Choosing The Most Productive Training Split

When programming both for clients and for myself, one of the most important factors I account for is frequency. For the average person (those of you with job, family commitments etc.), the single muscle group bodybuilding style splits will often not be productive long term due to the lack of frequency at which each muscle group can be trained.

For example, while a chest/back/legs split may seem logical for someone training 3 times per week, the reality is that those individual muscle groups will now only be stimulated once every 7 days. While you mat experience mode are success initially, these muscle groups will eventually require more frequent stimulus in order to force further adaptation.

Below I've mapped out guidelines for 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 day training splits, which will allow you to hit all muscle groups at least twice per week.

* 2 Days Per Week - Full Body / Full Body

* 3 Days Per Week - Full Body / Full Body / Full Body

* 4 Days Per Week - Upper A / Lower A / Upper B / Lower B

* 5 Days Per Week - Upper Push / Upper Pull / Lower A / Full Upper / Lower B

* 6 Days Per Week - Upper Push A / Upper Pull A / Lower A / Upper Push B / Upper Pull B / Lower B

The split recommendations are based on both personal experience and experience with both fat loss and hypertrophy goal driven clients. This was even those of you very stretched for time will be able to train all muscle groups at least twice per week, which would be my minimum recommendation for anyone looking to change (not just maintain) their physique.

The only time when I'd look to potentially deviate from one of these splits would be if someone were to have either a very lagging body part, or a very dominant body part. For example if the trainee had naturally huge, strong legs and a very lagging upper body, I would likely program them in for just one leg session per week regardless of their weekly training frequency.