Many types of training routines for lifting exist, and they remain as varied as the goals of lifters. Your routine should reflect and focus on your specific goals, and splitting a routine to focus on specific aspects of your goals allows instead of just training your entire body every session. Bodybuilders, powerlifters and weightlifters all have different goals, and depending on which category you fall into, your routine must allow you to maximize your training time and effort. Consult a health care provider before beginning any exercise program.
Push-pull Split
A common type of bodybuilding split is what is known as a "push-pull split." This type of split routine allows you to focus on pressing exercises in one workout, pulling exercises in another, and training your legs on a third day. An advantage of this routine is that you are only in the gym three times a week, but sometimes training sessions can take a while if you need a lot of training volume. An examples of this workout program would be working your legs on Monday, then training your chest, shoulders and triceps via pressing exercises and extra barbell or dumbbell extensions Wednesday. On Friday, train your back and biceps via chinups, rows and curls.
Body-part Split
A body part split is another type of bodybuilding routine in which you focus on a different body part each training session. An example would be training your chest Monday, legs Tuesday, back Wednesday, shoulders Thursday and arms Friday. This allows you to keep your training sessions short and focused, but it can make it difficult for you to work in compound exercises that hit multiple muscle groups. By the time you train your arms Friday, your triceps have been worked on your chest day, and possibly the day you train your shoulders as well. Fatigue can become an issue, so proper exercise selection is important to avoid overtraining.
Powerlifting Split
A powerlifting split allows powerlifters, or those who wish to train like powerlifters, to focus on three specific lifts. Powerlifting requires you to compete in the squat, bench press, and deadlift, and one workout each week can be devoted to each lift. By deadlifting on Monday, benching on Wednesday and squatting on Friday, you get enough rest to train with peak intensity in the gym. Specific assistance work is done each workout, such as extra overhead pressing and triceps work to help the bench press, hamstring work for the squat and back work for the deadlift.
Weightlifting Split
A weightlifting split allows you to focus on the Olympic lifts, devoting an entire session to each lift. By training four days a week, you can devote two workouts to the clean and jerk, and two workouts to the snatch. If you have only three days a week to train, you can train both the snatch and the clean in two workouts, and devote a third workout to the jerk and specific conditioning work, such as extra pressing. In your snatch workout, you can do extra specialized lifts such as overhead squats or the drop snatch. In your clean workout, you can do extra specialized work such as the front squat. One of the biggest differences between weightlifting and most other forms of training is that each workout in your split is designed to focus on improving specific skills, not training body parts.
References
- "The New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding : The Bible of Bodybuilding, Fully Updated and Revised"; Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bill Dobbins; November 1999
- "Practical Programming for Strength Training"; Mark Rippetoe and Lon Kilgore; September 2009
- "The Weightlifting Encyclopedia: A Guide to World Class Performance"; Arthur Drechsler; January 1998
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