The Best Training Split for Muscle Growth (Science-Based)

0:00 Every lifter swears their favorite training routine is the best. Pushpull legs, upper, lower, full body. But choosing the wrong one can actually slow down your progress for months. In this video, we'll look at what really separates these routines and which structure actually gives you the best shot at building muscle. To understand which routine is best, we first have to take it back to first principles. What is a routine fundamentally? Just like your day-to-day routine, a training routine is simply a way of distributing training volume and exercises over time.

0:32 As a result, training routines determine a few things: frequency per session volume, exercise order, and interaction effects, the feasibility of each workout, the inherent bias of certain routines, and finally, fun. We'll break down each of these six things to determine which of these three routines is optimal. To understand what routine is best, we also need to set certain standards. specifically that high volume training generally leads to the best hypertrophy. A met analysis by Palin and colleagues showed that performing 30 to 40 fractional weekly sets for a muscle maximizes hypertrophy. We'll be using that information to guide our analysis.

1:07 First, let's discuss optimal frequency for a given muscle group and ideal workout volume per muscle group. Let's start with upper lower. In an upper lower routine, you typically train each muscle group two to three times per week. If you're training four days a week, an upper lower routine has you training each muscle twice a week, six days a week, three times a week. You could certainly run an upper lower split five days a week and rotate upper, lower, upper, lower, upper, and then next week lower, upper, lower, upper, lower. Quick math, but that is more of a niche case. In order to reach 20 to 40 fractional weekly sets per muscle group, you'll be doing 7 to 20 fractional sets per muscle group per workout using an upper lower routine. In the case of push pull legs, nearly invariably, you'll be training each major muscle group twice a week. You could certainly do a push pull legs only 3, four, 5 days a week, but that isn't advisable. In a moment, we'll discuss whether or not that's optimal. A push pull legs routine is nearly always used in the context of training 6 days a week. You could certainly run a push pull legs routine with three, four, 5 days a week, but that's not really advisable. Let's stick with 6 days for this example. When using a push pull legs routine 6 days a week, you'll be training each muscle twice a week. As a result, to reach 20 to 40 fractional weekly sets, you'll need to do 10 to 20 fractional sets per muscle group per workout. And finally, let's talk about full body. A full body routine is by far the most flexible. As a result, any muscle group can be trained from anywhere from 2 to seven times a week.

2:30 Not every full body day needs to train every single muscle group, but that range gives us a total of 5 to 20 fractional sets per muscle group per workout. Now that we have these numbers in place, we can assess how effective these routines are. Some very new interesting research has been published in exercise science on exactly this topic. A meta analysis by Remington colleagues tried to determine how many sets should you be doing per workout per muscle group. Since we also know how much volume you should be doing per week, knowing how much volume you should be doing per session can help inform us as to what routine is best so that we can construct a program that is both effective on the weekly scale and on each session scale. In their analysis of several dozen studies, Remain colleagues found that more hypertrophy was seen going all the way up to 11 fractional sets per muscle group. Beyond 11 sets, however, there was less clarity as to whether going higher actually led to more hypertrophy. So, as rule of thumb, most workouts for a muscle shouldn't contain more than about 11 sets.

3:26 Additionally, returns were diminishing, meaning that for every additional set you performed in a given workout for a given muscle, a bit less hypertrophy was observed. In other words, going from doing five sets for a given muscle in a workout to six sets had less of an impact than going from four sets to five sets. With that information in mind, we can compare the numbers from this huge analysis to the numbers we came up with in the context of these routines to determine which routine is most optimal.

3:51 One thing is clear, every single routine can actually be misapplied. You see, whether you're looking at upper lower push pull legs or full body, you can go substantially over 10 fractional sets per workout and not even notice. At the same time, all three routines can work. In the context of an upper or lower routine, you could do between seven to 10 fractional sets per workout. With a push pull legs routine, you could do around 10ish fractional sets per workout as well. And for full body, you have even more flexibility. In general though, the full body routine and the upper lower routine have far better margins between the bottom boundary and 11 sets. For upper lower, anywhere between around 7 to 11 fractional sets per workout is fine. And for full body, you can do anything between 5 to 11 fractional sets and still reach an effective total weekly volume. In both those examples, you would achieve a solid per walkout volume without running into excessively diminishing returns and achieve a solid weekly volume for each muscle group.

4:46 When it comes to volume, however, I want to give a quick caveat. You see, while it's probably worth doing 20 to 40 fractional weekly sets for most muscles, your own volumes can differ based on your priorities. If, for example, you're specializing on chest and triceps, you probably want to distribute that volume for chest and triceps across more days. After all, you're probably pushing for closer to 40 fractional weekly sets for those muscles. And therefore, based on results by Remington colleagues, you'll likely want to distribute that over closer to 3 to four weekly sessions. On the flip side, if you're following a lower volume routine, for example, doing 10 fraction weekly sets per muscle, you can likely get away with just one or two sessions per week. But so far, upper, lower, and full body offer the most flexibility. Next, let's discuss exercise order and interaction effects.

5:31 And this is where a routine like pushpull legs does slightly lag behind. You see, in a push day, for example, you start with a chest compound movement or two, and then you move on to maybe an overhead press. And so if you're then including a tricep isolation movement in order to achieve a weekly volume that is sufficient to maximize hypertrophy, you're oftentimes running into pretty severely diminishing returns for your triceps because you've already accumulated many of the better bang forbuck sets across that workout. And so the interaction effects of several exercises in a row for a pushpull leg split often times ends up being slightly worse than for an upper lower routine or a full body routine. But when it comes to exercise order, there is another consideration. A recent meta analysis suggests that exercise order doesn't really influence hypertrophy too much.

6:14 However, when it comes to strength, it is likely that sequencing your exercises in such a fashion as maximizes the weight used on each one is beneficial. Generally, when it comes to maximum strength, lifting heavier is a good thing. This was clear, for instance, in a meta analysis by Swinton and colleagues where intensity and strength gains display a clear positive relationship. In the case of routines, what this suggests is that full body is likely superior to upper lower, which is likely superior to push pull legs for strength. And that's because if you're doing a push pull legs routine, for example, on a push day, you might be pretty strong on your first movement, but the second movement will be negatively impacted by the fatigue of the first since the same musculature will be being used for many of the exercises. Compare that to a full body routine where you can move from a lower body movement to an upper body movement and a pull movement to a push movement, for example. the amount of load you'll be able to use in each movement will be higher as a result of local fatigue being lower. To summarize, since a pushpull legs routine quickly pushes you into lower efficiency sets, whereas upper lower and full body don't do so as much, those routines come out ahead bit here. And when it comes to hybrid goals, full body and upper lower also come out ahead due to allowing you to use heavier loads usually. And when it comes to hybrid goals like building size and strength at the same time, full body routines also come out ahead due to having lower local muscular fatigue, allowing you to use higher weights during training. And that logic when it comes to routines is exactly how my training app, Myod, works. My is the app I co-ounded to help you apply the science from this channel. It builds evidence-based routines around progressive overload and smart exercise selection. It lets you emphasize the muscles you care about, and it tracks your progress automatically. You can train anywhere at home or in a gym in as little as 15 minutes and switch between gyms seamlessly. Head to myapp.com and use code wolf for a free twoe trial. If you prefer to walk with me directly, you can also apply for one-on-one coaching while I work with you to optimize your training, nutrition, and recovery. Big thank you as always to Rascal Apparel for supporting the channel. You can use code wolf for 10% off their training gear at rascal apparel.com. Next, let's discuss the feasibility of each workout within the routine. Feasibility matters.

8:17 For argument's sake, if one day within the routine is so challenging that you really dread it and you find it difficult to give it your full effort, the quality of each set and therefore the hypertrophy you observe gets compromised. The upper low routine balances difficulty and feasibility relatively well. For men especially, upper body days tend to have slightly more exercises since there are more individual muscle groups to target. This makes upper body days difficult but feasible. Leg days, on the other hand, can be relatively challenging, especially in the context of a 4 day a week setup since you're trying to get in 20 to 40 fractional weekly sets in only two sessions for your legs. That'll often mean using plenty of compound movements. If you're training 6 days a week with an upper lower routine, the difficulty of each leg day does improve substantially. So, the upper lower split does reasonably well on this one. On the flip side, pushpull legs, the slightly worse than upper lower since even if you're training six days a week, you're forced to only have two leg days. And if you're training fewer than six days a week, it gets even worse. On the flip side though, push pull legs routines tend to display some asymmetry in difficulty of workouts. Push and pull workouts tend to be pretty easy by comparison to leg days. After all, a pushpull legs routine on the push and pull day effectively divide half of your body in more halves. Meaning you train around 25% of your total musculature in a way on push and pull days versus 50% on leg days. And the leg days tend to be quite challenging. And so the pushpull legs routine again scores lowest on this criteria. On the flip side though, full body routines tend to rank the best in terms of feasibility. And that's simply because they're a blank slate. A given day within a full body routine is as hard or difficult as you wish to make it because you're effectively free to train any muscle on any given day. You're free to remove or add exercises as you wish.

9:57 you can preserve the integrity or the concept of the routine of training muscle groups pretty often and being flexible while tweaking the difficulty of individual days pretty effortlessly. And so full body ranks best in terms of feasibility. The feasibility benefits of a full body routine can be especially beneficial for someone who has higher stress days and lower stress days where you might not feel quite as motivated or energetic on certain days. You can simply tweak that session to be a bit easier. Next, let's talk about the inherent bias of certain routines because different routines actually bias certain areas of your physique. By definition, upper lower routines do a pretty good job of training all parts of your body evenly. After all, you're allocating 50% of your training days to your upper half, aka 50% of your body, and the remaining days to your lower half. As a result, an upper low routine can be a great choice for someone who's simply looking for an even physique development. Solid growth in their legs and solid growth in their upper body.

10:48 Moving on to the pushpull legs routine. This one does have a slight bias towards the upper body. After all, you're spending 2/3 of your days on your upper body, aka half your body, and only one/ird of your days on your legs. As a result, the push pull legs routine is best suited to someone who's trying to bias their upper body. For example, if your legs are already a strong point, or if you simply don't want to spend as much time training legs, which let's be honest, most of us don't. The full body routine resembles the upper body routine in terms of bias in the sense that you can train anything on any day. And so, by definition, there is no bias.

11:19 However, it is different in a sense that is a blank slate, meaning you can make this routine emphasize anything within your physique. If you want to bring up your arms, you can do that. In general, in terms of bias, pushpull legs might be best if you're intending on specializing on upper body anyways. But full body might be even better in this regard. That's because a pushpull legs routine limits your weekly frequency for a given muscle group to only twice a week. And as we reviewed earlier, you're better off distributing high volumes for a given muscle group across more workouts.

11:48 But let's discuss something a bit more abstract, and that's do training routines even make sense? And the answer is no, not really. Because you're likely better off thinking, how should I distribute volume for each muscle across the week? And what does each individual day structure look like as a result? Because ultimately what you're trying to achieve with a training routine is making each day feasible, having a sufficient weekly volume, and training each muscle with the optimal per session volume. Maximizing area under the curve for hypertrophy based on the per session volume analysis we have. Before we get into specific recommendations, let's briefly talk about fun within your routine. Because most people are following a routine because they enjoy it. And when it comes to fun, the world is kind of your oyster. As long as you're considering the science and you're making an informed trade-off, experimenting with routines is perfectly valid. In fact, I would hypothesize that most people who are following a push pull legs routine are doing so in part because they enjoy it more. They enjoy the pump in their pecs from a push session. They enjoy getting a nasty back pump and they even enjoy the leg day as hard as it is. And there's not really a need to stick to one specific routine for the rest of your life. You can absolutely experiment as long as you're with the trade-offs in terms of effectiveness. Based on this breakdown so far, you can probably guess what the best routine is for hypertrophy. But let me give my recommendations for different use cases. First, if you're training with more low to moderate volumes, routines like a push pull legs routine or an upper lower routine work very well. And that's because you wouldn't really be going much past 10 fractional sets per muscle group per session anyways. So, if you're only performing, say 5 to 15 or 20 fractional sets per muscle per week, these routines work just fine. However, if you're training with higher volumes, say closer to 20, 30, or 40 fractional weekly sets per muscle, whether because you're specializing on a given muscle group, or whether you're just training with a high volume approach overall, your best bet is likely a full body routine. To be clear, a full body routine does not mean you need to train every single muscle group every single day of the routine.

13:44 Instead, it gives you a blank slate to tweak the difficulty of each session to distribute volume for the muscle groups you care about the most the most effectively. Because if you're doing, for example, 30 sets of chest training per week, you're likely better off distributing that over three to six sessions per week rather than trying to cram it all into one or two upper or push sessions per week. And that's because you get diminishing returns on going past say 10 sets for a single muscle in a single session. So, when specializing or when training with high volumes, I would honestly recommend a full body routine. However, if you can find a compromise with per session volume and your weekly volume is appropriate with a different routine, by all means, go for it. Or if you're willing to make a compromise to your overall hypertrophy in exchange for having more fun in your routine, that is perfectly valid as well. On principle though, full body routines tend to be best. Upper lower tends to be a good alternative and push pull leg routines can work. They're just a bit more limited. Thank you for watching and I'll see you in that next one. Peace.