Workout splits are essentially how you divide and organize a strength training program. What are you going to do each time you go to the gym? How often are you training each muscle group? What’s the best workout split?
There is a lot to consider.
There are an endless number of workout splits from bodybuilding-style splits that emphasize a specific muscle group per day to those that emphasize movements such as push, pull, squat, and hinge. Trainers and coaches will swear by one while slandering others.
Each split has its merits and advantages but there is anything you take from this post, it’s to just stick with one for long enough to make progress instead of hopping from one program to the next every week.
People will often get caught up in the difference between mobility vs stability. They’ve become buzzwords in the fitness community, and if you’re not addressing them, then it may feel like something is being neglected.
But what on earth is mobility and what is stability? Most fitness coaches and trainers have a hard time differentiating the two and when they can, they have a hard time explaining why its so important to address.
So if these health nuts can’t even define these two concepts… Why is everyone so obsessed with them?
Let’s take some time to define mobility vs stability and explore the importance of each.
Mobility
Mobility is simply your ability to move.
In the most broad sense, it is an individual’s ability to move themselves through space. An elderly individual who has difficulty with bed mobility, standing, and walking is said to have compromised mobility. An individual who has no difficulties moving is said to have normal mobility.
In the fitness community, mobility has taken on a much more microscopic context. Mobility has become an individual’s range of motion and ability to attain certain positions for exercise or athletics.
Mobility is both active and passive range of motion, for good or for bad. While it is common to have too little mobility, it is also possible to have too much mobility and cross into the space of instability. This can happen when mobility is obsessively chased while strength is neglected. It’s also possible to have more passive range of motion than you can actively control.
Pathological hypermobility is a relatively rare problem that some individuals suffer from.
Two good examples of instability resulting from genetic disorders are Ehlers Danlos syndrome and Marfans syndrome, often characterized by hypermobility and fragility of connective tissue. These individuals can get injured very easily from seemingly trivial trauma due to the decreased strength of their connective tissues.
While most people will not have to worry about this level of hypermobility, it is a good demonstration that there is a limit to our mobility needs.
When it comes to mobility, you simply just need to ask yourself if you have the requisite ability to move to complete the task at hand.
Stability
Stability in the context of human movement is the ability to stop or control any unwanted movement. If you’re doing an overhead press, you don’t want the bar shaking uncontrollably and swaying in all directions. Your ability to control that excessive and unwanted movement is stability.
There are two types of stability, just like mobility. Active stability is the ability of your muscles to actively control and stop unwanted movement. Passive stability is the inherent stability resulting from structures like ligaments, bones, tendons, fascia, etc. We can appreciate how pathology such as Ehlers Danlos and Marfans can cause a massive lack of passive stability.
Truly pathological instability outside of traumatic injury and disease is very rare. When I hear someone say that they have an “unstable spine”, I always ask questions. True spine instability is a serious problem that most people don’t have. A weak set of abs is not an immediate precursor to an unstable spine.
Now, if you have weak abs and try and do heavy lifting, it may very well become the weak link in your lifting, but it doesn’t mean you’re “unstable”. Heavy exercise inherently requires a greater degree of stability to transmit force and control unwanted movements.
When it comes to stability, you need to ask yourself if you have the requisite strength to control your body and any weight you are moving.
Mobility vs stability: A spectrum of movement
Mobility and stability are not mutually exclusive concepts. You cannot work just one end of the spectrum and expect to perform optimally. I have many friends who are fantastic yoga practitioners who only ever did yoga and had a plethora of shoulder, hip, and back problems. Only once they started to incorporate strength training into their exercise regimen did those problems go away.
Most overhead sports will require a high level of stability
A perfect example of mobility and stability working in tandem is in Olympic style weightlifting. These athletes need tremendous levels of mobility to achieve the requisite positions in the clean and jerk and snatch while having superhuman strength and stability to keep the weight under control.
Gymnasts are another great example. Gymnastics requires high levels of mobility and flexibility as well as stability and strength to perfectly control the athletes bodyweight through space. Have you seen how jacked gymnasts are?
We cannot simply pursue one while neglecting the other. Mobility and stability are equally important for any high level athlete.
A practical way to integrate both
I will always come back to lifting weights. Most people associate strength training with bulky, slow, and immobile individuals. This is far from the truth. Proper technique in weightlifting, powerlifting, and bodybuilding requires high levels of mobility. Simply controlling your way through full ranges of motion during most lifting exercises will improve mobility. Overhead presses require good shoulder mobility. Stiff legged deadlifts require great hamstring flexibility. A full squat incorporates full ranges of motion from the hips, knees, and ankles as well as requiring good shoulder mobility.
If you incorporate a few mobility drill during your warm up, you will have a well-rounded plan that tackles both mobility and stability.
So quit freaking out about spending hours and hours on one and stick with an intelligent plan for fitness. Mobility and stability will naturally be addressed.
Everyone wants to get jacked but no one knows where to put forth their time and energy.
The 80/20 rule remains true for fitness. A vast majority (about 80%) of your gains will come from about 20% of what you do. This means that there are endless gimmicks in the other 80% that will distract you and waste your time. Focus on these 5 high impact pillars of fitness to get the most out of your efforts.
The 5 Pillars of Being Jacked and Fit
I can simplify getting jacked and fit down to 5 things: lift heavy 3-4 times per week, do high intensity conditioning, eat well, sleep well, and manage your stress. If you neglect any one of these things, your results will take a large hit. There are an endless number of extra gimmicks like massage guns, red light therapy, overpriced supplements, cryotherapy, and rolling around on foam tubes to distract you. If you don’t take care of the 5 pillars first, then none of the extra gimmicks will make any difference.
Supplements can be helpful, but not if your nutrition isn’t dialed in.
Massage guns, foam rollers, and cryo can all be helpful, but not if your sleep isn’t taken care of.
And all of the “corrective” exercise in the world won’t help you if you’re not on an intelligently designed training program.
I repeat: a vast majority of your gains and results come from the core behaviors and principles of training, nutrition, and recovery. We need to differentiate that from the fluff.
So let’s dive in.
1. Lift Heavy 3-4 Times Per Week
In order to get strong and jacked, we need to be lifting heavily and focus on the large compound exercises. These include squats, deadlifts, lunge variations, presses, pull ups, and rows.
Compound exercises are more effective than isolation exercises. The big movements are the core of your training program. Curls and triceps extensions are the icing on the cake. You don’t get dessert before your protein.
We should also be lifting heavily. A vast majority of people will make incredible gains lifting within the 5-10 rep range. I will sometimes push that to 10-20 reps for certain phases and exercises, but most of my sets are done between 5-10 reps.
There is no way around progressive overload. If we want our muscles to grow in size or strength, we must be doing more in the future compared to now. This means doing more reps per set, more sets per exercise, or lifting more weight.
Lifting about 2 times per week is the absolute minimum dosage for strength gains, but 3-4 days seems to be the optimal range. I advocate for an upper/lower split. This is how most athletes train.
If you train 3 times per week, your training schedule may look like this:
Monday: Upper Body 1 Bench Press Emphasis
Wednesday: Lower Body 1 Squat Emphasis
Friday: Upper Body 2 Overhead Press Emphasis
Monday: Lower Body 2 Deadlift Emphasis
Wednesday: Upper Body 1 (The cycle begins again)
A 4 day training week may be distributed to Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Or, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday.
High Intensity Conditioning
Don’t do cardio. Perform conditioning.
Low intensity cardio will only yield disappointment when it comes to performance gains and body recomposition. High intensity interval training and sprint interval training are both vastly superior in terms of performance and fat burning.
We don’t need to look much further than Olympic sprinters to have a visual understanding of this.
High intensity conditioning is more effective and time efficient than low intensity cardio. You can get a good HIIT or SIT session done in 20-30 minutes, whereas it can take up to that amount of time of jogging to even sufficiently reach a fat burning state for some folks.
Here is a good sprint interval training protocol to try:
Complete the following 2 times a week:
Week one: 4x10s, 4 minutes rest between each
Week two: 6x10s, 3 minutes rest between each
Week three: 8x10s, 2 minutes rest between each
Week four: 4x20s, 4 minutes rest between each
Week five: 6x20s, 3 minutes rest between each
Week six: 8x20s, 2 minutes rest between each
Week seven: 4x30s, 4 minutes rest between each
Week eight: 4x30s, 3 minutes rest between each
Week nine: 4x30s, 2 minutes rest between each
Complete the following 3 times a week:
Week ten: 4x30s, 4 minutes rest between each
Dial In Your Nutrition
You must tailor your nutrition towards your goals. If you trying to gain weight, then you need to be in a calorie surplus. If you are trying to lose weight, then you need to be in a calorie deficit. And, if you trying to maintain your weight, you need to be at calorie maintenance. There is no way around this law of thermodynamics.
Gaining or losing 1-2 pounds per week is a healthy start. A pound of fat is about 3500 calories. In order to lose about 1 pound per week, you need to be in a 500 calorie deficit everyday.
Gaining a pound of muscle requires about a 2800 calorie surplus. This means you should be in a 400 calories surplus per day if you are trying to gain weight.
The calorie surplus and deficit are the most reliable metrics of altering body composition. The next most important is macronutrient distribution. This is the ratio of protein, carbs, and fats if your daily diet.
The most important macronutrient to focus on is protein intake as this will help with building muscle during weight gain phases and maintaining muscle during weight loss phases. Once you have protein dialed in, you should focus on taking in more complex carbs than fats, as carbs will provide more readily available energy than fat.
This does not mean to completely eliminate fats! Fats are important for a wide array of functions throughout our body.
If you have your calorie surplus/deficit and macronutrient distribution dialed in, then you will have covered a vast majority of your nutritional needs.
Sleep Like You Mean It
Sleep is the foundation of all health. If you neglect your sleep, then you are essentially throwing away all of your hard work.
I cannot emphasize the importance of sleep. Sleep is usually the first thing that gets neglected when life gets busy and hectic. However, skimping out on sleep will negatively affect literally every aspect of your life. You will notice that you have less energy, are more irritable, make poor food decisions, perform poorly at complex tasks and at the gym, and have reduced vitality overall.
There is a reason why professional athletes obsess over their sleep. It is the foundation of their performance. Sleep is the time that our body repairs itself, the brain literally cleans itself, and balances our hormones.
I have written about the importance of sleep and how to optimize our sleep in previous articles here and here (don’t worry, they open in new tabs).
Here is the gist. You should sleep between 7-9 hours every night (children and teenagers will need more). Get to bed around the same time every night. Make your bedroom as dark, cool, and quiet as possible. Cut out screens and stimulating activities about 3 hours before bed time. Stop caffeine at about 1pm.
Don’t neglect sleep.
Manage Your Stress
This is a big one for the modern world. Our attention and focus are being stolen from us everyday from every direction and our jobs only get more stressful. Responsibilities quickly pile up.
If we don’t do something to manage our sanity, we are heading towards a world of anxiety, panic attacks, and depression.
All of these factors significantly impact our health and well-being. Chronic and high levels of stress will negatively impact our mental health, motivation, hormonal health, sleep, nutrition, and gym performance.
We are all wired to handle stress differently. Some people can manage loads of stress without any negative consequence, and others will fall apart at the slightest derailment of plans.
You must understand your needs and manage your stress or else suffer the negative consequences. Some strategies to help manage stress include meditation, journaling, exercise, sleeping enough, and making time for your passions.
Your life cannot just be your job and responsibilities. You need to make time for your tribe and community. You need to pursue your passions and hobbies. Go outside.
Spend Your Efforts Wisely
We only have so much time during the day. Ensure you are spending your efforts on the right things that will yield the most results.
Lift heavy weights.
Do conditioning.
Dial in your nutrition.
Sleep enough.
Manage your stress.
If you have these 5 pillars in check, then you are off to a good start.
A morning routine and ritual are mainstays in the self-help and entrepreneur space.
Proponents rave about how successful people always have a morning routine to “win the day” or to get them centered. Make your bed. Coffee. Journal. Express gratitude. Exercise. Read. Meditate.
I get it. Focus is a scarce resource these days. If you’re trying to advance towards your goals, you need to avoid brain fog, being unfocused, and being unmotivated like the plague.
I still have a daily morning routine. I’ve pared it down by quite a bit and I’ll admit, it helps me gain momentum at the beginning of the day. I still drink coffee, meditate, and write in a journal.
But there’s something I do that helps me stay more focused than any amount of meditation or journaling can.
