/lower routine for a couple of weeks, but it was just one thing I noticed that by the end of the session, when it came to arms, I was getting pretty tired by that point. I would have to wait and see whether my strength went up in my curls and extensions, but I was just wondering before I committed to that if there may be a better way of splitting things up. Thanks.
I’m 28, male, body fat is roughly 15%, maybe a little higher. I’ve been lifting for year but only really serious about it the last two. I am making strength progress, yes, but I was just wondering whether my arms would benefit from being placed elsewhere in the program, because I do get tired by the time I get to them.
I think a lot of people forget sometimes they don’t have to fit everything into a week. The OP could also stretch his program out over 8 or 9 days if he needs more rest too.
I was always looking for a better way. I had a few constraints that I demanded my workout fulfill.
I had a workout partner so the cycle was a week. I wanted to hit my Chest, Shoulders, Biceps, and Triceps twice a week. My Back/Chest and Legs workout were highly intense and I wanted a rest day off both of those.
Monday was heavy Back then heavy Chest. I finished the workout with a biceps pump (because I didn’t feel I had good biceps action on back exercises.) Shoulders got worked whether I wanted to or not; and Triceps were adequately stimulated.
Tuesday was a rest day
Wednesday was a heavy Legs day. I waddled out of the gym
Thursday was a rest day
Friday was a lighter Chest day and heavy Biceps day
