If you're personally wondering what Split you should be doing at the gym you can read and listen about my experiences with my split and see if it helps you at all! I personally have been doing the PPLxArnold split for about 4 months now. What this means is that on the first 3 days of my split they will go as follows, Push, Pull, and Legs. I have been over what these mean on my definitions page in depth but I will summarize each quickly. Push days consist of Pressing movements meaning that I will be working mainly front deltoids, side deltoids, triceps and chest. Pull days consist of pulling movements that will put a bias on a large amount of different muscles in my back, my biceps, and also rear deltoids. Lastly, legs this day consist of hitting legs, I usually will ot bias hamstrings or quadriceps on leg days but sometimes it is necessary if a certain muscle group is still sore, but on leg days I am doing leg movements, these like I said will mainly work quadriceps or quads, hamstrings, calves, glutes, and other parts of the legs but like I said we have already been over what those mean but I would like to elaborate more on the “Arnold” part of my split this time around.
The Arnold split is named after a famous bodybuilder and multiple time Mr.Olympia Champion named Arnold Schwarnegger and and is modeled after one of the splits that he personally did, and is most famous for doing this split. One well known denefit of this split is people have widely accepted that it stimulates accelerated growth of the arm musscles since there is a whole day dedicated them, but we will get to that later on. The first day of this split is Chest and Back, this is a very large change from the standard PPL split because these two main muscle groups are hit first, and usually hit the hardest during the PPL split but instead in this split you hit both of these very large muscle groups in the same day. One thing that I personally like about this day is that while you are working your Chest and Back you get slight stimulation in your Biceps and Triceps as well. Some workouts that you could do on these days include Bench Pressing, T Bar Rows, Incline Pressing with Dumbells or a Machine, Lat Pulldowns and many more. Next Up in the Arnold Split is Arms, and Yes all of your Arms. On this day we will focus on Biceps, Triceps, Sholders, and on some occasions I will isolate Forearms on this day. This day is a very large factor in Arm Growth as in the PPL split most of the time by the point in your workout where you are isolating your arms you have already expending a lot of energy on your compound lifts. On the contrary I personally feel that on these days I am able to go a lot heaveier and do more volume on my arms and personally feel that theese days have helped grow my arms immensely. Some workouts that you can do on these days incude Standing Bicep Curls, Preacher Curls, V Bar Pushdowns, Skull Crushers, Shoulder Press, Lat Raises, and many many more. Lastly we are back to Leg Day, and just like in the PPL Split Leg days are Simply for legs. As I stated earlier some people will put a bias on a certain muscles group each day such as biasing the Glutes, Hamstrings, or Quads but I personally do not do that at this time unless I feel a muscle group needs more rest but I don’t think that I need a full rest day. Again, some workouts that we can do on leg days include Leg Extensions, Bulgarian Split Squats, Seated Calf Raises, RDL’s, Barbell Squating, and so many more.
Now that we have coverd the Arnold Split we can further elaborate on what some of the expected benefits are and why I personally switched to this PPLxArnold split. I after having done the PPLxArnold Split for a decent length of time now I can confidently say that I will be sticking with it as I am progressing at a steady rate and am happy with the results both hypertrophically and strength wise. I say this because I defitiely have noticed a difference in strength and size of my Arms, which is a result of the Arnold split as we covered earlier but I still like having my Back and Chest days separate sometimes as well, I say this because when bench pressing you use your Lats a good bit and this can preexausht them and make you rely on other muscles while you are trying to work your already tired lats on those Chest/Back days in the Arnold Split. All in all I am not a Professional and I have only been lifting for a little over a year so please to anyone reading this keep that in mind. What I do want to make a point of is that no matter what stage of lifting or working out you are at you will want to find a split that aligns with your personal goals, whether that be strength, hypertrophy, or even both you have to get in the gym and do your own reseach to find what you like and what you think will help you achieve your goals.