Good morning

How we all doing today?

I’m feeling pretty darn good, except I did wake up with a little pain in my left hip. A little foam rolling action took care of that, though!

Before we get into today’s post, I gotta show ya’ll last night’s dinner:

Pork chops! I made yet another person’s recipe of apple onion porkchops in the slow cooker:

Guys, these were SO delicious and so easy. I think there were literally 4-5 ingredients. I served mine over sauerkraut, as pictured above. YUM. If you like pork chops, I recommend THESE.

OK! Now let’s get down to business.

Today I want to talk to you about workout splits – namely, my very favorite split – the 3-day, upper/lower/full body split. And bonus: if you stick around for geeky personal trainer split routine talk, I’ll throw in an upper body workout you can print off and take to the gym to get those shoulders, chest, and back burnin’ up

For the sake of post length, I’m going to leave cardio completely out of the equation for today. Today, I want to talk solely about resistance training, where, in my opinion, the guts of a good workout program lies.

First – a note on splits:

In training clients, and in my own workouts, I end up writing a lot of training programs. Most of my clients train with me 3 days a week (some 4 days, and some 2 days.) Regardless of how many days they train with me, I’ll put them on some sort of splits. The type of split varies depending on where they’re at ability-wise, how many days per week they can train with me, how long they can train each day, what their goals are, etc – and varies from:

• Muscle group splits
• Upper/lower body splits
• Full body splits

It can also range from 2-5 day splits, as far as how many days per week the person is training.

Whichever split we choose, I make sure that each muscle group is being stimulated at least twice in a one week period, as that’s the least amount required to see results from resistance training.

My current personal favorite?

The 3-day, upper/lower body split

Reasons:

• 3 days are very manageable to get to the gym for resistance training
• 2 out of 3 of those days, leave you huffing and puffing, do to lower body work
• It works each muscle group exactly twice in a one week period
• You’ll see results without overtraining
• There’s not many isolation exercises (more compound exercises)
• Great for reversing muscle imbalances

My other favorite split is a 3-day full body split, meaning full body workouts three days a week, but then so many other factors come into play, so we won’t get into that today.

How about a workout? Shall we?

This workout is an Upper Body day for the 3 day upper/lower body split. Usually my upper body day is Day 2 of my resistance training for the week. This one is to be performed in the gym, with a weight that you can lift about 10-12 times, but not more.

And don’t let it’s pretty colors fool you; it’s not that innocent

Disclaimer: please check with your doctor before beginning any new exercise plan

Exercises:

smith bar pushups

seated row w/ neutral grip

seated overhead dumbbell press

assisted chin up

stability ball dumbbell press

bench-supported single arm row

cable biceps curls

modified triceps push ups – bring knees to ground for regression (best triceps exercise alert!)

leg raises – KEEP LOWER BACK PUSHED INTO GROUND AT ALL TIMES<—if you cannot do this, bend the knees

BOSU side crunches – KEEP ABS ACTIVATED BY PRESSING TOP HIP TOWARD THE CEILING

All right, I’m off to find some breakfast! Probably leftover pork chops since my beloved coconut butter still isn’t here yet  

Tell me!

How many days per week do you try to do resistance training?

What’s your favorite upper body exercise?