Program Design – to Split or Not to Split?
By Mark McKean Dip.T (HPE/Sc), CSCS, ASCA Level 2 S&C Coach, MAAESS, AEP
www.markmckean.com

For years one of the standard methods of training taught and passed on to new fitness trainers and strength coaches was that of Splitting up strength Programs. It seems that trainers believed a client was not really training hard until they were given a split program. Trainers believed that they were extremely skilled if they could develop a Split Program and the race was on to come up with the most extreme Split Program that they could in order to get the best from the program and their clients. This became the common way of thinking of some trainers and it was passed onto their clients until the concept of the Split Program has gone from optional to compulsory and from sublime to ridiculous.

The concept of the traditional split is simple and it involves structuring ones training routine around the individual body parts/muscle groups. Certain athletes and clients had reached a point where in order to progressively overload further they needed a program that could provide more volume or intensity for specific patterns or muscles groups. This idea was most commonly used in Body Building. The types of split programs that have been used are varied. Commonly used Splits include – upper/lower split, push/pull split, front/back split, chest shoulders triceps/back biceps/legs trunk split.

Split routines first appeared sometime in the late 50s or early 60s, around the time that steroid use was really becoming widespread in bodybuilding and power lifting. You can understand why such types of splits became prevalent when rates of recovery and training responses went through the roof. Of course programs needed to be changed to allow them to ‘hit’ the individual muscles more and more. Hence, the evolution of the Split training style program. You also need to understand that the loading patterns in use today were only just being developed and the concepts of periodisation were only starting with elite athletes and not the average body builder who wanted results.
Further support for the use of split routines is that they will allow you to train more frequently because you are training different parts of the body each training session. It’s true, you may train different muscles each time, but the muscular system is not the only part of the body that is influenced or fatigued by training. All other systems such as the nervous and endocrine systems are being trained every time and can be susceptible to considerable fatigue. Proper nutrition and recovery methodologies may allow the average client to cope with this training, but the truth is few trainers actually know enough about these strategies to pass it on to their clients to help them cope with such methods (unless they use drugs).

Don’t get me wrong, the concept of splitting up the training is a very sound one. The manner in which these types of splits have been used is where i have a real problem. I believe these types of splits mentioned previously have taken trainers down the garden path with their way of thinking and it results in an ‘isolation mentality’. What happened to the full body routine? Trainers today tend to provide full body programs only to beginners and people who can only train once per week. (Don’t even get me started on the one set per body part programs) When in fact if you delve into the programs used by elite athlete and some of the world’s strongest and biggest lifters you will see mostly full body programs and if they are split, they will be split quite differently. Full body programs have much more use than with beginner clients, yet they just don’t seem to the used by the average fitness trainer.

The concept of splitting has been taken beyond the practical for most non elite trainees and even in some cases for the elite athletes. There is a lot to be said for hard training using the big lifts with proper periodisation over any fancy style split that a trainer may try and develop. Sure you can split up the training week in order to achieve the strength goals and lifts you want, but that doesn’t mean you have to use the isolation approach.

I frequently provide my clients and athletes with two different gym programs to alternate between and in a way you could say their training is split, but not in the traditional sense. My programs will often have leg work, pulling movements, and pushing movements on both programs. I will also use trunk strengthening exercises on both programs. So what is correct and what’s considered poor programming?

Do you aim to balance the number of push/pull movements? Should you make sure that there is equal number of sets between Bicep and Tricep movements? Should there be as much quad work as there is hamstring work? Should one program take as long to complete as the other? Should my total training loads be equal across both days? I could go on asking questions that would in all likelihood create more questions than real answers. The truth is that program design and development has gone away from the simple principles that get results.

Instead of worrying about what split to do, we should be more concerned about the effort put in, the progression in weight lifted, the total volume of weight moved in a session and the manner in which we recover before the next training session. Stop playing with splits and fancy designs that really don’t work and go back to the basics. Chose an exercise because it can be progressed often, allows weights to increase steadily and challenges the lifter to develop better movement patterns and control. Choose loads that require the body to adapt over time and allow for frequent recovery cycles which is where all the training effect actually shows as results.