Push, Pull, Legs, Split Is Dead

and I think Push Pull likes for example I see a use case for but it's only for those who are consistently training 6 days a week or more essentially cuz otherwise you're missing out typically on training each muscle twice a week folks Dr mik here farby strength and I'm here with Dr Milo wolf researcher extraordinaire actually doing research on how to get jacked anything on how to get tan from your lab looking at me you would think I'd have the keys apparently not on getting jacked you told me listen this new meta analysis came out

and it's kind of about how to get jacked in general or training for getting jacked but it has a few unique features that it also has training frequency recommendations as well as volume tell us about the new metaanalysis what we can learn from it sure as of this video when this comes out there should be a pre-print of metanalysis on train frequency and muscle hyper so we're getting the shit early early getting exclusive exclusive essentially they looked at all the studies that manipulated frequency having people train a muscle fewer times a week or more times

a week and they looked at how that influenced hypertrophy I'm sure you've heard the claim online that certain people say full body training is best you want to have a full body split train each muscle as often as possible or back in the day especially body part splits were best next Monday exactly back Tuesday shoulders get the deal this meth analysis tried to look at that idea and we found a few things this was a metanalysis by Pelin colleagues frequency seems to have a neutral to slightly positive effect on hypertrophy so as you volume equated

or not volume equated okay correct so let's just describe to folks quickly what that means volume equated means if you have to do let's say 12 sets per week you can do them Monday Wednesday Friday four sets or you can do them Monday Thursday six sets each still 12 sets per week so the frequency doesn't raise the volume but it just hits you with a little less a little bit more often and what you're saying is the effect is either like man nothing write home about or like a little bit of a boost even if

the volume doesn't go up what do you ascribe that to hypothetically I have my own guesses but I want to hear from you there's a variety of things mechanistically whenever you muscle that growth curve response only lasts so long mhm so even if you blast a muscle with more and more volume in a single bout that myoi protein synthesis response muscle growth essentially will only take so long several days correct not eight days not seven days probably not six or five correct more like two to three correct so if you're only training a muscle once

a week you're missing out on three or four days out of that week where you're not growing that mus at least neutral and then you grow it but again and at least neutral missed opportunity to get more growth correct because essentially what we want to do is maximize that area under the curve of hypertrophy and so if we only aggregating one bump that is only so much area on the curve we could potentially get yeah so that is my most likely explanation to be clear the effect is somewhere between there is next to none and

there's a slight positive effect slight so if we want to maximize muscle growth we probably want to ear on the side of training muscle a bit more often rather than a bit less often because there's nothing to be lost but there is potentially a small thing to be gained train a muscle a little bit more frequently but with the same volume 12 for three sessions versus 12 for two sessions six versus four sets in those extra sets on the fewer sessions at the end you kind of a little bit lit tired as the French would

say and then maybe your stimulus isn't as great as if you were more Fresh So in essence three days a week of training gives you kind of more rest breaks between the sets on average and the workouts on average so you can come back fresh and hit it do you think there's maybe some reason to think that a little bit it's funny you mention that because I'm aware of a upcoming analysis on the topic of procession volume and hypertrophy now that is probably not going to be published at the time of this video if it

is I'll comment it below so you can check it out but the relationship between pession volume in hypertrophy displays more strongly diminishing returns compared to weekly now as we mentioned in our video on volume we don't have any studies looking at high frequency training in conjunction with high volume training yeah we don't really have studies where people are training five or six days a week with really high volumes most of our studies are on high volumes but training muscle two or three times a week yeah we have very few studies on frequencies of like four

five six times a week per muscle however with a previous analysis by creger James ker for example on per session volume and this one that I'm aware of behind the scenes I can tell you that there is more of a diminishing returns situation with per session volume and hypertrophy which with a bit of speculation and a bit of theory crafting leads me to think practically speaking if you're trading with really high volumes if we want to maximize that area under the C we're better off spreading that high volume across more sessions because we get such

strong diminishing returns On A procession basis yes and so if you're doing say 20 30 plus sets for a muscle fractionally speaking counting both direct volume and indirect that is where I think there's a case to be made as we'll probably see in the metanalysis by remon colleagues for your volume to be spread out across three or more sessions it's just that we don't have the research on that yet to make any super clear inferences right all right so small increase in growth potentially neutral to small from added frequency in a volume constrained manner did

they look at unconstrained volume as well they did not however they looked at a variety of potential moderators so they performed sub analyses based on training status whether they were more untrained or at least slightly trained whether they were trained to failure Etc and just like with volume the relationship between frequency and hypertrophy seems to be robust to different moderators so for most populations in most contexts where you're trained to failure Etc training a muscle a bit more often is going to have a sort of neutral to positive effect so I would say as a

rough ballpark train each muscle at least twice a week mhm that relationship between frequency per week like how often you train muscle and hypertrophy you see slightly larger returns when you go from say once twice a week then you do after that I would say this kind of an inflection point where after twice a week There's may be a positive effect but it's very minimal so significantly different returns from one to two versus practically I would say so practically I would say that you better off training each twice a week then once a week past

that it's probably a neutral positive effect but it's a very slight one that there is one very so practically that means that if you are training two days a week for example your someone doesn't have much time you should almost certainly be training with full body split there's no real downside but there is an upside to training each muscle twice a week or more likewise if you're training say four days a week you're likely better off with something like an upper lower split compared to like a body part split sure importantly here's an interesting part

just like with volume they looked at frequency fractionally so they looked at direct instances of training a muscle like for example the biceps doing bicep curls would be a direct instance they looked at indirect instances where for example doing back training would still Target the biceps but just not as well and they looked at fractional frequency where essentially they counted direct bicep training as one unit of training frequency for the biceps and back training is half a unit of training frequency for the biceps and once again just like for volume fractional frequency was the most

accurate way of looking at the data excellent so back training still counts for something because it's more realistic correct it's it would be a lie to say that 16 sets of back work on a Friday does nothing after a Monday and Wednesday bicep workout doesn't have any more effect on biceps it would also be a lie to say that it counts for 16 CS of biceps that's fucking crazy but it might for something like 4 to 12 yeah some half there sure so that was interesting as well because it means that a body part split

can be modified to be pretty effective like don't get me wrong training a muscle once a week probably not ideal and if I were coaching you I would say try training at least twice a week sure but if you modify it a little bit say instead of just doing Monday chest Tuesday back Wednesday shoulders Thursday legs and Friday arms you add in some compound training for your arm day you do some chinups and do some bench pressing maybe you add some a couple of leg exercises on your shoulder day all of a sudden for most

muscle groups fractionally speaking you're actually training them one and a half or two times a week yes it doesn't take a lot of modification to make even something a body part split pretty effective with frequency not playing so big of a role in the first place with it being more so about volume and potentially other factors even the body part split can be effective but if you want to improve that a little bit just some small tweaks can take it from effect to quite a bit more effective many people may see this study and as

usual without reading it will conclude that c frequency is not a big deal neutral effect may be a little positive but what do you think they're missing Milo if they don't include the fact that this was a volume equated study tell us a story about non-volume equated frequency that makes some sense yeah so a few things one with really high volumes like we just mentioned there is a potential use case for higher frequencies that is one thing equally I think most people will be able to tolerate more volume and have higher quality volume quote unquote

if they're doing the same amount of sets with a higher frequency so just spread out across the week better technique Better Effort better follow through less likely to SLO off on later sets correct is set number seven of legs you're like man I'll do it but I'm not going to do it to it whereas if you take those eight sets for example you're doing in one session and spread it into two days yep mentally present for each 100% so I think with specialization phases where you're performing higher volumes or if you want to get the

most out of each set a slightly higher frequency can be beneficial look it's not going to be a 9-day effect but I think if you want to optimize your growth slightly higher frequencies are probably a good idea it's an optimization thing but it's also a question of what exactly do you lose by just taking single mouth training and spreading it out more I think it's a personal preference thing for a lot of people they like to just smash the muscle just a few times a week or even once but even for the one time a

week your recommendation is like okay fuck it you like once a week sweet Monday hit chess like crazy hit a few sets of triceps after though and then Thursday hit your tricep workout your Bice still say arms Thursday Thursday arms back shoulders arms somewhere there and uh legs never shows up but uh after you finish your bicep stuff and your tricep stuff do a couple of sets of close grip presses or push-ups after your triceps stuff it'll cook your triceps even better but it'll get you enough of a stimulus for chest that it's you're definitely

benefiting from multiple per week frequencies and you'll probably be able to put in a little bit more volume that way and a little bit more of an elevation of the fractional synthetic rate of muscle growth and you'll get more jacked over long term versus Monday chest Thursday shoulders and arms but nothing remotely to do with chest at all because it needs recovery bro because it probably doesn't training once a week I agree and I think people can think of frequency of training kind of like protein where total protein intake is fairly important for hypertrophy and

you want to make sure you're getting enough protein each day to maximize hypertrophy but exactly what your meal frequency is in a given day like whether you're having three or four wheels or four six or what have you doesn't seem to play nearly as large of a role it's the same with volume and frequency where volume seems to be quite important for hopy as we've discussed but exactly how you spread that out plays potentially a small R but certainly not as large as volume yes unless we go to the extremes correct one meal a day

difficult to get your protein at all just like one workout a week is how you're going to get all your volume in it's practical consideration but also a lot of the Protein that's available to you in the digestive tract from any one meal some fraction of it gets used for muscle synthesis not high and the rest of it the body doesn't need at the time just gets burned directly for energy and so you eat 250 grams of protein and one meal you may find that like you only really analized 125 of that which is good

but if you ate 100 grams of protein per meal twice a day or 125 you may anabolizantes because I think here's here's where I'm going this Smo some people are looking what what can I get away with doing the minimum to still get great results and there's nothing wrong with that's great but a lot of people are looking for I want to make sure that my workout routine is checking all the big boxes and not missing out some shit where it's like man I wish I knew that you know like for example talk to people

who try to get bigger shoulders side delts and they training shoulders the shoulder day is crazy but it's once a week I usually talk to those people and I go dude try two or three shoulders per week exercises and or sessions rather you're going to see a huge difference because your shoulders just take that long to recover and you can multiply your volume by XYZ those people typically experience that they go God damn it why didn't anyone tell me this shit so as far as frequency per week we're ready to say you and I real

serious effort at getting jacked two times a week frequency is the meat and potatoes for most people sometimes higher is better unlikely that lower is better solid take I think practically for people what that means is if you're training two to three days a week I would typically stick with a full body approach that allows you to train most muscles two to three times a week and real quick just for folks that don't connect the dots yet because it took me a while to understand this the alternative is people will say okay I train Monday

Thursday you're okay great and you and I are on making think in full body because it takes the growth happens for a few days it comes down down happens a few days comes down but some people will be like okay so I do upper body on Thursday lower body on Monday and you're like oh man the volume is the same total if the total amount of workout 's the same but now the frequency is insufficient and now you grow a little bit but then you sort of and you grow a little bit more so just

the frequency alone even if it's a smaller effect and between one and two it's a notable effect it's a good idea to do a 2X or more even if you just train twice a week correct which means the best routine for you will depend on how often you train CU we want to hit each muscle at least twice a week sometimes more so I think if you're training two to three days a week all us being equal a full body routine will be pretty adequate for most people if you're training four days a week or

five days a week an upper lower split could work great full body can work great too still luck for sure if you're recovering joints feel okay but then four to five days a week is where upper lower starts become more viable because it allows you to train each muscle twice a week at least if you're doing a 5day split for example you could do upper lower upper lower upper yep days for upper body which anecdotally I enjoy two days for lower body and I think Push Pull legs for example I see a use case for

but it's only for those who are consistently training six days a week or more essentially because otherwise you're missing out typically on training each muscle twice a week for you to train each muscle twice a week you need two full rotations of the push pull legs sequence sure so I think that's more of a reserved use case a body part split can work but you need to be smart about it essentially you need to make sure you're making those modifications to your routine to make each muscle beain at least twice a week so it's not

a b split anymore it's a body emphasis if spiritually yeah you view it as a body part split and you still enjoy it and that's probably what you're doing in the first place just those modifications make it a bit more effective I wonder is that why SCI there you go proved correct and then the final use case I would say is if you're specializing on a muscle or you're training with really high volumes all around that's where experimenting with slightly higher fre quencies for those muscles muscles you're specializing on or for your whole body can

become beneficial if you have the time and the inclination to say get 20 30 fractional sets per muscle per week that's where maybe doing a full body split three or four days a week or training the specialized Aon muscles three or four days a week could become beneficial as I mentioned those diminishing returns on per session volume yeah might allow you to get more overall hypertrophy if you spread that out or stretch it out across the week how many sets per muscle per session would you say starts to be a little much for optimal hypertrophy

I've heard eight I've heard 12 I've heard six what is your take on that on average that's a great idea that's a great question for my own coaching process and the app developing I have essentially set a limit of around 5 to eight sets per session so for every five to eight sets direct sets you do per week for a muscle I would add one extra day of training to people that's direct training so in fractional terms maybe we're talking about 10 fractional sets so for every 10 fractional sets I would add one day of

training if you're getting 20 sets a week in for muscle that gets into about two days a week if you're doing say 30 sets or below like between 20 and 30 I would do 3 days that makes sense I think that's a rough ballpark in theistic I use that makes perfect sounds that's it that's it I think all right guys like subscribe do YouTube things check out Milo he's on YouTube he's on Instagram we'll have all the links below see you guys next time