How To Decide Which Muscles To Work Out Together

Your goals and specific training program will impact which muscles to work out together. In my post Training for Massive Gains: Really Powerful Tips, I discuss German Volume Training (GVT) as the best lifting program for skinny people looking to gain mass. All of the information below is based on the idea that gaining mass is your goal and you are using a German Volume Training program.

What is a training split?

When you start your training program, a big question is which muscles to work out together. You want to figure out which exercises to do in the same session and how often you should do them. That’s all a training split is. It’s how you decide to segment your body for training, which types of exercises you choose for each body part, and how often you do those exercises. Below, I’ll lay out the best training split that I found.

There are an endless number of options on how to structure your splits. There are also great reasons for why each option may be best for you. Some of the most common splits I see are:

• Upper Body vs Lower Body
• Push Exercises vs Pull Exercises
• Antagonist Muscles (or Opposing Muscles)

Antagonist muscle splits are very common and often recommended for GVT programs. These are simply splits that work out muscles that have opposing jobs together. For example, biceps and triceps would be trained on the same day. I actually started with this split when I first tried to gain mass, but decided it was not the best way to accomplish my goal. However, this split does have its benefits. Most importantly, you avoid overworking a muscle or fatiguing it early, before you get to complete the exercises that are actually focused on it. Consider doing a lat pull down right after you finished an intense bicep session. Your back is probably already feeling a little tired, and you may fear that you’ll have to lift lighter to make up for the early fatigue.

Figure out what works for you

Before you copy my split, consider what works best for you.

1. You have exercises or body parts where you struggle and others where you are very strong. Don’t choose to load up your most difficult lifts on one day. That can be physically and mentally taxing, putting you at risk of quitting.
2. Think about the lifts that you absolutely dread and those that you are excited about. Again, balance those out so that you don’t have days where you just want to quit early. Early on, squats were an exercise where I struggled and I also dreaded them. Just like most skinny people, I was not the first in line on leg day. It wouldn’t make sense for me to load on another exercise on top to make those days even worse.
3. Lastly, consider the fact that GVT asks you to do 100 reps of one very intense exercise, and then follow it up with 100 more reps of another intense exercise. By the time you are on the second half of your training, your mind and body are starting to feel exhausted. Don’t save the difficult exercises for the end of your training. I wouldn’t save squats to end my lifts for the day. Chances are that I wouldn’t have the strength or mental stamina to push through.

My recommendation on muscles to work out together

After trial and error with a bunch of different splits, I’ve landed on the following pattern that I’ll explain in more detail below. The main idea is 4 focused days per week, while working out muscles that complement each other.

• Monday: Biceps and Back
• Tuesday: Chest and Triceps
• Wednesday: Quads and Hamstrings
• Thursday: Deltoids and Abs
• Friday: Rest or Clean Up Day
• Saturday: Rest or Clean Up Day
• Sunday: Rest or Clean Up Day

You probably have a lot of questions after seeing that. Keep in mind, my recommended variation of GVT is to complete one major, preferably compound, movement for each muscle group targeted, and then one 5×5 exercise that hits both.

Why I choose to work these muscles together

The reason I absolutely love this is split is that it targets muscles that already work together naturally. The exercises you perform to target one muscle group will fire off the muscles in the complementary group. This helps reduce warm up time, it eliminates saving a muscle for a day when it’s already somewhat sore, and it helps you knock out your training in 4 days per week so that you won’t fall off track when life gets in the way.

The last 3 days are “Rest or Clean Up Days”. This means that I can choose to take that day off completely. However, that’s unlikely when you’re fired up about packing on muscle. So, instead I can use that day to clean up the week. What does that mean? As focused as you are, not every day is going to be great. You might feel really bad about your effort or progress in your chest workout. There’s also a chance you had a great chest workout and the fatigue is gone, so you’re ready to hit it again. On clean up days, I choose 1-2 exercises that allow me to clean up the work I’ve done during the week and aim to do 5 sets of 5 to 10 reps each.

Example of how this all applies to my splits

Let’s use Tuesdays as an example of how this all comes together in the splits I choose. On this day, I target triceps and chest. For exercises, I choose the bench press to target my chest, skull crushers to target my triceps, and dips as a great lift to hit both. I start with chest because I find that I’m able to hit my triceps easier than my chest and I’m more successful completing skull crushers after blasting my chest than I am trying to flip that.

The great thing about this is that the bench press actually triggers involvement of the triceps, so those muscles are getting primed for their moment in the spot light as I focus on my chest first. After I push through bench press, which I’ve never been amazing at, I’m able to dominate skull crushers and finish with 5 sets of 5 reps with bodyweight dips.

What are your thoughts, questions, or comments? Let me know below.