Tip: Push, Pull, Bend, and Extend

Properly planning your workouts and lifting days around the different muscle groups can be daunting. However, breaking the body into four quadrants and thinking of how you're going to incorporate the four major movements makes programming pretty simple:

1. Upper Body Push
2. Upper Body Pull
3. Lower Body Push (Knees Bend)
4. Lower Body Pull (Hips Extend)

When planning your workouts, figure out how to incorporate a push, pull, bend, and extend and you can't lose. Dedicate one day to each movement, group them together to create an upper body day and lower body day, or fit them all in for total body training. Whichever way you choose, you need to get really strong and feel very comfortable with these four major movements.

Examples of how to break up workouts:

2-Day/Week
Upper Body Day – Push/Pull
Lower Body Day – Bend/Extend
or
Upper/Lower Day 1 – Push/Extend
Upper/Lower Day 2 – Pull/Bend

4-Day/Week
Lower Body Day 1 – Extend
Lower Body Day 2 – Bend
Upper Body Day 1 – Push
Upper Body Day 2 – Pull

You can still blast the bi's, torch the tri's, and crush the core if you want, but your program design should revolve around the push, pull, bend, and extend. These are the meat and potatoes. Everything else is just the gravy.