I don’t think the ages of bro splits or full body workouts will ever end, and I don’t think they should either. They serve a great purpose for new trainers and those who are happy to just come to the gym and train to feel healthier and fitter.
I think it's fair to say the most popular programs are full body, push pull legs, lower upper and the bro split – chest and arms, back and shoulders, legs. For good reason as well, I have nothing against them. They are tested in time and you can gain a good amount of muscle from them. I have even gone back to many of these programs in pursuit of more muscle. It’s good to go back to basics every now and then, and I do think a lot of people forget that its relatively simple to build muscle or lose fat. We just like to complicate things.
Many people though, are probably not like me and you. That’s why you are reading this article. You want to create a program to suit your goals and stand out from the crowd. You want to develop your weaknesses and create a physique that you are proud of and other people notice. If you train the same way as everyone else, do you really expect to look any different from them? I didn’t think so, at least that’s the way I always viewed it.
So how do you go about creating your own program?
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Pick a goal that you can reach and know is attainable, yet still requires hard work.
The goal needs to be realistic and exact. Saying I want to lose some fat or I want to build some muscle isn’t exact at all. Instead, say how much you want to lose/build. Then say a timeframe in which you would like to achieve it. Then assess if its realistic. For example, saying you want to lose a stone of fat in a month isn’t realistic at all. A healthy weight loss of a stone (14lbs) is around 2lbs a week. So that’s at least 7 weeks.
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Choose exercises that you can connect with and that match your goals
Each exercise should have a desired outcome. Are you hack squatting to develop your glutes and hamstrings more, or your quads? Foot placement will have a big outcome in this. How many reps and sets are you doing? What tempo are your reps? Also don’t do an exercise because your favourite influencer does them if you can’t feel the exercise working yourself, that’s stupid. Connect with your movements.
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Choose one goal – fat loss, strength or hypertrophy
Nothing slows progress down more than trying to chase more than one goal at a time. Often your timeline just gets extended and you achieve nothing or mediocre results on everything. Pick one goal, chase it relentlessly, achieve it and move onto the next.
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Alter your volume, frequency and intensity. Ramp one up and lower the other so you can recover optimally
Volume, frequency and intensity are the main variables you need to alter in your training. For clarity, volume is your total workload per day, week and even month. Frequency is the amount of training you do, and intensity is how hard the set or training session was. You can’t go balls to the wall with all 3 otherwise you will burn out, so choose 2 and increase them and reduce the 3rd.
For example, I really enjoy hitting my muscles frequently and intensely, to the point where nearly all of my sets are to failure. As the frequency and intensity are so high, the volume of my sessions are pretty low. I only ever hit 2 working sets for each exercise and my exercise selection is quite low too. I recover well and I continuously make progress, so it works for me. You might be different.
I suggest that you stop following the crowd and start writing down what you really want to achieve in the gym. The future you will thank you for it.
