Hey T People,
I took a second job and my Workout time hass to suffer. I can train sun/mon/wed/fri but recovery and fatigue are taking a toll so I want to float an off day.
This is what my workouts look like:
Chest/calfs
Back/traps
shoulders/tris
Legs/bi’s
If i skip a day, sunday most likely than, and then start on monday, I will not work that bodypart again till next wednestday (8days). The problem is whatever I do on Friday wont be trained again until the following Friday.
I could always go to a 3 day split of:
chest/tris
Back/bis
shoulders/legs
This is a much tougher split for me so I have been trying to avoid it.
What do you guys think?
I think your new split is better than the old one anyway. Chest and calves isn’t all that much to do in one workout, unless you either workout for 15 mins or do way too many isolation movements.
Throw out any useless isolation movements and you’ll be fine.
It could work, depending on a few things. If you really blast the muscle groups, it could take them 8 days to recover. First, how long have you been training? Ian King did an article about this, the point of which was the longer you’ve been training, the better your body is at utilizing all its muscle fiber. So a novice lifter may use, say 50% of his capacity, but an advanced lifter could be using 85%. The more you utilize your full capacity, the longer you need to recover. I think Dave Tate wrote about this, too. I’ve also found that as my training age advanced, I benefited more from a longer split, and I could really blast the muscles in my workout, yet still feel recovered when I returned to the gym. With a shorter split, my recovery wasn’t very good, and I wound up regressing.
I have been lifting on and off for years but had a long lay off and Im 2 months back now.
I agree though with my fatigue factor and 2 jobs that the latter may be the way to go.
The reason I split calfs is because shoulders and legs is a very tough lift for me. I dont know how people do it.
Unless someone knows a routine for this that Im missing??
I agree with some of the other comments here. You really have to blast a muscle group to need eight days of recovery. When I did EDT or GVT, I found that 6-7 days between each muscle group was ideal. Thus, the more volume you use and the more intensity you use, the more time that you need off. Try ramping up each workout.
Mike Mahler
We’re publishing a great article by Thibaudeau on this very topic Friday. Stay tuned.
Excellent, thanks everyone.
a good three day split is: day 1 deadlifts, traps, back, biceps; day 2 chest, delts, triceps; day 3 squats, calves, hamstrings. put in days off according to your soreness levels. laters pk