The bottom line with any workout routine is to get your ass to the gym and do it. You can come up with the most innovative plan of all time but it means shit if you fail to execute it. With that in mind, keeping it semi-simple and even interchangeable will give you the advantage to easily make up for missed body parts and or days.
One of the most basic routines is the ‘push – pull’ and it splits the body parts into how they are worked. For example, when you work chest with pressing movements, you are pushing the weight off. Then when you are working biceps, you’re pulling the weight towards you.
Here’s the breakdown for a three-day routine:
DAY 1 – PUSH
Chest, Triceps
DAY 2 – PULL
Back, Biceps
DAY 3 – PUSH
Legs, Shoulders
If you have more days available to train during the week, then you can do that twice with a rest day in the middle on the fourth day. Here’s another variation if you may not have the days open, but can commit to an extended stay at the gym once you’re there:
DAY 1 – PUSH
Chest, Shoulders, Triceps
DAY 2 – PULL
Back, Biceps, Legs
Since you hit the entire body in just two days, a rest day right after them would be the way to go. Then you can repeat it and train everything twice in a week.
The problem with training three body parts in a single day is that the second and third will not be as strong as the first. So a good idea is to mix things up and start with a different one each time. Another good aspect of the two-day routine is the pull day and how training legs hard will not pre-exhaust your back or biceps. The same can’t be said for the push day, however, since the triceps are going to be heavily taxed as a secondary muscle working chest and shoulders, let alone isolating them later in the same workout.
That is why this type of workout is not for beginners. If you’re going to try it, you should at least have some type of experience with the weights.
It can be modified to doing legs alone on the third day, as that body part can be time consuming and taxing. So you would have a much easier workout on days two and three after kicking yourself in the ass on the first one back after resting for a few days.
This can also come into play depending on what time of the day you train. If it’s a day off from work, then take advantage of that and do the push workout then. And that will leave you two shorter workouts to perform either before or after work, depending on when you like to go to the gym.
Some of us are morning people; others rather work out at the end of the day. So this gives you some options as to what body parts are trained when it’s most convenient for you, schedule-wise.