Ultimate Gym Guide (Science-backed)

[copemaxingll]

Full Gym Guide

This split will consist of 3x upper frequency and 2x lower frequency. If you want to be in the gym 5 times a week and don't want to do FBEOD bullshit, this is perfect for you.

Monday: Upper
Tuesday: Rest
Wednesday: Lower
Thursday: Upper
Friday: Rest
Saturday: Upper
Sunday: Lower

Upper Day - A perfect upper day consists of 2 chest movements, 3 shoulder movements, 3 back movements, and 2 arm movements.

Lower Day - A perfect lower day consists of 2 quad movements, 2 hamstring movements, adductors, and calves.


Chest: The chest is made up of two main regions: the upper chest and the middle/lower chest. The main purpose of the chest muscle is to perform horizontal adduction, with shoulder flexion being specific to the upper chest and shoulder extension and vertical adduction to the lower chest.

Shoulder: The shoulder is made up of 3 main parts: the front, side, and rear deltoids. The front deltoid performs shoulder flexion and abduction, the side delt performs abduction, and the rear delt performs vertical and horizontal extension.

Back: The back consists of 2 regions: upper back and lats. Upper Back: The upper back contains the traps and rhomboids; their function is retracting the scapula. Lats: The lats are the muscles that add width and that wing look to your back. They function in shoulder extension and adduction.

Arms: Your arm consists of many muscles, but they can be grouped as triceps and biceps. Triceps: This group consists of three heads: the long head, medial head, and lateral head. They all have the function of extending the elbow except the long head; it has an additional function of shoulder extension. Biceps: This group consists of two heads, which both have the function of flexing the elbow.

Quads: A quad consists of four main muscles, which all extend the knee. The rectus femoris also has the secondary function of flexing the hip.

Hamstring: The hamstring consists of four main muscles, which all flex the knee. Three of them also have the function of extending the hip.

Adductors: Adductors are made up of multiple different muscles. They all have the function of adduction, while the adductor magnus also has another function of hip extension as it specifically crosses the hip.

Calves: Calves are made up of two muscles; the main function of the calf is plantarflexion as well as the gastrocnemius having some activation in knee flexion. The gastrocnemius is the main part of your calf, which is the focus of your calf training, but it connects to the knee. This means you should do calf exercises with a straight knee.



Now that we know how each muscle group works, let's structure the perfect upper and lower.

- Upper Day -

Chest: Flat Chest Flies: 2x6-8, Incline Press: 1-2x6-8 reps
The majority of your chest gets enough stimulant from chest flies, so doing 1 set is enough for incline; if you prefer 2, feel free to do 2.

Shoulders: Machine Shoulder Press: 1-2x6-8, Rear Delt Fly: 2x6-8, Machine Lateral Raise: 2x6-8
The shoulder press goes in sync with the incline: 1 set of incline, 2 sets of shoulders, and vice versa. Rear delt fly can be superset with chest flies since you will be on the same machine. Lateral raises can be done on a machine or cable; I prefer the machine since it's more stable.

Back: Lat Pulldown: 2x6-8, Close Grip Row: 2x6-8, Kelso Shrugs: 2x6-8
This is all fairly simple; you need 2 movements to fully hit your lats, a pulldown training adduction and a close-grip row training shoulder extension. Kelso shrugs fully isolates your traps and trains scapular retraction.

Arms: Preacher Curl: 2x6-8. Reverse Curl: 2x6-8, Tricep Pushdown: 2x6-8, JM Press: 1-2x6-8
For the bicep, you want to do a supinated curl like a preacher, and for the brachioradialis, you want to do a pronated curl like a reverse curl. For the triceps, you want to perform a pushdown with your upper arm stationary by your side, then additionally, to bias the medial/lateral head separately, you can do something where the shoulder is moving, like the JM press.

This is it for the upper day; every exercise can be swapped for something you prefer, but this is the most optimal for each group.

- Lower Day -

Leg Extension: 2x6-8, Leg Press: 1-2x6-8
To train the entire quad, all you need is a leg extension and a leg press. Have a low foot placement to bias the quads more.

Seated Leg Curl: 2x6-8, SLDL: 2x6-8
Training the entirety of the hamstring consists of knee flexion exercises, for which the seated leg curls are perfect and most stable, and a hinge exercise like the SLDL.

Adductor Machine: 2x6-8
To train the entirety of the adductor, you want to perform adduction, the second function of the adductor magnus. You can do a hinge exercise, which we already have, the SLDL.

Straight Leg Calf Raises: 3xFailure
Calves are the easiest and the hardest muscle group to grow since the majority of it is genetically based, but the best exercises will be any standing calf raise since the gastrocnemius is the most active. Also, don't do full ROM for calves; studies show that the calves grow the most in lengthened partials. This means the most negative part of your calf to the baseline where your foot is flat.


This is it for my gym guide Hope this helps since this is my exact split.

 

[Mob Boss]

Cool Thread

 

[Ahmed88]

1 Cardio day+ 2 rest days is optimal

 

[copemaxingll]

Cool Thread

thanks

 

[copemaxingll]

1 Cardio day+ 2 rest days is optimal

cardio is done everyday?

 

[Bipolar2Cel]

Do some isolation for abs, at least 1-2 sets of leg-HIP raises or some crunch or incline sit-up variation at the end of one of your weekly workout. Will go long ways in improving your abs and maximizing gains there, good for hip flexors too and cool muscles like Sartorius, most people have WEAK and by extension tight hip flexors. Psoas major is also a very important stabilizer of the lumbar spine.

Also hip abductor machine is just as important if not more important for aesthetics as adductors(glutes I'd argue are more important for aesthetics than adductors). Better to do both. Both are also great for hip health and not having cranky hips on squats, leg presses, deadlifts etc.

I think incline press and regular mid chest level flyes maybe are not enough for ideal lower pec gains, those bias middle + upper pecs and don't give ideal ROM and contraction of lower pecs. Some decline press(machine) variation or deep chest dips are great for more lower pec gains, and both exercises are great for the deep lengthened stretch of upper pecs. Mixing decline + incline is a simple and more WHOLE pec effective routine IMO. Maybe throw in some machine decline press in full ROM after incline and finish with some flyes, even one high rep set to failure would work wonders. Lower pecs is the most "mogging" part of the chest too.

Else looks like a OK relatively simple minimalist bodybuilding routine. 1-2 sets of wrist curls and reverse wrist curls are also a great way to get more forearms gains in, hard to develop max good forearms without those exercises. Reverse curls help some but the other two are still a good addition. Adding in this stuff is maybe 10-20 minutes more weekly time and can be supersetted with other exercises not much extra effort for vastly improved gains(IMO).

Oh and yeah kelso shrugs are indeed superior for majority of the upper trap fibers, it is also my main upper traps isolation move. Recently I added one set of vertical shrugs to failure after though just to make sure the vertical uppermost fibers of upper traps + levator scapulae get finished. Maybe another good tip. Also on kelso shrugs for maximizing UT you want to focus on retraction of clavicles at slight elevated angle and not just straight back and down, in case someone reads this and wonder how to maximize the UT activation on them, the way some do them is more middle traps + rhomboids biased.

Also I think overhead extensions are the best triceps isolation move, JM press is very inferior for the long head + it still uses front delts and chest a fair amount. Do it if you prefer it but I think OH extensions are simply the best move for isolation, then pushdowns after. Reverse curls are great and superior to hammer curls for sure, best done with max strict form many guys use too much weight and cheat on this move and also should be done with a straight bar and not EZ-bar like a lot of guys do lol, then it becomes a shitty hammer curl variation mostly and takes so much load off the forearms.

Leg extensions pro tip for max Rectus Femoris activation: Set the back pad as far as you can and lean back as much as possible, you want to minimize degrees of hip flexion to put the Rectus Femoris in a better position(minimize active insufficiency) for better RF activation and gains plus you get a better fuller stretch of the entire quads. Very important to do these with max full ROM and squeezing at the top for Vastus medialis aka teardrop muscle and maximize VMO and VLO fiber gains(good for knee stability aka knee health also)

Could write more as the bipolar ADHD autist I am passionate about this topic but yeah you get an overall thumbs up from me. And yeah seated calf raises are a troll move compared to standing straight knee ones, absolutely correct.