Weightlifting Schedules

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There is an endless number of ways for weightlifting to be divided up for someone. Many times, people lift what they want when they want, not taking into account rest time, volume, and goals. Those who have goals and hold themselves to them, follow a weight-lifting split. Among the most common are Push-Pull-Legs and Arnold’s split. Both of these splits focus on the growth of certain muscles over others. To decide your split, you must first figure out what you want to achieve in weight training.

This image depicts some different ways to split up your training sessions.

Push-Pull-Legs

Push-pull-legs are undeniably the most commonly used weightlifting splits. It is also the easiest most recommended split to start on as a beginner weightlifter. Push-pull-legs are broken up into 3 different days; push, pull, and legs. Push-pull-legs focus mainly on the growth of the chest and back muscles. This split can be performed in a 7-day window with one rest day, but it is more recommended to be done in a 4-day window with one rest day. Push day consists of chest, triceps, and some shoulders. The idea of push day is your always doing a push movement.  It is most common that you do 3 exercises or movements each for your chest and tricep muscles. While only 2 for shoulders, because different shoulder exercises and muscles require pull movements versus push movements. Pull day is extremely similar to push day except instead chest and tricep it is replaced with back and bicep along with shoulders. Pull focuses solely on pulling the weight towards you. Legs consist of quad, hamstring, butt, groin, and calves. The entire leg day is focused on muscles below the hips, no other muscles are being focused on this day. Typically, this is performed with 2-3 quad, 2 hamstring/butt, 1 groin, and 1-2 calve focused exercises.

Arnold Split

The Arnold split got its name after famous bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger used it during his prime bodybuilding years. This consists of a 6-day training program; the 7th day is a rest day. Each session is hit twice during the 6 days. Arnold split is divided into 3 sessions: chest and back, arms, and legs. The Arnold split focuses mainly on the growth of your arms. Typically, bicep and triceps are hit as secondary muscles to back and chest. On the Arnold split they can be focused on or featured on a given day. Also, inadvertently they can be activated as a result of the chest and back session. Along with arms, shoulders are hit as well. The clear goal present to Arnold was to get large arms and shoulders.

This is an image of Arnold Schwarzenegger performing a curl.

Additional Information

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