Pull - Push Workout

How To Work Opposing Muscle Groups On Different Days For Optimal Muscle Growth

The basic idea behind the push pull workout is to work the pulling muscles one day and work the pushing muscles another day.

Muscles with multiple actions like the legs and abs are evenly divided.

The workout's main advantage is to provide adequate rest to all of the major muscle groups of the body.

This way, the muscle have the optimal amount of rest and recovery times needed for muscle growth.

This particular training method focuses on the specific action needed to work one muscle or muscle groups that push away from the body (ie: triceps that push away from the chest) to muscles that pull toward the body (ie: biceps required to pull the weight into the body such as a row).

Let's take a look at the workout:

Day one (Monday): Chest, shoulders, triceps, and abs;

Day two (Tuesday): Legs, back, and biceps;

Day three (Wednesday): Rest.

This type of workout gives the cycle of body parts trained about 48 hours to rest. However, an alternative is to space the workouts further apart to give the targetted muscles more time to rest.

Here's another example of this kind of push pull workout with one more days rest:

Day one (Monday): Chest, shoulders, triceps, and abs;

Day two (Tuesday): Legs, and calves

Day three (Wednesday): back, and biceps.

Day four (Thursday): Rest.

You will have to keep in mind that the recovery periods will depend on your intensity levels and progress. As you improve with each of your workouts - Which you should be doing, you will need to give your body more time to recover. This is a good thing because the more rested your body is, the better your workouts will be and hence, more muscle growth.

This type of workout is combining a 3-day split weight lifting routines with the pull push workout concept. By adding in another day of rest, the muscles get an additional 24 hours to recuperate. If you find that your muscles are still sore on day three using the first pull push workout, try using the second pull push workout and you can add more muscle recuperation.

Remember, the whole idea behind push - pull workouts is about recovery. You work your push muscles one day, than work your pull muscles the other, take a day to rest and repeat. It's all about the recovery.

All the best

Blake