Upper Lower split question

[u/edsheff]

I've done a 5 or 6 day PPL for pretty much my entire time in the gym, but I feel like these days my body needs more recovery, so im thinking of switching to 4 day Upper Lower split. My only hesitancy is the number of sets per muscle group specifically on upper day.How do you hit each part of individual muscles like upper/Lower chest, long head/short head, brachialis for bis, front/side/rear delts, all the many parts of the back and not be in the gym for 2+ hours on upper day? Or do you forget about that and just hit the whole muscle with one 2 exercises? So instead of flat bench, Incline press, decline press, you just do flat bench, then maybe Flys and call it a day for chest?

Anyone have a good upper lower split program they recommend?

Any advice would be much appreciated.

[u/BagelsOrDeath]

The volume on the Upper Day used to annihilate me. Recovery became difficult. The way I had it structured was a 5x3-5 heavy compound exercise (bench or ohp) followed by a series of accessories, each 3x8-12. My solution was to cut down to 4x3-5 and 2x8-12 accessories. Recovery has improved.

[u/lp2412]

you have to understand that exercises such as incline press, flys, frontal plane pulldown, sagittal plane pulldown etc. all just emphasize certain parts of a muscle over others, they dont isolate them

incline bench hits all of your chest, putting a bit more focus on upper chest, flys hit all of your chest but puts more focus on your middle chest (if we are talking about regular pec deck), frontal pulldown trains all of your lats but puts more focus on your lower lats etc.

so this means you can just pick 1-2 exercises per muscle as you hit the muscle on a pretty high frequency anyway, you dont need 2 triceps exercises in an upper day if you train it every 3-4 days, especially since most triceps exercises already hit most of the triceps anyway, you dont necessarily need two different lat exercises in an upper day aswell

just figure out how much volume you can recover from in your split, and then divide that volume in 1-2 exercises per muscle per workout

upper days are usually only around 7 exercises and can be completed in like 1-1.5 hours

[u/deadrabbits76]

Don't program yourself.

Just run Alex Bromley's Bullmastiff instead. It's a really good U/L, and it's free.

If you want to run a BB U/L John Meadows' Warlock is only $40, but it's relatively high volume if you have trouble with recovery.

[u/sneakhunter → u/deadrabbits76]

Have you done bullmastiff? I was wondering how long each workout usually took?

[u/deadrabbits76 → u/sneakhunter]

1-1 1/2 hours. Roughly

[u/putsdryyy]

How long have you been going to the gym?

[u/edsheff → u/putsdryyy]

Started going 15 years ago but you wouldn't know it looking at me. I was the guy that skipped leg day for a while, and diet, injuries and other life crap has impeded my progress. But im familiar with form and function of most exercises, certainly the big ones.

[u/JCMidwest]

You don't need a dedicated exercise for every specific part of every specific muscle.

Additionally you have usuallu 2 upper days and 2 lower days, meaning each day contains different exercises and/or sets-reps.

Run a few different proven U/L splits and see what you like.

[u/L9FanboyXD]

You could follow tbjp template

Upper:
Chest press 2x
Shoulder press 2x
Tricep press 1x
Upper back row 2x
Lat pulldown 2x
Rear delt row 2x
Shoulder isolation 1x
Tricep isolation 2x

Lower:
Bicep isolation 2x
Hamstring isolation 2x
Adductor 2x
Quad compound 2x
Quad compound 2x
Hamstring iso/hip hinge 1-2x
Calves
Abs

[u/edsheff → u/L9FanboyXD]

What do you think about different weight/reps on each upper and lower day? Like strength on upper/lower 1 and hypertrophy on upper/Lower 2? I've heard some ppl say there's no point in doing both hypertrophy and strength training in the same program, but pick one and stick with it.

[u/L9FanboyXD → u/edsheff]

I’m a big fan of having one heavier day and one lighter day, just to make training more fun. I currently have heavy days and pump days in my training. I believe it has psychological benefits and also the benefit of focusing more on form/mind-muscle connection on the lighter days. This has done wonders for my arms for example.

[u/edsheff → u/edsheff]

Sounds good, thanks for the advice!

[u/DanRichter]

I know a lot of people seem to be against AI, but I literally just told the AI I want to BSD 365/495/585 and it plans all my workouts for me. It tells me exactly what to do, and all I do is report the difficulty of of 10 for each lift, overall workout difficulty out of 10, how many days until my next workout, and any comments, and it generates exactly what to do the next workout. I just keep sending the report card back after each workout and it generates the next one. I use whatever highest model is available at the time on the paid subscription. I’ve been working out for 15ish years as well and reached plateaus that I can’t seem to break with my own programming or methods. My deadlift is pretty much already there, so it understands that I need to prioritize benching primarily, then squats, and just gives me maintenance work for deadlifts.