After Workout for beginners Part I, you would have gained considerable amount of energy and you will be able to control your muscles better than before. When you had little control over muscles you were able to produce only little stress on your muscle. Hence the damage on the muscles during the workout was less. But now you would be able to put even more stress on muscle and hence the damage after each workout would be greater. So its time to switch your training split. As a beginner you were training each muscle group three times a week, but after six weeks of part I program you will be stronger and able to control muscles better. So we will be switching training a muscle group three times a week to training each muscle group two times a week. This is a considerable growth in your training. And don’t get hypnotized by the pro’s workout at this point. They have years of experience in lifting and maintaining a good diet. At this point you need to keep the sets and reps in the optimal range to get optimum results.
The Push-Pull split
By this time we would be able to feel each muscle group while doing the exercise precisely. The pushing movement involves different muscles and the pull movement involves different muscle groups. The basic criteria of splitting our workouts into push and pull is that we will work on two consecutive days and if we use the same muscle groups on both the days it will lead to over-training. So here we split our workout into push and pull.
Muscle groups worked on the push days: chest, deltoids, triceps, quadriceps and calf muscle groups worked on the pull days: back, biceps, hamstring & abs
Push workout
Exercise (Sets) x (Reps)
Squats / leg-press 3 x 8
Flat/inclined bench press 3 x 8
Military press 2 x 8
Lateral raises 2 x 12
Lying triceps extension 3 x 8
Standing calf raise 2 x 15
Pull workouts
Exercise (Sets) x (Reps)
Deadlift 4 x 12,10,8,6
Lat pull downs 3 x 8
Bicep curls 3 x 8
Leg curls for hamstring 2 x 10
Hanging leg raise 2 x 10
Bamboo twisting 1 x 50
Workout split
SUN
MON – push
TUE – pull
WED
THU -push
FRI -pull
SAT
In the next article, we will look into the upper and lower body splits.