How to Organize Your Weight Training to Best Effect

When trying to design an effective strength training program, the first thing to note is that there is no singular right or wrong way to organize everything. An efficient and effective training program is going to take certain parameters into account and work with them: your time allotment, your goals, any injuries you might have, overdeveloped or undeveloped body parts, imbalances, and a host of other factors. However, we can say that there are ways of organizing your strength training that make more sense and ways that make less sense, given those factors. Let’s look at a few of the variables involved.

TIME ALLOTMENT

One of the first questions I ask of all clients is, How much time, per week, can you truly commit to being at the gym, strength training and cardio included? If you are a professional athlete, obviously it is your job to train, and therefore, we can demand a lot of time commitment. If, however, you are a business professional, and a mother of two, and have a lot of responsibilities outside of the gym– and also want to get in shape and lead a healthy lifestyle– then we obviously need to work within that context, and design a template that works for you.

I like to see most of my “normal” clients (read: everyday people looking for fitness and a lean, toned body, not bodybuilders or athletes) strength training twice a week on average. This allows us to spike the metabolism a few times throughout the week, rather than just once a week– when you strength train, you put a large strain on your body and your muscles, which then have to recover afterwards, and this recovery process can elevate your resting metabolic rate for 48-72 hours (which will aid greatly in fat loss). Also, when training more than once a week, it is easier to implement something called a “body part split”, or a “split routine”, which we will address further below.

I have a handful of clients that only strength train once a week, due to time limitations mostly, and still see great results over time. Remember, the most important variable with your strength training is intensity– increasing weight and reps over time, in order to put a progressively larger and larger strain on your muscular system. Even if you only do this once a week, as long as you focus on progression, your body will still change over time, albeit maybe a little slower than somebody who trains twice or three times a week.

The first step is to figure out how much time you can realistically spend in the gym, and then commit to that time allotment. There’s no sense in having an “ideal split” that has you strength training four days per week, and then letting a bunch of external obligations pull you away from the gym so you end up only training half your body every week! Again, for most interested in fat-loss and toning, twice a week is a perfect amount to aim for.

TOTAL BODY VS. SPLIT ROUTINES

The next question: should we try to train all the major muscles in the body at once every session, or should we split the body up into distinct muscle groups each session? There are numerous advocates for each approach, and each approach makes sense in certain regards. Let’s look at the virtues and vices of each way.

When strength training for muscle tone and fat loss, we want to focus the bulk of our efforts on the large skeletal muscles of the body, as these are the muscles that will contribute most to metabolic rate: the pecs (chest), lats (back), deltoids (shoulders), quads and hamstrings (thighs), glutes (butt), biceps and triceps (arms), and core (abs). Yes, we can specialize and focus on smaller muscle groups, like rear deltoids and calves and rhomboids, but these groups a) will not burn as many calories while being worked, b) will not contribute as much to metabolic increase, c) will not put as much total strain on your body as a unit, and thus won’t bump your metabolism and natural hormone levels quite as much. It’s fine to focus a lot of your efforts on these groups for rehabilitative purposes, or, if after you’ve built a foundation, you are looking to put the “finishing touches” on your physique. If I have somebody that is willing to strength train 3 days a week or more, I will definitely have them doing direct work for these smaller muscle groups. However, if I only get Joe Office-worker for two hours a week, the bulk of our efforts are going to be spent doing large, compound exercises that work larger muscle groups (those listed above in the beginning of this paragraph).

If you decide to train total body each time you strength train, you will undoubtedly burn more total calories during your weight workout, as well as increase your metabolic rate in the hours following, simply because your entire body has been utilized. A good example of this would be something like Crossfit workouts, which tend to use all of the muscles for every workout, to maximize metabolic contribution.

The problem with total body workouts, however, is that they don’t allow for almost any specialization. Let’s say you’re a total beginning, and are trying to learn how to squat. Well, squatting is a very difficult exercise (at least if you want to do it properly and not injure yourself)– it will take all of your physical and mental focus. The same is true of dead lifting. To a slightly lesser degree, the same is true of bench press, and pull-ups/pulldowns, and most compound movements.

If you really want to learn the proper mechanics of real strength training exercises, I think a split routine, where you split the body into different muscle groups and train different groups on different days, makes the most sense. It allows you focus more individual attention and energy to individual muscle groups. It also allows you to devote more time (exercises, sets, and reps) to each individual muscle group over the course of the week, leading to a higher likelihood of overload for that muscle– meaning you succeeded in actually causing fiber damage to the muscle, meaning it will remodel and grow (which is our goal, after all!). The purpose of strength training is not primarily to burn calories– if that were the case, it would make more sense to just get your butt on a treadmill, which would burn more total calories, and requires virtually no attention to form! The purpose of strength training is simply to build strength and muscle, and all the side effects that go with that (increased metabolic rate, great fat loss over time, a tone physique, greater bone density, etc.). This is why I’m not a fan of circuit training, and why I’m not a fan of total body workouts: in general, I don’t think they allow you to focus enough on each individual muscle group to create fiber overload, and therefore, over time, don’t lead to much muscle accumulation.

Now realistically, over time, no singular routine is going to work perfectly forever. Whatever you throw at your body over time, the body will acclimate to and get used to, and you will stop seeing results. Therefore, it periodically makes sense to modify your routine, whether on a smaller level, or a greater overhaul. As such, you might begin with a split routine for 6 months to master the basic mechanics of the movements, then move to a total-body routine twice a week focusing on simply core compound movements, then go back later to a different split routine, etc. This would be a perfectly reasonable way to approach to your training over time. But in the beginning, until you have built a foundation and at least gotten a basic handle on basic exercises, I would advise sticking with a split routine.

DIFFERENT KINDS OF SPLITS

When it comes to split routines, there are a million different possibilities. The one that most novice bodybuilders follow is a 5-day-a-week routine where each major muscle group (or pair of muscle groups) is given a full day, so something like: day 1, chest; day 2, back; day 3, shoulder; day 4, legs; and day 5, arms. (Of course, there would be a rest day or two worked in there over the course of the week.) Of course, this much time in the gym would be very impractical for most individuals.

In the past, I have used a number of different split routines that work quite well. One “classic” is upper body vs. lower body. The muscles of the lower body are much bigger and much more taxing to work than the muscles of the upper body. So an upper body day would include 1-2 movements for chest, 1 movement for back width (a vertical pulling movement, like a pull-up or a pull-down), 1-2 movements for shoulders (usually an overhead press and a lateral raise), 1 movement for back thickness (either a row or a deadlift), 1 movement for triceps and 1 movement for biceps. Lower body day, by contrast, wouldn’t focus on isolating out individual muscle groups, but instead would just start with the biggest “basic” movements and more towards more isolated movements as needed, or as time/energy would allow: some type of squat, followed by some type of lunge, followed by some type of leg press, followed by some type of deadlift (for hamstrings and lower back), followed by some type of leg curl. That would be a basic, well-rounded lower body workout.

In more recent times, there are 2 variations of a basic split I have found to be very effective with clients:

1) legs and back: a lot of the primary movements for legs also involve a lot of the back muscles, such as deadlifts, lunges (which work the glutes and connect to the back), and even rowing movements (which work primarily the back and biceps, but require a lot of core strength, lower back, glutes, etc.); on the second day of the week, you would train chest, shoulders and arms– again, a lot of overlap between muscle groups (working chest already hits shoulders and triceps, working shoulders already hits triceps, etc.). The nice thing about this split is that it is efficient (lots of overlap, meaning you’re not taxing the same muscles a mere two days apart), and you are working comparable amounts of muscle mass (even though legs and back are the largest groups, you’re only focusing on 2 major groupings; chest/shoulders/arms focuses on four major groupings (breaking arms into biceps and triceps), but they are smaller groups than back and legs; thus, comparable amounts of muscle mass). A generic version of this split might look like this:

Day 1: back and legs-wide pulldown: 3 sets x 10 reps

-dumbbell row: 3 sets x 10 reps

-deadlift: 3 sets x 10 reps

-squat: 3 sets x 10 reps

-lunge: 2 sets x 10 reps

-leg press: 2 sets x 15 reps

-leg curl: 3 sets x 15 reps

Day 2: chest/shoulder/arms

-incline chest press: 3 sets x 10 reps

-chest flye: 2 sets x 10 reps

-overhead shoulder press: 3 sets x 10 reps

-dumbbell lateral raise: 2 sets x 10 reps

-barbell curl: 3 sets x 10 reps

-triceps extension: 3 sets x 10 reps

2) the other split I’ve been using a lot lately is torso vs. limbs– day one would be chest, back and shoulders, while day two would be legs and arms. I like this split because day one gives equal attention to the larger torso muscles, while day two, you can focus 75% of your time on lower body (the bigger grouping), and then, since you already did a lot of upper body work earlier in the week, you can simply touch briefly on arms (25% of the time)– which are the smaller muscle groups anyways– and be done with them. I consider this just a minor variation of the more classic “upper body vs. lower body” split that I used successfully with clients for years. (On a side note: I think it’s also easier to get my male clients to wrap their brains around a workout that is predominantly all lower body, provided we do just a little bit of upper body during the same workout!) A generic version of this split might look like this:

Day 1: chest/back/shoulders

-incline chest press: 3 sets x 10 reps

-chest flye: 2 sets x 10 reps

-wide pulldown: 3 sets x 10 reps

-dumbbell row: 3 sets x 10 reps

-deadlift: 3 sets x 10 reps

-overhead shoulder press: 3 sets x 10 reps

-dumbbell lateral raise: 2 sets x 10 reps

Day 2: legs and arms

-squat: 3 sets x 10 reps

-lunge: 2 sets x 10 reps

-leg press: 3 sets x 15 reps

-leg curl: 3 sets x 15 reps

-barbell curl: 3 sets x 10 reps

-triceps extension: 3 sets x 10 reps

You should notice that I used pretty much all the same movements for each split, just rearranged the order and grouping of them. That’s because the body has specific muscle groups, and each muscle performs specific functions, and all we are doing is trying to tax that muscle with a load to get it stronger and more efficient. Thus, regardless of how I organize my split, it is going to revolved around certain basic movement patterns, and variations of those patterns:

-chest press and flye

-shoulder press and lateral raise

-triceps extension

-lat flexion (so lat pulldowns and rows)

-hip extension (so deadlift-type movements)

-biceps flexion (curl)

-squats

-lunges

-leg press

-leg curl

And that’s pretty much the major movement-types for the major skeletal muscles.

SMART STAGING AND STAGGERING

One of the things I intuitively do when I train clients is try to make the workout “efficient”. There are a million little variables involved in this, and it really is an art as much as a science, but we can cover at least a few quickly.

One thing I try to do is “stagger” muscle groups. So let’s say I’m taking a client through chest, back and shoulders. Well, the primary movement for both chest and shoulders is going to be some type of pressing movement. This will heavily tax the deltoids and the triceps. So if we go straight from chest press to shoulder press, chances are that their triceps will be fatigued, which will severely limit the amount of weight they can handle and thus lead to a worse workout. Therefore, chances are I’ll stagger it: do chest first (a pushing movement), then back (a pulling movement), then shoulders.

I’ll use the same logic if we’re training the entire upper body during a workout: chest (pushing) followed by back width (pulling) followed by shoulders (pushing) followed by back thickness (pulling) followed by triceps (pushing) followed by biceps (pulling).

Let’s follow the logic further. Suppose I’m doing a total-body workout with a client. We know that leg movements are more taxing, overall, than upper body– spikes the heart rate more, and more tiring in general. Thus, chances are I’m going to go back and forth between lower and upper body movements, which will allow a slight recovery in the bigger muscles (legs) while doing upper body, and will allow the client to “get through” the entire workout. So we might do squats (legs), chest press, lunges (legs), pulldowns, leg press (legs), shoulder press, leg curls (legs), rows, and that’s the whole workout.

Let’s say I’ve been working with a client for a few months now, they have learned basic form and gotten good at it, and they have built something of a strength foundation. Chances are I will now start focusing on building up their endurance, or their capacity to push harder for longer periods of time. As such, I will start using more supersets, which is two exercises stacked back to back with no rest in between. You can either superset two movements for the same muscle group (a chest press and a flye) to create a deeper burn in the muscle; or you can superset upper body and lower body, as in the example above; or you can superset antagonistic muscle groups, like a chest movement and a back movement (opposite muscle groups), which, again, will help to avoid too much localized fatigue.

There are a variety of intensity techniques that can be employed over time to push a muscle harder and harder. One good technique is drop sets: use your heaviest weight for the desire number of reps (8-12), and when you fail and can’t get any more reps with good form, reduce the weight (usually by about 33%) and try to get another 4-5 reps; you can do a triple drop to push it harder. This is very intense, and usually best reserved for the last set of an exercise, when you are trying to get that final bit of intensity out.

You can stack multiple exercises for the same body part, something called a giant set, in order to beat the living hell out of an individual muscle. So for instance, for hamstrings, you can do a single-leg leg curl right into a lying leg curl right into a lunge right into a stiff-legged deadlift. If you start going to fast that you have to use very light weights, then your training is now approaching circuit training and probably not as effective; however, if you try to keep the weights fairly heavy, this can occasionally be an awesome technique for pushing a muscle harder.

Your own creativity will be your only limitation while training. My advice is to observe other people while in the gym– especially those who appear to be in terrific shape– and notice what they do. I’m guessing now that the majority of the “really fit, really toned” individuals keep it very basic and simple: basic compound movements, training with a fairly high degree of intensity, trying to increase the poundage over time. Again, there is a large artistic side to training, and creativity is great, but nothing will ever replace the basics.

David A. Johnston

3/28/2010