Frequency & The Power-Building Split

For those of you that follow my Power Building routine, or at least my writings on power building type training, you know that I’ve come to favor a 5-day training routine for my clients.  Of course you can split things up into a 3-day or a 4-day routine (and those work well for many), but I feel like to really get the best combination of size, strength, and physique development, the 5-day split is optimal.  In my standard program there are 2 lower body focused days and 3 upper body focused days.

The problem?

A lot of my clients don’t have 5-days a week to train.  And I understand, as I often don’t either.

Several years ago, I decided to test out extending my “training week” beyond the traditional Monday-Sunday 7 day week, which is a purely societal construct anyways.  So instead of trying to cram in 5 training days into a 7-day week, I simply fit my preferred split into a schedule that worked for me.

What I started doing was this:

• Mon:  Bench + Chest/Bicep
• Weds:  Deadlift + Hamstrings, Calves
• Fri:  Press + Delts, Triceps
• Mon:  Upper Back, Traps
• Weds:  Squats + Quads, Calves
• Fri:  Repeat Schedule

On certain weeks I would train on either Saturday or Sunday if I wanted to.   And that shortened the split down by a few days, but most of the time I simply adhered to the schedule above.

What did I find?

I found that I had outstanding results.  I got stronger and I grew like a weed.  And almost as important, I felt GREAT going into each training session – physically and mentally.  Always refreshed and always hungry to train my ass off on that days lift / muscle group. I rarely missed my target numbers on my big lifts and made progress on all my assistance exercises as well.

This schedule has now become my “default” training program for most of the year.

As I worked out the kinks with the split I started implementing it with clients and I found similar success with many of them.  Not only were my clients growing and getting stronger – they were having fun in the gym, they never felt beat up, and this led them to train harder and harder and get even better results.

One thing I’ve done with this split is make sure that I “sneak” some added frequency in there in order to make sure that each muscle group (not necessarily each lift) is actually being stimulated more often than it would appear at first glance.   This is less important for me, as I respond well to lower frequency, but very important for some of my clients.

The heavy Bench Press is trained on the chest/bicep day , usually first in the workout, followed by Incline Pressing and usually Dips to finish. Often times we have clients start with Inclines and do Bench Press second.  So that takes care of the Chest, but also serves as a pretty good second day stimulus for the Triceps  and also the Delts (especially if Inclines get hit first).  And then later in the week when we directly train the triceps, I do lots of extension type work, but also almost always incorporate Dips or Close Grip Benching, both of which hit the Chest pretty hard, serving as it’s second day stimulus.

So now we have Chest, Delts, and Triceps each getting hit twice during the “week”, each one once really hard,  and each once more indirectly.

On the Deadlift Day, we obviously do Deadlifts (hamstrings, quads, and back) but I often precede or follow that up with Box Squatting.  So while this is a hamstring dominant leg workout, the quads get hammered pretty hard too.  And then we have a Quad dominant workout later in the week which usually has plenty of squatting and leg pressing, both of which hit the hamstrings for a second time in the week.

The Back and Traps are hit on the Deadlift Day, but both are hit later in the week too with a more direct, higher volume session that involves lots of things like Chins, Rows, Shrugs, etc.  And in turn the high volume Back workout serves as the indirect stimulus for the Biceps which are usually trained after the Chest workout.

The body part split gets a lot of hate now days for not delivering enough training frequency, but that is really a myth.  Sure if you try to go to some weird extreme and work each muscle group totally in isolation, then yes, frequency is low and results will be terrible.

But nobody does that.  Does anyone “do quads” by simply doing leg extensions?  Does anyone “do chest” by strictly hitting the pec-deck?  The reality is that most people hit multiple muscle groups every time they train, even if the focus of the day happens to be fairly narrow.

It’s a straw man argument.

The truth is that most body part splits can deliver adequate frequency as long as you remember, it’s all about exercise selection!!!!  

Being intentional about what exercises you choose ensures that muscle groups are stimulated more often, and this can be the case whether you want to perform your 5 workouts inside of a traditional 7 day week, or if you want to extend things out like I do.

I can hear many of you already up in arms about the lack of Squat, Bench, and Deadlift frequency on a plan like this.  And yes, in some cases it may be less than once per week for the actual competitive movement.  But remember, if the goal is added muscle mass and physique development – you don’t have to build your training around the Squat, Bench, and Deadlift.  If you are a power lifter, then you do.

In bodybuilding, no one cares about your total.   So it’s a question of priority.

In fact, I have several more advanced clients who do very little Squatting, Benching, and Deadlifting because mass and physique are the primary goals and we have found that those exercises are not the best for them at this stage of their training.  But that’s another article for another day.

Interested in the full Power Building routine?  Go here:

The KSC Method for Power Building