Transcription
What's the best workout split for natural athletes to build muscle? It's a hard question because there's so many splits out there. Should you train legs by itself? You get back and biceps. You do arms by themselves? Shoot, your chest and biceps, triceps and shoulders, back and shoulders, chest and arms. It's really confusing, especially when you're just starting off.
In this video, I'm going to talk about the workouts that I have used for the past 30 plus years. A workout supplement that I have used to compete successfully as a natural bodybuilder, create other successful bodybuilders using this workout split, and train hundreds of men and women over the past three decades of my personal training career to help them build muscle and lose fat. In the beginning of my career, I tried just about every possible workout split imaginable, and this was what I came up with as being the most efficient.
[Music] And has continued to work, as I said, for all these decades without fail for everyone who's ever tried it. So if you're serious about building muscle, getting results, and doing it the natural way, then give this video a look.
[Music] So you're talking about workout splits, namely, what's the best workout split for building muscle? And I want to start by saying that it is a blessing to have been able to realize my dream as a natural bodybuilder and to have trained so many people. And one of the things I try to do with this channel is to pass on the experience that I've picked up over all these years onto you. To whom much is given, much is expected, and that's a phrase that I live by and try to live by as much as I can by trying to spread as much information as I can about training naturally. That being said, thank you so much for tuning in and thanks all for all those people who have said this would be a one-stop resource for anyone interested in naturally building supplements. And do be sure to like, subscribe, and hit that bell so you're the first to get the new content as it comes out.
So on to our topic at hand, which is what's the best training split for building muscle if you're a natural and not using drugs? The one that I use and have used for the past 30 plus years at this point is the one that seems to yield the most in terms of results if you're training at very high intensities. Now, that being said, there are many ways to get to the top of the mountain, but this is one way that I know for a fact that it's gotten every single person who's taken this path to the top of that mountain.
So here's how it works. On day one, I do legs by itself. Legs meaning quadriceps, hamstrings, and calves, all trained on the same day. Now, day two is back and shoulders, which is a very strange thing because in Trinidad, where I was growing up, it's called back and shoulders, even though you do shoulders before you train your back muscles. That's just how it is back home, and I've always called it back and shoulders.
[Music] And then day three is chest, arms, and abdominals.
[Applause] [Music] And while I haven't trained my abdominals directly since the mid-1990s, which spices up the whole video in and of itself.
[Music] But actually, my clients, we always do chest, arms, and abdominals on that one day. So the why of it, why these particular breakdowns? First up, recovery time. Training three days a week means that you have at least six to seven days between your muscle group workouts to get the most in terms of muscle growth. Remember, muscles grow as a response to unaccustomed stimulus or some degree of overload while you're working out. The recovery process is when your muscles are building themselves up to make themselves stronger in order to deal with the stress that they experience.
[Music] I want the biggest difference between a natural athlete and someone using drugs is that someone using drugs has an exponentially higher recovery time. For example, if I train my biceps today and someone using drugs trained their biceps today, it's like comparing apples to watermelons. I can't train my biceps a day or two later because they still recover from the initial workout. They can recover so much faster, and so for them, it makes sense to do high volume workouts because the more they train, the more muscle growth they can experience.
[Music] On the other hand, think about a natural athlete. A natural athlete has to consider the fact that there are limitations to how much our body can adapt. An easy-to-understand analogy is a suntan. If you go out into the sun and you're there for a relatively short period of time, the ultraviolet radiation that's striking your skin is going to cause a reaction whereby your skin is going to start producing more melanin in order to minimize the damage done by the ultraviolet radiation. So you have a stress, and in response to a stress, you have the body adapting in a way to deal with that particular stressor to minimize the positive overload because if your skin gets too much ultraviolet radiation exposure, it can cause a burn. It's the same in terms of muscle growth. As a natural athlete, we have to make sure that our muscles have enough time in between our workouts in order to recover.
[Music] [Music] Thank you. An overuse injury is something we don't talk about very often in the natural bodybuilding world. I'm going to be 50 years old next year, and my three-day training split has allowed me to be able to still lift heavy at this age. But in terms of being able to put on quality muscle mass, it's the time in between the workouts that have really been crucial for my overall growth and the muscle growth of my clients.
Now, why did I choose to train those particular muscle groups together? Here's the biology behind it. When you're working out, you get a pump. The muscle becomes engorged with blood. The longer you have that nutrient-rich blood flowing through the muscle, the more of an adaptation you're going to get from your workout.
[Music] So the idea is to try to keep your pump to last as long as possible. Now, that being said, if you think about it, if you do your legs all by themselves, all the blood goes to your legs, simple enough. But if, let's suppose, we did a leg workout and a back workout on the same day, it would be very difficult to maintain the blood in one area because your legs are really huge, and your back is a pretty big muscle as well, and there's only a finite amount of blood in your body. And so you can't get a maximum back pump after doing legs. It's simply impossible. So to that end, by training shoulders and back at the same time, you're keeping the blood in the same area for as long as possible, which gives you the maximum pump possible and the longest pump possible. By training chest with your biceps and triceps as well, you keep the blood in the same area for as long as possible, and it also makes for some fantastic pumps. The other important factor is intensity. If you do a really high-intensity leg workout, it is almost impossible to do anything for upper body with the degree of intensity you would do if you're doing it on its own. If I do a back workout with the type of ferocity that I attack my back muscles when I'm training, I'm not going to be able to do a bicep workout because my biceps are already fried from the back workout, and I can't switch it around. If I do biceps first, the intensity that I use in my bicep workouts means that as a secondary move with my back movements, it will not work. I won't get a good back workout. And so that's some of the rationale behind my three-day workout split for muscle growth. And bear in mind, it works not just for muscle growth, but also for fat loss as well. Now, sometimes I will do back and shoulders first, put legs in the middle, and then do chest and arms. But I recommend most people do legs first, only because it is the hardest muscle group to get through, and you also want to make sure if the entire way it goes and you only get one workout in, it should be legs.
Other important factor, because the muscle groups are split the way they are, you can literally train one day after the other. In fact, very often I can train Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. It doesn't make a difference because my individual muscle groups have enough time in between each workout, at least six, seven days, to fully recover and make sure that when I'm ready to work out, I can really give it my all. So consider my three-day training split if you're a natural athlete. It's based on hundreds of men and women who have had fantastic results over decades. So stay natural. Know that I believe in you. Thanks so much for tuning in, and as always, Excelsior.