TEKST
Wat is de heilige graal op het gebied van training?
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I received a message on instagram the other day asking…
What is the ideal training split for building strength and size?
In the past, my go to training split was an upper-lower training split.
It looked like this:
Monday: Upper Body
Tuesday: Lower Body
Friday: Upper Body
Saturday: Lower Body
But over the last few years as my professional life has gotten busier…
My family has grown…
And my body has gotten older from close to 20 years of training like an athlete…
So my training has needed to change, too.
I’ve crafted a training split that’s worked better for me and the dozens of busy professionals we work with inside the Bach Performance Lean Executives Program.
It’s a push, pull, lower, and “vanity” split, or PPLV for short.
Push day focuses on your chest, shoulders, and triceps. Exercises like push ups, bench presses, flys, shoulder presses, dips, triceps extensions fit the bill.
Pull day focuses on your lats, traps, rhomboids, rear delts, and biceps. Exercises such as bent over rows (all rows, really), pull ups, shrugs, reverse flys, and curls.
Lower body day trains your glutes, hamstrings, quads, and unless you hate training them like I do, your calves. Exercises like squats, deadlifts, lunges, leg curls, leg extensions fit here.
Vanity day is for anything else you’d like to train. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to look great naked, so this is a flexible day to train whatever weak point you want to bring up whether its your shoulders, arms, abs, or glutes.
How often am I training?
Three to four times per week.
I alternate with at least a day off between training and due to my schedule and try to hit more workouts on weekends.
I get 10,000 steps per day and do walking meetings to save time. This is most of my cardio--and its plenty to keep you healthy, lean, and sane.
I also sprint once per week, because I don’t want to pull hamstring chasing my daughter around the yard.
Overall…
I’ve noticed better joint health. My knees and back didn’t enjoy heavy squatting and deadlift in my 30’s the way they did in my 20s.
I’ve had more energy.
Exercise can give you more energy, but only if you’re recovering from what you do in the gym.
When stress rises in all other areas of your life, you need to adapt your training and recovery to follow suit. Otherwise, you’re just working your ass off and running yourself into the ground.
And I’ve built some muscle.
Nutrition obviously plays a role, but your body only adapts (and grows) when you recover from what you’re doing.
And in most cases, this is what most guys are missing: recovery.
As your body and life change so should your training. This is a tough pill for many to swallow.
It leads them to train through pain rather than around it.
It leads others to grow frustrated and stop training altogether.
Niether is a good option, especially if you want to be strong, lean, and healthy.
A better option? Pivot your training.
If you want to try the PPLV training split for yourself, all you need to do is read this page and fill out the short form at the bottom.
We’ll take you from there.
Cheers,
Eric
P.S. This split works wonders for fat loss too. The only major difference in your “routine” when trying to get lean is what you’re putting into your body.
