Many bodybuilders don't really understand the reason why training is divided into splits where you train bodyparts on different days. They care about which bodypart they should train with which bodypart, when that is a secondary consideration. The reason why you split your training is because the body can only handle a certain amount of training stress in one day, so depending on the number of exercises you do for your entire body, you must split them into different training days. Which bodypart should be trained with each bodypart is another and less important consideration. As a general rule, most Humans can only perform 4 to 6 different exercises during a training session before the sympathetic nervous system starts to release noradrenaline - a sign of stress - and your adrenals start to pump out large amounts of cortisol to mobilize sugar and glucocorticoids to control the inflammation incurred from all the muscle damage. This is bad for recovery and for the general health of the nervous system.
You need only between 12 to 16 different exercises to develop the muscles of your entire body. This means that you should split your training between 2 to 3 different training sessions. A 4 split is completely unnecessary except for the very advanced bodybuilder who competes and needs to do a lot of very specific exercises to bring up lagging bodyparts. Even for the advanced boybuilder, a 3 split is more than enough to train the whole body.
As for which bodypart to train with which, a beggining bodybuilder should train his whole body per session for a total of 6 basic exercises for the first month. This is to create neuromuscular connections and get accustomed to lifting. After that first month, he should switch to a two training split, training his upper body in one session and lower body in another. The intermediary should do a 3 training split. Unlike what some say, he shouldn't train triceps, back and shoulders in one of the upper body sessions and pecs and biceps in another. This is irrational. He should split his upper body into pushing movements and pulling movements, since mixing pulling and pushing exercises in the same training session means that you will always be weak for the next session a couple days latter since you will be using both pushing and pulling movements in the same session. So pulling one session and pushing in another. This means pecs, shoulders and triceps in one of the upper body sessions, and back and biceps in the other. The very advanced bodybuilder should further split to a session for the back alone and divide legs into two training session with quads and calves being trained in one training session and hamstrings can be trained with biceps since biceps cannot be trained with the pushing upper body exercise., since this is a huge bodypart and bringing all the detail in this muscle complex needs 6 exercises or so. Developing back thickness only requires about 3 exercises(deadlift, barbell row and pulldowns) so it can be done inside a 3 split with biceps.
Fresh Bodybuilder(first month of training):
- Train whole body for 6 basic exercises per session two times a week. No split.
Begginer(first year)
- Split training into one for the upper body and one for the lower body 6 exercises each.
Intermediary(1-8 years of training)
- 3 split:
Session 1: Legs
Session 2: Pecs, triceps and shoulders
Session 3: Back and biceps
Advanced competitive bodybuilder:
- 4 split
Session 1: Quads and calves
Session 2: Hamstrings and biceps
Session 3: Back
Session 4: Pecs, shoulders and triceps
SUCKMYMUSCLE
