Bigger Stronger Leaner

Tip: Drop The Bro Splits If You're Over 40

Still training one body part a day? There's a better plan. Check it out.

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Grown Men Don't Need Bro Splits

You're not 15 anymore. The traditional bro split where you train one body part each workout (usually 5 workouts a week) isn't efficient or effective, especially for an adult with a job who actually communicates with real-live women in their non-pixilated form.

Your muscles recover in about two days, so why let them go fallow for a whole week? Besides, what happens if life intervenes and you miss a day or two one week? That mucks up the whole schedule and you might not train the same body part for another 8 to 10 days instead of 7.

A Split That Makes More Sense

You're much better off doing an upper body/lower body split where you work out 4 days (or even 6 days) a week:

  • Monday: Lower Body
  • Tuesday: Upper Body
  • Wednesday: Off
  • Thursday: Lower Body
  • Friday: Upper Body
  • Saturday: Off
  • Sunday: Off

As Charles Staley pointed out in his The Single Most Effective Workout Split, this upper/lower split does a couple of things:

It makes the best use of time. Since muscles recover in about two days, muscles trained on Monday should be trained again on Wednesday. If you don't, you're losing ground.

You get to train muscles more often with fewer workouts. With a bro split, you work out 5 times a week and each muscle gets hit once. With an upper/lower split, you work out 4 times a week and each muscle gets worked twice.