How should workouts be split between upper body and lower body?

Question

Gina Grain · Answer

Hey Glenda. So the first of all, you don't necessarily have to split your workout between upper body and lower body. You know, if you're working out two to three times a week, those two to three times per week, could be a combined, like an overall body workout, upper body and lower body and core. However, if you are trying to increase muscle mass, you would be looking at doing more of a split routine like that between upper body and lower body and that way you can work out, you know, five to six days per week. So Monday doing upper body, perhaps chest, and back will be a good combo and maybe Tuesday will be lower body and core Wednesday buys and tries. And then you can rotate through that for the next three days. So it's by splitting upper body and lower body. You can actually, if you upper body, you can you can get more exercise. You can you can stack more exercises in the workout for, for muscle mass gain. Whereas if you do a full over ball over, Whole body workout. You have less exercises per body part, right? For example, if you do a full body workout, you might have one or two chest exercises, but if you didn't do it upper body, lower body split. You could do like four chest exercises in in a, in a workout. So I hope that helps. If you have any more questions, just ask me a question.

Matthew Pendola · Answer

So here's some thoughts on how you can split up your strength training during the week. Of course, you want to consider what your goals are. Why are you strength training in the first place? But we also really look at what kind of time. Do you have to commit to this? What kind of energy do you have? So you can remain consistent with the program you do set up. All right, so that's important to consider. So that being said, most of us, we're going to be better off. Probably committing to two to three days. Week for some of us in the preseason or offseason, you can get in maybe more frequently than that. But we'll stick with in general two to three days. And I would give a lot of frequency to muscle groups so that you can get the adaption you're looking for but that can be done with the proper split. So, for example, on a Tuesday, you might do an upper pole with a lower push and then on a Thursday You would do an upper push with a lower pull then say, on Saturday, you can do more total body Dynamics, where you're really working more on speed and power. But I always like on that third day to finish up with accessory movements for the posterior chain, okay? So that might be something like face pull. Aparts glute-ham, raises things like this because I do believe getting in more pull. Work is beneficial. Especially most of us need that posterior chain work. So two parts, pull to One Part push. I think is a good overall rule to consider when we're doing our splits. Now from there, you can really look at just the stimulation for adoption. You know, what is it that you've already adapted? To what do we need to maybe change up? And so looking at when we need to change some of those exercises so we can make more Or progress has also important anyways. I think that that is giving some at least ideas on what we can do for adaption for each each athlete needs purpose. I hope that helps you

Paul Edmondson · Answer

Morning, Glenn s. Thank you for the awesome question. My thoughts are on this. Is it depends. That's going to sound like a cop out, right? But hear me out if you're working with a client or athlete that wants to get better at life or sport performance. Then chances are outside the four walls of a gym, they're doing whatever they want to do as a whole body system. So to train their whole body is going to have much better transfer into whatever it is, they need to do better. So to divide the body up into parts and split routines is probably going to detract from performance for that person. Maybe that's my opinion on the flip side of that, if Client is after Jim strength or muscular hypertrophy, then there may be an argument to divide their body up into split routines and train them. That way, that way of training has been validated in literature for 50 plus years and you know, if it's not broke, don't fix it. However, In recent years Brad schoenfeld is conducted various studies where by he's taken beginner trainers and advanced hypertrophy users for weeks of programming. Half the group were given split routines, half the group were given whole body programs and even the high-end experience hypertrophy users yielded better more increases in protein synthesis in the whole body training group. This is the split routine group, so split routines. Maybe not necessary. It depends on who the person is, what they need, what they want. But I think ultimately we have to also take the clients once into consideration and how do they want to train? What do they enjoy as well? Because both whole body and split routines are going to yield benefit and you results. I think there's a lot that comes into that equation into that. X that needs to be considered and there's a few things that I've posed there. Hope that helps catch you soon.

Tim Crowley · Answer

How should workouts be split between upper and lower body? Well, let's just say you're going to do four days a week. You're going to do two upper body, two lower body. It might be like Monday upper body, Tuesday lower body, Wednesday rest day, and then Thursday upper, Friday lower. This gives you a lot of flexibility in your training week because say you miss a Tuesday lower body, that could be switched to a Wednesday. Or if you miss Thursday, we could go Friday upper body, Saturday lower body. It gives you a lot of flexibility in there based on your work and life schedule. The way it also would do it if you're an endurance athlete, say you're a runner and you do your long run on a Sunday, then I would make sure that the upper body day was on Monday and then lower body on Tuesday. You want to rearrange those. If you're doing quality workouts and you're a running type athlete, court athlete, soccer player, endurance athlete, triathlete, then make sure your lower body days coincide with days that you might not be doing a hard quality. So you have a lot of room for flexibility and move those around, but feel free to experiment with different formats until you hit on some that really works well for you.

Chris Gorres · Answer

Hey, Glenn, is this is a great question about, how workout should be split between upper body and lower body on? This really depends on the type of goal that you have. If you have a functional training goal a weight-loss goal or performance goal, it's probably not best to split into upper and lower body splits. You're probably going to do some sort of combination of upper lower push, lower or upper, pull whatever it is. But you know for me especially on let's say a three day program. If you're doing a three-day program, I Do light medium and heavy and I'm hitting every part of the body that day, all of my movements push-pull hip hinge and squat. Now, if you're in a rehab phase or a hypertrophy phase and that would be probably more appropriate to do Upper and Lower Split. Or if you're doing four days a week, you can go up or lower rest upper lower. But that would probably be the only time that I would recommend upper lower splits. If you know that you're going to be consistent. Ain't coming four days a week and you want to work on hypertrophy or if you've know that you want to work on rehabbing a particular body part or rehabbing the injury, then then I will do the upper lower split.

Jess Racz · Answer

So my answer is going to be. It depends on your goals, it always, it depends and workouts what to do for workouts rep sets scheme? Splits, it all is contextual. So contextual in terms of what is your specific goal? What's your purpose? But then, what are you trying to get better at? So usually with my athletes, I usually do three times a week of working out. If I do have a fourth day where I'm seeing them, it's more of a recovery core Mobility. Things like that. May be hitting a 20 to 30 minute bike. I'll just The blood flowing but it's three days high-intensity lifting or I add Plyometrics and change of Direction work and stuff like that which is not applicable to this question. But basically it's a full upper body and lower body together. So I combine both three days a week. We're hitting every muscle at least once if not twice during those three workouts and then just including every sort of plane so I'm wanting an upper body push. I'm wanting an upper body pool. I'm sorry a We'll push vertical pool, I'm running a horizontal push horizontal pool. I'm going to want to hit hamstrings, adductors calves. Some I do a lot of foot foot, strengthening quads core everything. So we hit everything at least once or twice three times a week. Now, if you're wanting to work out and live five times a week, you can go upper body lower body split so you can hit upper body on Monday. Lower body Tuesday, upper body on Wednesday, lower body on Thursday. All the way through Etc. Take your two, rest days in between whatever day that works for you.

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"How should workouts be split between upper body and lower body?"