Episode 175: My Workout Split (and Why You May Not Want to Use It)

Choosing a workout routine doesn't have to be complicated. Learn the pros and cons of different workout splits and why your fitness level and schedule matter more than following someone else's plan.

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Transcript

Becoming MindStrong Episode 175: My Workout Split (and Why You May Not Want to Use It)


Speaker 1  0:00  
Welcome back to the Becoming Mindstrong podcast. My name is Rachel, and I'm the founder and CEO of Mindstrong. Before we dive in today's episode, I have to tell you guys a funny behind-the-scenes story. If you've been listening to the podcast for a long time, if you were to go back and listen to older episodes, you would notice that I have said we've been helping peri and postmenopausal women for almost the past decade, and the stat that I've been using is somewhere between 20 530 500 women for years now. I have been using that same stat for years, and finally, in this past week, I sat down with my team and I was like, "You guys, we have been using this number for years. There is no way with how many women we get to help in a given month. There is no way that stat is still accurate. We need to update this. So, true story behind the scenes in the past week, as of the time I'm recording this, we went back, we ran our stats. Get this, it was closer to 8000 women. We're conservatively going to call it over 7000 But man, oh man, this is what happens when you have a rapidly growing company and you have to prioritize where you put your energy. Man, did we drop the ball on keeping up with our stats. So if you hear a drastic jump in that over 3000 women to now over 7000 it's because you you'll hear me say that 3000 for years now, which I think is both heartbreaking and hilarious. So, all that said, I'm Rachel. I'm the founder and CEO of Mindstrong, where we have been helping peri and postmenopausal women for almost a decade now, over 7000 of them, and that is a conservative. So, if in today's episode, we're going to do a few things. I'm going to share with you my personal workout split, and I'm going to show you why you may or may not want to use it. If you are not currently a worker outer or you're newer to the world of workouts, we're going to start a bit zoomed out. That's how I like to teach: is a big bird's eye view, and then we'll get deeper in the weeds. Meaning, we're going to talk about what workout splits are. What does that even mean? From there, we'll talk about some options for workout splits, and then I'll share mine, and we'll talk about why you may or may not want to use it. So, what is a workout split? Very simply, a workout split is how we divide our body in a given week to make sure we hit all our body parts. Let me say that one more time. A workout split is how we divide our body in a given week to make sure we hit all our body parts. So, what does your workout look like in the name of hitting all the body parts? What body parts are we trying to hit? There are six of them, and the name of the game is that we want to hit all six in a given week if we are going to work out. They are back, chest, legs, shoulders, biceps, and triceps. In case you're driving and you can't write this down, I'm going to say it one more time: back, chest, legs, shoulders, biceps, and triceps. So that means as we design our workout split, we're going to divide up those six body parts. The ultimate goal is to make sure we're hitting all six of those in a given week. In a second, I'm going to talk you through some common workout splits, and we'll talk about the pros and cons, and then I'll tell you mine. Before we do that, let me say this up front: if you've hung out here before, you already know what I'm going to say. Nutrition, I would say, is king, but in our world, we know Queen Trump's king, right? Nutrition is number one, and I will always include that in a workout about a conversation about workouts because so many of the women who come to us say things like, "Rachel, I can't work out right now. I have an injury. I'm scared of workouts. I've never done it before. And the answer, 100% of the time, is great.

Speaker 1  3:53  
We're going to start with nutrition alone, and maybe we stay there. You can heal your metabolism. You can do all the things we're here to do: get healthy, maybe lose weight, using nutrition alone. And humans are pleasure-seeking creatures. So as we start to feel better in our body, what we're not going to do is say, "I feel incredible. Let me not do anything else. Right? For most of us, we start to say, "Huh, I'm feeling really good. My energy's up. What else can I do? And then we do our favorite-I hate the word mindset-but mindset exercise called "Do the bare minimum, where we're going to get a snowball rolling down a hill. So all that to say, if you do not work out right now, if you are newer to working out, put this in your back pocket. Still listen to it because it's information you might need one day, and know that nutrition is number one. If you are someone who works out, then this will more directly impact you for the time being. So let's talk about some common workout splits, and then I will share my personal workout split with you, and we'll talk about the pros and cons. If you are newer to working out, a very common workout split is called a full body split. What a full body split means is that you're going to do probably about one, maybe two exercises per body part in your workout. That might look like one back exercise, one chest exercise, one leg exercise, one shoulder exercise, one bicep exercise, one tricep exercise. If you did one of each, that's six exercises. That's a great beginning workout. The pros of that is when you're newer to working out, you're just not going to have the stamina to do a full workout on just your back. So a full body workout is a great way to make sure that you're hitting each body part and you're not getting so sore to the fact that you're puttering out before you can end your workout, or you're walking like a baby giraffe the next day. So if you're brand new, maybe you're doing three days a week. You're doing a full body each day. It's a fantastic way to start. The next level up of that. So if we're going to call full body workouts kind of the the entry level, the next step up would be what we call pairings, and I want to be clear about something. I'm saying the next step up. There are plenty of people who've been working out for years who do this professionally who still do pairings. Part of this is personal preference, and we'll talk about that more as we go. I like to think of it as the next step up from full body. Here's what pairings mean: certain body parts, certain exercises also incorporate other body parts. So a great example of this is back and biceps. When you're working out your back, most back exercises also use your biceps. So a lot of times people will pair back and biceps together. Another example would be chest and triceps. When I'm working out my chest, I'm also using my triceps in a lot of those exercises. So a lot of people will pair chest and triceps. So a common workout split for pairings would be back and biceps one day, chest and triceps one day, shoulders and legs one day. Now, when you're working out your legs, you're not really working out your shoulders. That one's just kind of by by default. We need somewhere to put your shoulders, so we're going to put it with your legs. So, if you are going to work out three, four days a week, you might do a workout split that looks like back and biceps one day, chest and triceps one day, legs and shoulders one day. Then we can repeat the cycle as needed, making sure we're taking rest days in between. The most advanced workout split, and this is going to lead us to the conversation of what I do. Then we'll talk deeper about pros and cons of each. Real quickly, if you are loving my content, I want to invite you to apply for a free one-to-one strategy session with my incredible all-female team.

Speaker 1  7:46  
On your session, we'll talk about where you are, where you want to be, a game plan to bridge that gap, and see if one-to-one coaching is a fit. You can use the link below to access the two-minute application, and we'll see you on your session. I like to do one body part per day. Now, here's why you may or may not want to do this. There are two reasons that I like to do one body part per day. Here's what I mean by that. First, then we'll get into the reasons. I do a back day, I do a chest day, I do a leg day, I do a shoulder day, and then I do an arm day. And on arm day I combine biceps and triceps. So for me that's five days a week of working out. If I do a sixth day, I'll just pick one of those and repeat it. Usually chest day because chest day is the best day. It's my personal favorite. So back day, chest day, leg day, shoulder day, arm day, which combines bicep, triceps. There are two reasons why this is my go-to workout split, and I've been doing this for years. Are there times I do pairings? Yes, I'll talk about when and why in a minute here. I love a full body part per day for two reasons. Number one, I've been weight training for a very long time, so my body has the stamina to do a full hour, hour and a half back day to do a full hour, hour and a half chest day. Could I do that when I very first started my first year? Absolutely not. I would have puttered out after 20 minutes, not an hour to an hour and a half. So I love leaving it all on the floor. Right? I love at the end of my workout feeling like, holy cow, I just worked my back. I got nothing else to give. I've put in my all. The second reason is just how my brain works. I have a brain, and most humans have completion brains, right? Human brains love completion. Mine is is next level. The running joke with anyone who knows me is like, if I'm focused on a task, the world can burn, and I won't notice because I'm in it to win it, so for me personally, and the way my brain works is, it's really hard for me to divide focus. Meaning, if I were going to do back day and arm day, my brain does not like stopping a back day to switch to arms, and there is no validity to that. It is not scientific. It is how Rachel's brain works. I want to go hard on back until my complete workout is done. I don't want to switch gears halfway through. So my workout split is one body part per day. If you are new, you probably don't want to use that workout split for all the reasons we spoke about, right? You will put it out 20 minutes in. It's not going to be feasible early on to do a full body part in one day for a full workout unless your workout's shorter. If you're more advanced, it might be a workout split worth testing. Now, part of this is how new or advanced you are in this. The other part, as you heard me reference, is personal preference. I know plenty people who are advanced and they're like, oh my gosh, a full back day sounds so boring. I like doing half back, half bicep. What they'll typically do is do it twice in a week. So that workout split we spoke about: back and biceps, chest and triceps, legs and shoulders. They'll do those three days, take a rest day, repeat the cycle. Right? You can do this more than once in a week. So when deciding on your workout split, there are two things that come into play. Thing number one is your level. If you're newer, if you're more advanced. Thing number two is straight up personal preference. Now I'll add a thing number three in here. You heard me reference that I've been doing the one body part per day for years and years. Occasionally I switch it up. When would I switch it up? Simply a matter of time. It is logistics.

Speaker 1  11:26  
If I have a day or I have a week rather where I'm like, oh, I am not going to be able to get my five to six days in. I typically aim for five. I need to. I need to get in what I can. Then I'll go to a split. It's like, all right. I know this week I'm only getting three days in, I want to make sure I hit all the body parts. I'm going to go to back and biceps, chest and triceps, legs and shoulders in the name of hitting all the body parts. It is rare. I've been doing this long enough to know how to, even if I'm traveling, figure out my schedule to hit my body parts. And in a pinch, it's in my back pocket. So to bullet point today, number one, nutrition is number one. If you don't currently work out, don't worry about it. Focus on nutrition alone. As we get the snowball rolling down a hill, we can always add them in later, or maybe we don't. And weight training is the most bang for your buck when it comes to workouts, so it's a good idea if or when we can swing it. Number two, if you are new to the world of working out, a lot of people like to start with full body. You're going to hit each body part once in a day. Doing it three to four times a week is fantastic. The step up from that would be pairings. Popular pairings are back and biceps, chest and triceps, shoulders and legs. You don't have to do those pairings. Those are just the common ones because those body parts work together. As you get more advanced, you might want to experiment with doing one body part per day. At the end of the day, most important thing I'm going to say: there's no right, wrong, better, best. Workout splits are one of those conversations that I think people get into paralysis by analysis. It's like I don't know what to do, so I'm going to do nothing. If you did the absolute bare minimum, if you did 20 minutes of legs because you want a booty and you think they look that looks fun and we don't know what we're doing yet and that's okay, if you did 20 minutes of exercises that you thought looked fun, you are golden. This is what we talk about when we talk about getting the snowball rolling down a hill. It is not zero to 100 It is not. I'm not going to do anything because I don't know how to do it perfectly. We jump in. We get the snowball rolling down a hill. We trust the fact that we are intelligent human beings who will continue to grow and get better as we learn more, and we only focus on baby steps and momentum because, as pleasure-seeking creatures, that is human nature. The snowball will roll down a hill. We will get better, and that is how we eventually create a sustainable lifestyle. For more information on Mind Strong Fitness, or to apply for a free one-to-one strategy session with my incredible all-female team. Visit www.mindstrongfitness.com.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai