Best Workout Split For Building Muscle

I’ve already talked about the best workout split for losing weight, and thought I write a quick article about choosing the best split for building muscle.

Quickly again, for those who don’t know what a “workout split” is, it is the way in which you break your workouts up. For example a split could be upper body and lower body, or you could make your split certain muscle groups (ie Chest/Arms, Back/Shoulder, Legs/Core).

A muscle building split will often have a number in-front of it, which will show how many different workouts there are before you are to repeat from the beginning. For example – a 3 day split would have three separate workouts. You would complete all three on separate days, and then go back to the first.

If your #1 goal is to build muscle and you aren’t training to lose fat, specifically for a sport, or to gain strength you will probably be looking at a minimum 3 day split.

There really isn’t a best split for building muscle, but the idea is to hit every muscle group hard every few days without over-training. Hitting a certain muscle group too much can tax the Central Nervous System (CNS) and can be counter intuitive.

I recommend lifting weights 6 days of the week max (unless you are on a special program). Depending on which split you choose you could make each day a certain muscle group, or you can just make it all continuous.

My personal favorite workout split for building muscle:

Day 1 = Chest, Biceps, Triceps
Day 2 = Lower Body, Core
Day 3 = Back, Shoulders

Another good muscle building split:

Day 1 = Chest
Day 2 = Back
Day 3 = Lower Body, Shoulders
Day 4 = Biceps, Triceps, Core

My favorite are the 3 or 4 day splits, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do a 5 day split (or even 2 although I don’t recommend that for mass building).

I should also note that when I say “shoulders” this means every aspect of the shoulder (front delt, rear delt, and trap work). Some beginners may think this means doing a lot of shoulder presses or different variates of presses, but you need to realize that to build muscle you will want to isolate individual muscle groups. When you are training back you need to think about upper back, lower back, lats – just hit it from all angles with a variety of exercises.

To be honest there are a lot of different splits that will lead to you building muscle. Don’t stress over your split – find something that works for you and work hard and smart. Get your rest, eat big, and enjoy your growth.