Training Myths That Won’t Die #8: “The Best Bodypart Training Split”

Never in the history of social media did a single post about someone’s training split, or even a
conversation about how to train a bodypart go without at least one comment to the tune of “so,
what’s the best
best training split?” And that’s a perfectly
perfectly valid question to ask…
ask… of course if there was
such a thing, we’d want to know about it! Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a “best”
training split, even if you zoom in to a specific sport or outcome, like just bodybuilding, just
powerlifting, or just general fitness. In Point #1 below, I’ll discuss the many (though not all)
reasons why a “perfect” split for everyone doesn’t exist, but the good news comes in Point #2 in
which I’ll share some
some guidelines as to how to design
design the right split for you. If you follow them, you
won’t be guaranteed the the optimal split. But you will
will sure as hell have a split
split that does two things;
things;
works for you and doesn’t totally
totally suck by committing grandiose
grandiose errors in program design!
design!

1.) Reasons that there is no such thing as a “best split.”

a.) Number of training days

Some of the most effective training splits for hypertrophy, such as those pro bodybuilder Jared
Feather designs and runs, have you training 6 days a week and most of those are double split
sessions. Jesus, I don’t think most people have that possible answer in mind when they ask
“what’s the best split for hypertrophy” on an Instagram post! Because people can commit only so
much time to training and have some days in their schedules that simply don’t allow for training,
not everyone can do the 6 day double split. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t great ways of
arranging training to grow tons of muscle from anywhere between 3 and 6 days a week of
training, with of course quite a few changes to the arrangements of the programs depending on
how many sessions there are per week. Another very related concern to session number is session
position. You’re going to have a very big difference in splits between two individuals who can
both train 4x a week, but one of whom can pick any day they need for a session
session and the other of
which cannot train AT ALL every
every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

b.) Amount of time one can commit per session

Not only is there a big difference between planning a split for someone who can do two hours of
training each time for 4 days every week vs. 45 min each time, but there are asymmetrical
concerns as well. For example, two individuals may both be available for 4 hours of training per
week over 4 sessions,
sessions, but one might have
have two of those days limited
limited to 30 minutes each while the
the
other can do a whole hour each time. The kinds of splits best for all of these scenarios will be
vastly different based
based on the particulars of each scenario.
scenario.

c.) Muscle Growth Priorities

Some people want bigger upper bodies, some want bigger legs, some want bigger everything, and