A training split is how you break up your training over the week.
How many times are you training a movement pattern?
How much volume are you doing on that movement pattern each time?
How much recovery are you getting between training exposures?
This is really important stuff when it comes to delivering results and making a program fit a busy client who really needs quick and efficient results.
So let me take you through what I know is the BEST training split for everyday athletes, which I use to great effect every day I coach.
The Everyday Athlete The everyday athlete is a person who want to test themselves physical and achieve performance based goals, but is doing so alongside a busy life that puts significant external stressors on them in addition to their training. This means they often need:
Shorter but equally as effective workouts
Flexibility around changing life demands
High attention to maintaining energy and promoting recovery
Significant intensity to reach their desired athletic ability
Balance between training, work, life and relationships
When you look at this from the coaching perspective, it becomes clear that the priorities are
An effective stimulus
An efficient format
Flexibility to allow the athlete to make it fit
Robustness to ensure that flexibility doesn't hinder the progress
And these are the reasons why I have a favourite training split for my everyday athletes... The BEST Training Split For Everyday Athletes In my opinion (based of working with hundred of everyday athletes over the last 15 years), is that 3x per week full body is the best lifting split for everyday athletes. (I specify lifting split as it easily allows the athlete to work conditioning work in around it as well, which can often be easier to sneak in without the need for additional travel to the gym and specialist equipment). And the 3x per week full body split will often look like: Monday: Lift Tuesday: Rest/Conditioning Wednesday: Lift Thursday: Rest Friday: Lift Saturday: Rest/Conditioning Sunday: Rest Why 3x Per Week Full Body? I love 3 times per week full body for a few reasons. Firstly, it's enough training, but not crazy amounts. It potentially includes more rest days per week than lifting days, which most people will find manageable even around a highly stressful/demanding work/life schedule. But it still guarantees that you're giving your body reasons to adapt pretty much every other day. Because of those rest days, you can also train all the major movement patterns each session, knowing that you'll have a days recovery before you go again. Which then guarantees that if life goes to pot and you HAVE to miss a session (it happens, to everyone, quite often), it's not a HUGE deal as you'll be back in the gym 24/48 hours later hitting all the major movement patterns again, rather than having to wait 7-14 days before you complete a full body part split cycle. This gives the everyday athlete both the flexibility that they need to train around a demanding work and life schedule, but also the robustness in their programming that guarantees progress even when they need to make the most of that flexibility. A Working Example Look at it this way, say you do a 3 day per week Push/Pull/Legs (PPL) split, with Monday being push, Wednesday being pull and Friday being Legs. Volume is equal to the full body split, but just separated out into specific days. And boom, your Monday goes south and you can't make it to the gym, and you're down to 2 sessions this week. That means you won't be doing any pushing work for 14 days between Mondays on the PPL split. On the full body split it would be Friday - Wednesday... 5 days. That's a whole lot more flexible, and a whole lot more robust as a training program. What About Intensity? The perceived downside of a full body split is the need to drop the intensity slightly on each movement pattern. Because you train each pattern 3x per week, you can't do them all at 100% intensity. The recovery cycle is too short. If you trained each pattern once per week as in PPL you could go 100% as you have 7 days to recover and train different patterns in between. But think back to the everyday athlete. They have other stuff to do. Other important things to spend their energy on. So training slightly sub maximally on parts of their session, to accumulated their volume over a higher frequency actually works really well. It means they can leave most sessions with a little left in the tank, or with one movement pattern prioritised but not destroyed. This can keep their whole body feeling better throughout a week, and their energy levels much more consistent for use on the other areas of their life. And never forget, within 3x per week full body you still have LOADS of wiggle room to play with volume, intensity, and frequency of intensity to make sure you push an athlete forwards, while doing so within their external time, energy and recovery limitations. Don't be fooled into thinking it's easy and low volume/frequency. Done expertly, it will be much more productive and challenging than a poorly chosen 3/4/5/6 day bodypart split. So if you're an everyday athlete and your training hasn't progressed, and you're feeling drained, sore, stagnant, and you're NOT doing 3x per week full body... get on it. For me, it's the BEST training split out there for everyday athletes. Thanks, Ian.