Somewhere between the super simple 3-day per week full body routine, and a highly detailed advanced bodybuilding split – lies an intermediate approach to hypertrophy training.
Usually this is in the form of a basic upper body / lower body training split.
It makes the most sense that after a beginning trainee has spent at least a few months training just the basic lifts on a basic 3-day full body routine that he split his workload up into more manageable bit sized pieces.
The simple separation of the extremely demanding lower body lifts from the more volume dependent upper body exercises allows the lifter to add more weapons to his upper body training arsenal in a more practical manner than simply tacking on more exercises to an already time-intensive full body routine.
For complete upper body physique development we’re going to need to increase the number of exercises beyond what we did as a novice. Unfortunately there is no upper body exercise equivalent to a Squat. No one, or even 2-3 exercises, can completely meet the needs of the beginning bodybuilder or physique oriented strength trainee.
But we aren’t necessarily at a level where we need to devote an entire training day just to “arms” or just to “shoulders.” Later on, that might become a necessity. As the trainee continues to grow and progress, the need for more and more stress also grows, and generally it becomes a practical reality that we’ll need to continue to split the body up into smaller and smaller segments.
Remember that bodybuilding isn’t the same thing as just being “big.” It’s about complete development. Little muscles that the power lifter might ignore (biceps, calves, delts, etc) all must be trained if a competitive physique is the goal.
That means that each of those smaller muscles must receive an adequate dose of both volume and effort throughout the week. It gets harder and harder to do that with every year of training advancement, and thus the need to split things up into a more detailed weekly split.
But as an intermediate, simply splitting the upper body and the lower body up allows us to start to focus a bit more on the details of the upper body without gravitating too far away from a continued focus on the “big lifts” that drive the most gains in size and strength.
Upper body sessions (lets assume 2 per week) should generally be focused heavily on the Chest and Back. These are the biggest and most visually obvious muscles in the upper body. And in training the Chest and Back, we’re also getting a somewhat hefty dose of stimulus for the biceps, triceps, and delts twice per week.
But just to make sure everything gets hit pretty thoroughly each week, we’ll have one workout that focuses a bit more on the arms and one that focuses a bit more on the shoulders – while both workouts still focus heavily on the Chest & Back.
Workout One is usually structured like this:
- Flat Bench Press (Barbell or Dumbbell)
- Heavy Row (Barbell, T-Bar, Dumbbell, Machine Rows, etc)
- Overhead Press (Barbell, Dumbbell, or Machine)
- Lat Pulldowns or Pull Ups
- Tricep Extensions (lying, overhead, cable, etc)
- Bicep Curls
Workout Two is usually structured like this:
- Incline Bench Press (Barbell or Dumbbell)
- Chins or V-Grip Pulldowns
- Dips or Close Grip Bench Press
- Rows (lighter variation with rear delt grip, rear delt emphasis)
- Side Delts (side delt raises or wide grip upright rows)
- Shrugs
So as you can see, both workouts hit the entire upper body with an emphasis on chest and back at the front end, and an emphasis on either arms or shoulders at the tail end. But again, there is a ton of overlap between the two sessions.
In my Upper / Lower for Hypertrophy Training Program I give out 3 different volume tiers to fit the needs of each individual trainee – there is a template for low, medium, and high volume for each workout.
In addition there is a detailed explanation of how to assign rep ranges to each exercises, how and when to progress each exercise within a given rep range, and how and when to rotate out rep ranges and even exercises.
If you are looking to move into an intermediate physique building program, I recommend you give the training program a look.
