Geschatte leestijd: 3 minutenWhen you engage in strength training, you can choose a schedule and training program that fits your goals. There are total-body workout schedules and split schedules.
When performing a training program that serves as a total body workout, you train your entire body in one day. For beginners, this is a great way to introduce the body to resistance training. Also ideal for people with limited time for training days. If you have more training days available and want to give your body more rest after each workout and do more for each muscle group during each training session, you can opt for a split training program. There are various variations of both training programs, which we will further explore below.
Split Training
A split training essentially does what it says: it splits the workouts over the available days. This division can be furthered into muscle groups, lower body and upper body, or pull exercises and push exercises. A two-day split schedule could look like this:
Day 1: Chest muscles, back muscles, shoulders, biceps and triceps
Day 2: Quadriceps, hamstrings, calf muscles and abdominal muscles.
If you can train for 3 days, a 3-day split schedule could look like this:
Day 1: Chest muscles, biceps
Day 2: Quadriceps, hamstrings, calves and abdominal muscles
Day 3: Back muscles, shoulders and triceps
You can fill in the variations and distributions you want for the split schedules, as long as all muscle groups are trained during the week and there is sufficient rest between workouts.
Circuit Training
If you use a circuit training program, you perform multiple exercises without rest for the entire body. This is often applied to athletes who want to train their entire body in a short period along with their overall endurance. The exercises are performed consecutively, and a circuit often consists of 10 to 15 exercises. The time spent on each exercise is approximately 1 minute. Depending on the available time, you can decide whether to perform the circuit once or multiple times, so that you perform each exercise once or more than once. Due to the short time between exercises, you also train your conditioning.
Don’t forget that with each training program variation, your nutrition is essential for muscle growth and recovery.
Supersets
A commonly heard variant to increase intensity in your training program is supersets. Supersets are a combination of 2 exercises that you perform consecutively without rest. From supersets, several variations can be derived. For example, you can do the superset for a specific muscle group or for opposing muscle groups, the antagonists superset.
Example of a muscle group-specific superset: bench press followed immediately by dumbbell fly.
Example of an antagonists superset: bench press followed immediately by pull-ups without rest between exercises.
After each set (so 1 + 1 exercise), take a rest. Often with supersets, you do the compound exercise first and then the isolation exercise.
Trisets
Another variation on supersets is trisets. Here, you do 3 exercises without rest, one after the other. When doing trisets, you don’t rest between the 3 exercises until you have completed them all. Then you often take slightly more rest than usual and start with the next trisets.
Giant Sets
Giant sets involve performing multiple exercises in a row. The similarity to circuit training is very close, with the difference being that with circuit training, you often train multiple muscle groups, while with giant sets, you train only 1 muscle group. On average, you choose 5 to 6 exercises to perform for 1 muscle group.
Dropsets
If you really want to maximize your muscle effort, then get to know dropsets. When performing dropsets, you continue after ‘failure’ with lighter weight until you can’t continue anymore. You do each set until failure. It is important to use the right weights for this. After completing the first set with difficulty, take a weight that is 20% lower and do as many repetitions as possible without resting. Repeat this 4 times or more.
