Need Help with My Workout Split

Bigger Stronger Leaner
1

Hello! so currently I am starting my bulking phase, I’m like 2 weeks in and things are going well.
My workout split currently is Legs - Chest/tris - Back/bi’s - Shoulders, repeat.
The problem I am having is that my lower back is shot. I get enough sleep, and I eat enough (following my macros to a tee usually).

I use shoulders as my off day where I don’t really go hardcore in the gym, still train shoulders hard, but its obviously not as intense as a leg workout. Anyway my workouts start with the big three, Legs start with 6 sets of squats 2-6 reps, then after those I change my sets to 4-5 and and reps of 8-12. I’ve had people tell me that I’m overtraining but I feel great, the only problem is is that my lower back is having a hard time squatting/deadlifting heavy every other day to the point where I tried to squat and my lower back couldn’t handle is so I couldnt even do one rep. How can I fit Legs chest and tris and back and bis twice in one week. If I have to I’ll put one rest day in there but I’d rather not. Is there any other options?

P.S. I don’t have a belt, and no my form isn’t bad. I’m at a home gym so ego lifting doesn’t really matter to me

2

Do your squats and deads on the same day.

Also, you could train 3 on 1 off which is not quite hitting everything twice a week but pretty damn close. Back when I used to train that way I’d usually do: Push day, pull day, lower day (one day squats & deads then next session squats & kb swings + hamstring isolation stuff etc).

3

Have you tried…

  • Deadlift fortnightly?
  • Mixing heavy deads with volume deads/RDLS?
  • Swapping conventional for Sumo Deadlift?
  • Swapping a back squat day for front squats?
  • Giving deads a break and focus on back hypers/good mornings/rack pulls/ RDLs?
  • Strengthening glutes to (hopefully) take some of the weight off your lower back?
4

Specific muscles or movements patterns and associated muscles can be under recovering, overreached or overtrained.

Wouldn’t say you’re overtrained without any systemic symptoms but sounds like your lower back is under recovering given your current training. Even in well designed programs based on the big three the lower back takes a hammering, big loads, volumes and frequencies. However a good program should still allows you to recover.

Muscle soreness after workouts will decrease over time but chronic under recovering is at best limiting progress and more than likely setting you up for some kind of injury…

There’s lots you can do: Revaluate your split/program, reduce work on the low back as much as possible, increase recovery ability.

Not gonna go through programming here because it’d just be rewriting your program. You can do your own research on programming or get a proven program off the internet that fits you.

There’s loads of considerations to be made here’s some examples:

You’re doing a lot of concentrated volume. 10 sets of squats on one day sounds like it’ll definite make you sore. 5 sets twice a week is the same volume but you’ll recover from it.

Frequency. After training muscle protein synthesis goes up a bit for a few days. You wait a week to train and you’ve missed out on a few days potential gains.

Daily/Weekly/Monthly Volume: Bit different for everyone but there is legitimate point where you are doing too much work to fully recover i.e. Maximum Recoverable Volume, regardless of how much you eat or sleep. If you train with too little volume you miss out on potential gains. You train too close to this limit or above and you slow down or plateau as your body is forever trying to catch up with recovery.

There’s much more to consider when programming. Anyways the point is unless you’re confident enough in your knowledge/experience to put together a workout program then it’s best use existing programs or at least draw from them and use them as templates.

Unless you are incredibly attach to body part splits alternatives such as Upper/Lower, Push/Pull/Legs or Full Body can enable you to train body parts 2 times or 3 times a week successfully.

You seem to have lots of freedom or spare time to dedicate to training make good use of it by choosing a good program.

6

Are you doing a BB row on your back day?

7

Thank you everyone for your help! The problem for me was my ankle dorseflection is shit so my torso was leaning way to forward when Doing squats which in turn out all the weight on my lower back. I widened my stance and my torso now stays more upright. Fixed my lower back issue and increased my squat a shit ton, thank you guys!!