Body part-focused regimens, due to their inefficiency are quickly becoming a thing in the past. Dividing your workouts into chest days, shoulder days, and so on presents a host of problems and could actually be holding back muscle growth rather than promoting it. Our answer: Switch to a classic push-pull split to simplify your training and see faster gains in a month.
Dividing your body into different parts doesn’t take into account how it actually moves, and which muscles are involved in each movement. You may intend to work only chest one day, but any presses or flyes you do will inevitably work your shoulders as well. If you follow that with an all-shoulder workout within a couple of days, don’t expect your delts (and shoulder joints) to be ready for the effort; and if you work triceps a day or so after that, you risk overtraining them as well, since they also assist in most chest and shoulder exercises.
In contrast, you could organize your workout according to pushing and pulling movements, so your chest, shoulders, thighs, and tri’s get hit on the push day, and your back, hamstrings, biceps, and rear delts get worked on the pull days. Then you can repeat both workouts once more in the same week, doubling the frequency with which each muscle gets trained without impacting its recovery. Plus, by working your muscles from head to toe each session, you’ll burn more calories and release more muscle-building hormones than you would hitting one area at a time.
Directions
Perform each workout (Day 1, 2, 3, and 4) once per week. Exercises marked A and B are alternated, so you’ll do one set of A, rest as needed, then B, and repeat until all sets are completed for the pair. Perform the remaining exercises as straight sets.
