Hello, friends! Can someone tell me why I am currently looking at back to school stuff in the stores? In seriousness, where did the summer go? I feel like our family has been booked solid and yet, it feels like we haven’t done anything. Busy seasons of life can feel that way and it can make it tough to figure out how to manage workouts. So today, I thought I’d break down some of my favorite strength training splits for busy people.
A bit ago when I talked about Exercise Hierarchy, I talked about how time is a commodity that many of us feel we don’t have enough of. And that the lack of time needs to be appreciated when we are talking about planning workouts. I am also not of the “we all have the same 24 hours in a day,” school, but priorities and time management are also important.
As a trainer, when I’m working with clients they are often surprised by some of my assessment day questions. Sure, I ask the usual medical history questions (tangent: if your trainer isn’t asking those questions, find a new trainer). But I also ask a lot of questions about how much time they reasonably have to give to exercise. I do that for very specific reasons.
Most trainers work from the goal down. Meaning that the end goal gets the biggest weight during the decision making process in terms of programming. It’s a straight line proposition. To get to end point C, you start at A and go through B.
But the time commitment doesn’t work for everyone and most goals can be attained through different methods. So, I like to work from a time down approach. It isn’t always a as straight a line, but if I can make exercise more easily achievable on a consistent week to week basis, then I am more likely to get my clients to their goals. Here are a few splits that I tend to use for people in busy seasons of life and their relative pros and cons in case you are looking to revamp your own training.
Three Days Per Week
I am not entirely sure why this is the case, but most of the individuals I have encountered joining a gym make a commitment to three days per week. I think because it maximizes the number of sessions during a standard work week without being overwhelming. There are two ways you can make this split work and to know which is right for you, you’ll need to refer back to your end goal.
If your end goal is increases in muscular endurance, functional capacity, weight loss or small increases in total strength, then three full body sessions is the way to go. It’s an easy way to get your whole body moving and to not have to keep track of which muscle groups you’ve already worked that week. Just do a bit of everything each time. You can even make it easier and do the same exercises for a month or so before switching them up. That repetitiveness can make this split monotonous, though, and you need to allow 48 hours rest between sessions. Sessions also tend to be longer as you are doing 8-10 exercises.
If your end goal is bigger increases in strength or hypertrophy, you are going to split your body into three parts (upper push, upper pull and core, and lower) and hit each section once per week. These are functional strength units of the body, so it’s still a very efficient way to train allowing you to hit one section heavy and then recover fully. This method does require a bit more tracking in terms of what has been trained already, but you can train on back to back days if needed. Individual sessions tend to be a bit shorter. You’ll only be hitting muscle groups once per week, though, so if you aren’t a fan of higher intensity lifting you might end up shorting the overload necessary to reach your goal.
Four Days Per Week
I know what you are thinking. I said this was about splits for busy people. It is, I promise, just hear me out. The total time per session here is shorter regardless of which of the methods I am about to describe, so if you find you have a small (think 30 minutes) pocket of time more frequently throughout the week, one of these might fit for you.
Option one here is to do a pretty straightforward upper/lower split and repeat it. Meaning you’d lift upper twice and lower twice each week alternating between them. If you are looking for those increased functional capacity or weight loss goals, this is a winner. And, if you are worried about getting to a gym that many days, you don’t have to. Make one upper and one lower workout one at home with body weight or resistance band exercises. You’re body will get equal overload, but as before you will need to make sure that either volume (sets and reps) or intensity (on the gym days) is high enough to push changes.
The other option is to further split your body up. The most common is chest and triceps, back and biceps, shoulders and core, and legs. Again, this keeps the functional working units together which creates a pretty efficient workout, but same concerns about intensity being high enough here. This method is definitely suited to wanting larger gains in total strength and very well suited to hypertrophy. Focusing in on each muscle group and allowing a long recover period primes the muscle for building.
With all of this being said, I want to acknowledge that if you are brand new to strength training, you will definitely see adaptations with a two day per week full body schedule. Although in full transparency, that will last about 12-20 weeks depending upon your individual genetics and where you are starting from before you’ll need to bump something.
If you’d be interested in post dedicated to how I would program specific exercises with these splits, let me know in the comments. Until next time, be well friends.
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