The Bro Science Thread

Any typical split where body parts are directly worked once per week.

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M-F Bench & Bis

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A dirty secret that they don’t want you to know about bro-splits: you actually train the muscles multiple times a week. Unless you go out of your way to train REALLY weird.

Let’s say we do this

Monday: Chest
Tuesday: Back
Wednesday: Shoulders
Thursday: Legs
Friday: Arms

On chest day, we use the bench press, dumbbell incline, and cable crossover.

Bench press trains chest…and triceps. Incline trains chest…and shoulders.

Then on back day, we do some deadlifts, rows and chins.

Deadlifts train back…and hamstrings. Rows train back…and biceps. Same with chins.

On shoulder day, we press, do lateral raises and rear laterals. Press trains shoulders…and triceps. Lateral raises get the rear delts…part of the back.

Legs are pretty much just legs…but we already got them on back day.

And here we are on arm day, having already trained them before.

We knew what we were doing, even when we didn’t know what we were doing.

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For the record … i know what a bro split is.

Just wanted to make sure. Since it seems now other’s have expanded the definition.

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SOMEONE FINALLY SAID IT! :partying_face:

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This is SO key for dialog. It’s like how “dirty bulk” completely transformed, from bulking while eating “dirty food” to now just getting fat on a bulk.

Mainly because we all became children and wanted to act like we don’t know what “dirty food” meant.

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I suppose on Shoulder Day we could work the chest a bit too if seated presses are with bench slightly reclined instead completely vertical. :+1:

As for myself, I only have 3 days per week to train, so I’ve been doing full body. But I was considering going back to a split, something like: 1) chest/back, 2)Legs, 3)Shoulders/Arms.

If I were to try to bro split it AND only train 3 days a week, I’d definitely NOT train chest and back on the same day. Think about how BIG that day is going to be compared to your shoulders and arms day. I’d balance out that load. And really, “Chest-legs-back” works out pretty solid as “Bench-squat-deadlift”, and there are a TON of great examples out there for how to train that way. That’s pretty classic powerlifting right there, before high frequency came on the scene. Typically you’d include a light bench day on Saturday (assuming you trained M-W-F) and more likely going Squat-bench-deadlift for how you structured the week, but it’s certainly viable.

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I used to know a guy who did a front/back split. It’s stuck with me because it seemed so weird.

So front day was chest, quads, abs, biceps, shoulders.

Back day was lats, triceps, glutes, hams and calves.

I don’t remember his exact exercise selection, but he looked better than 80% of people in the gym.

Kind of makes sense when you consider this.

Yeah… look how Coan trained. It would be considered by some today as a Bro split.

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Screw your preworkout drinks for energy to train…
Us old bastards need this as a preworkout drink.

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I just saw this in the store. Hits right in the childhood.

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Holy shit!

Ive always hated the term Bulk… i prefer the notion of eating the amout one needs to support ones training and recovery. So you see progression in the gym.

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Well, who needs a liver? Besides the Liver King?

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Exactly!

THANK YOU!

Similarly, I’d say a PPL would serve you here.

BRB - headed to the store

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It’s basically just a push/pull variation with triceps and biceps switched for no real reason. I did a Modified Hatfield split for ages and it was one of my most productive training periods.

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100%. People do things backwards. They eat a surplus and then HOPE they can turn it into muscle with hard training. And just imagine if you spend all that time building up that surplus only for your schedule to explode and suddenly you don’t get to train? That’s just called “getting fat”, and we’re pretty damn good at that. But if you bust your butt with some intense hard training and build up an appetite from it, you’ll eat big and get big from it.

We’re all trying to hack and cheat our way to fitness, but the body is a reflection of our habits.

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Love this phrase.

I have this idea that the body adapts to hold on to what it spends. So protein storage (in the form of muscle) is driven by muscle-damaging activities, since it is our hardware and software as humans. Like how fat storage can be driven by excessive aerobic activity, skinny-fat means there’s no need for excess protein stores, but we need to get some fat reserves going since that’s what we spend.

So try to get “fat” on protein by creating the conditions that makes your body feel the need to store it.

Obviously that’s a half-formed idea, and the replacement macro-nutrients need to be available to utilize.

If you just overeat with calories in mind, we know what happens. If you’re an endurance hunter in the wild of wherever, you’re going to adapt.

Kind of a g-flux idea, I guess.

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