If you go to a gym and decide to get your exercise plan from a beefy-looking bodybuilder, there is a good chance your training split looks like this:

Monday – Chest

Tuesday – Back

Wednesday – Off

Thursday – Legs

Friday – Shoulders & Abs

Saturday – Biceps & Triceps

Sunday – Off

On the surface, nothing looks wrong here and it looks balanced as well. Because you are hitting every body part once per week. There is no overlap between muscle groups and you won't be fatigued. Also, there is no fear of 'over-training' as well.

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In fact, it looks like the perfect training programs that are given in bodybuilding magazines by your favourite bodybuilders like Phil Heath, Jeremy Buendia, or Kai Greene.

If it is something that pros follow and it works for them, it will work for me too. Right?

Umm... WRONG!

The athletes that you see on stage are on bodybuilding drugs or anabolic steroids. On those drugs, you build muscle better, recover faster and get a great physique even with a shitty training split.

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Their muscle protein synthesis aka MPS, the mechanism through which your body builds muscle, stays elevated for days after training. 

But that's not you.

If you are a natural lifter, the one-body-part-once-a-week means missed opportunities for gains.

A study by Dr Stu Phillips found that after resistance training, MPS spiked to 65% above baseline after 24 hours, was elevated to 34% above baseline at 48 hours and then came back to normal.

If you want to gain maximal muscle, your MPS levels need to be elevated as much as possible. If you hit one body part once a week, it will have the growth stimulus for 2-3 days and then nothing will happen.

Another study from JSCR concluded that when the same weekly sets were matched, the group that trained the muscle 1x a week only gained 62% of the strength to those who trained the muscle 3x a week.

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To simplify it, if you do 12 sets of a muscle in one session, you will compromise your strength gains compared to doing 4 sets in 3 sessions.

So, as a natural lifter, a frequency of 2-3x per week is a much better option for you if you want to get jacked.

And for those bodybuilders you follow, you know what makes them grow muscle.

If you want to graduate from the bro-split, a good start would be a basic Upper-Lower split.

It would look something like this:

Monday – Upper body (strength focused)

Tuesday – Lower body (strength focused)

Wednesday – Off

Thursday – Upper body (hypertrophy focused)

Friday – Off

Saturday – Lower body (hypertrophy focused)

Sunday – Off

Start doing this and stop training like a bro and compromising your results. 

Author bio:

Pratik Thakkar is the co-founder and director of GetSetGo Fitness, an online fitness company and the founder of Mars Nutrition, a nutrition supplement company. Both his companies are geared towards providing you with the right information and products without any false or fake claims. You can reach out to him at pratik@getsetgo.fitness and follow him on Instagram.