About Brian Expertise I can help set up a weightlifting program, give suggestions on specific exercises and how to deal with injuries. We can discuss your goals and effective ways to work towards them. I compete at powerlifting, and have been weightlifting for over 15 years.
Experience 15 years weightlifting experience, including competitive powerlifting.
Question With regards to split systems, since there are so many different splits out there, do you know which sort of system has traditionally proven to be the most effective in terms of helping to look like a bodybuilder? I'm looking at doing either a 3 days per week split routine or 4 days per week split. I used to do the typical push/pull split where on Mon. you work Chest, Shoulders, Triceps. Then Wed. you work legs. Then Fri. Back & Biceps. I've also heard of the ever so popular upper body/lower body split, where you do upper body 2 times a week and lower body 2 times a week. It seems to me though with that program, you have a lot, lot more to do for upper body than lower body days. With all these programs, is doing 2 exercises for each bodypart better than doing 3 exercises? What about sets and reps? Also, I recently heard that for hardgainers or ectomorphs, working a musclegroup 2 times a week is most effective. It seems to me though, that if you are training really hard, training a musclegroup once a week would be most effective for gains, and to prevent overtraining. Where do yo stand on all of this? Thanks a lot.
Answer My very strong opinion on this is you are better off working each muscle group once per week, on a dedicated day for that muscle group. I think this is the only way to balance out the various things you're talking about (getting the maximum sets per muscle group w/out overtraining).
Here is an example (which is the program I follow):
Mon - chest
Tue - back
Wed - legs
Thu - shoulders
Fri - biceps & triceps
Each day I do 4 different exercises for the targeted muscle group, for 4-6 sets of around 8 reps. On Friday, I superset biceps & triceps (e.g., one set of preacher curls + one set of tricep press = 1 superset. So, I do 4-6 of these "supersets" and then move on to the next pair of exercises).
The real benefit of this approach is that you are giving each muscle group intense attention in it's workout--20-24 sets!
