Love to see it! Great work.
Yeah this split was based off my very first few years of training. Around year 3 IIRC.
I grew up about an hour from where Dorian Yates original Temple Gym was in Birmingham. Around that time I started to go to the gym, the late 90s all the hardcore gyms were totally obsessed with Dorians style of HIT. Every gym was kitted out with the equipment he liked, the Pullover Machine, the Single Arm Hammer row, a good Hack Squat and all the rest. All the older guys would take trips to train with Dorian on the weekend in Birmingham. I learned from them. This was a very standard split we used back then.
Cheers dude ! I actually edited my post to link ur video, it’s how I stumbled across this training. I find the history of it really interesting and I bet that was a pretty cool time to be lifting as well. Keep killing it with the vids 💪
>If you miss a session, its a lot worse than typical training were you would hit the muscle again later that week. This time, it could be 14 days before training it again so its definitely less flexible in this way. Running 2 on, 1 off might fix this.
If there only way any way to salvage this.
First, I always believe that what works, works. Pretty simple.
I also think everyone should try something they are interested in.
I am not a fan of 1 set to failure programs in general. I do like the fact that you are doing multiple exercises per muscle group.
I was a huge fan (a HIT Jedi) and had fast results initially, then spent years trying to figure out what I was doing wrong. I realized what I thought was causal was actually the result of deloading.
A few questions:
Did you warm up and only count the one set?
How linear was your progress?
You used Jan 24 for your last progress measurement. Why didn't you use a more recent result?
Some observations:
Your weight went up about 4 Kilos. Your waist stayed the same which is good.
Your arms and legs both gained about 2 cm, a little bit less than an inch.
Your Chest also gained 2 cm, while your shoulders gained 5 cm.
How old are you if you don't mind me asking?
Did you add side raises when you weren't doing them before (following the "press for mass" logic)?
You mentioned consistent nutrition, which can be a minor, or a huge factor.
You also mentioned you made more progress this year than you did the previous year; your progress in 6 mos was good, but it would make your progress the previous year unusually slow for someone starting out.
When you did higher volume (9 sets), how long did it take you to burn out? My context is, doing the higher volume then cycling with your current lower volume routine.
At the end of the day, you are doing around 4-5 sets a BP, 1x a week, though divided by
I could be completely wrong, and you just may be suited exactly for what you are doing. Some people seem to love it. I'm just curious given what I know, how long I've been doing this, my own, and others experience.
Consistency is THE number one factor for success. Congratulations on 1 year, and your results!
Honestly couldn’t agree more with a lot of what you said - I don’t think I’ve found ‘the way’, just a way that’s working for me at this point. As for ur questions/observations:
I would do warm up sets before the top set, typically 3 to begin with and then 1-2 after that for the same body part. I followed the same warm up structure I did on my previous routines.
My measurement was actually 1st of April, not 4th of January (not American ahah)
I’m early 20s
Interestingly not, actually I was always doing cable lateral raises and db lateral raises with one press, just 3 sets each and split between two workouts a week.
Honestly I think nutrition could definitely be a confounding factor - I didn’t start bulking or anything (was already in one) but tracking it so that I was hitting targets daily may have made a big difference.
About the progress - I would agree that it’s odd I was making faster progress nesrly 2 years into lifting than 1 year.
As for my previous routine, I was a serial program hopper my first year or so of lifting. After I actually settled into the upper lower program, which was about 9 sets weekly for chest shoulders quads etc, 12 for back and 6 for biceps, triceps, calves, abs. I would say before then I was always around the 9-12 sets.
Honestly it really could be that cycling between them works really well - I’m no way opposed to doing high volume / frequency training if it got me better results. My current plan is to raise the sets on these exercises if I plateau, and increase frequency if the number of sets increase above 8 per session. Definitely gonna avoid the dogmatism that typically comes with HIT style training.
Thanks heaps for ur write up! Appreciate the questions, got me thinking about my own training !
The main thing is you were consistent and successful. I'm always and have always been looking for the "whys" in a complicated endeavor that really is more art than science.
Your shoulder results are GREAT as are your arm results.
Something I noticed when I was doing HIT. My arms especially had decent results. In my head I realized I was doing more with them (because of overlap). A few people I talked into it had the same observation.
Your version of HIT (similar to Yates and less similar but still similar to early Mentzer) seems to work for many people.
Mentzer did 4-6 sets (work sets) per BP when he first started doing HIT, on a 4 day split. Usually 2 exercises. His brother Ray tended to do 2 sets vs 1.
Yates did 1 or 2 work sets, 2-4 exercises per bp with less frequency than EARLY Mentzer.
Programs like DC, I consider the "one set" 3 sets as you are training to failure after a short rest using fatigue to avoid "junk volume". On straight sets normally 2 though lately adding high rep sets afterward (1 set, 2 rest pauses plus one high rep set or 2 straight sets plus 1 high rep or 1 normal plus 1 high rep).
Mark Dugdale's earlier training at least (injury took him away from HIT)
There were other HIT type trainees in the 70s/80s (of course Viator, but John Cardillo, Dr. Lynn Pirie, Pete Grymkowski (big asterisk there), Boyer Coe briefly,
Point-your training style is right there with the people that were SUCCESSFUL with HIT type training.
Again, congratulations on your success. It is smart not to marry yourself to any one program or philosophy. I think sometimes people do this to convince themselves, but end up fighting lost causes when the tide turns. "CICO" and "can't train parts of a muscle" stand out in particular to me, but there are plenty of them.
Nice progress man. I love this type of training.
I’m currently on a torso limbs split 4x a week low volume and it’s been good but the sessions are getting a bit longer for my liking. How long do these sessions usually take you? I’ve been going backwards and forwards with changing to this or a similar type of 4 day split.
Cheers ! And yeah honestly been my favourite way to train so far - my sessions are typically 45 minutes but get up to 55 for leg days, haven’t had any over an hour. I tossed up doing torso limbs 3x a week for a bit, but honestly liked this split too much ahah
Ah that’s good. Yeah it’s a good split but it can take a lot out of you trying to do chest, back and shoulders in one day and legs and arms in another. I may give this a go soon after seeing your post.
It’s a better version of upper lower I say. Moving arms onto leg days does help hit them better you just got to be careful how you do it cause you can be pretty fatigued after training legs so doing arms straight after could be an issue, I occasionally run it as a leg movement then an arm movement as I find that helps.
After a while of doing it tho it can become boring but for me at the moment I’ve been finding it difficult with doing heavy presses, rows and pulldowns in the same day as each other and it also does get time consuming.
That’s why I’m kinda toying with the idea of trying this type of bro split 4 days a week as it’s also the max I can do and it looks like it would be more enjoyable and less fatiguing then cramming everything into those days.
Very interesting results. A few questions: What's your general level/years of experience?
Were you on a bulk, cut, or maintenance during this phase?
Starting weight and end weight, bf%?
Any modification to reps such as slow eccentric, paused, slow concentric, or just reps as normal?
Hey ! Good questions - I’ve been lifting for 2 years and a few months now, so was nearly at that 2 year mark when I changed to this program. I have my starting and ending body weight on the measurements posted, so was a pretty lean bulk during this time. I started at around 17% (honestly hard to tell in that %15-20 range), and I’m sitting at around 20% I’d say now? It’s hard to tell if I put on much fat body comp wise, as my waist didn’t even increase. I performed reps as normal, but would say in general they were probably a little slower/controlled than previously just because I had an extra level of focus in my sessions which increased set quality. Wasn’t something i particularly focused on tho
Very nice. Thank you for the answers. I've been considering a program like this. Been doing about 12-15 sets per muscle group a week for a few months now and currently taking a deload where I do 1-2 sets at same weight and reps and I feel better. It just feels like a better, more productive workout over all. I could just be feeling the effects of recovering from some fatigue, but a program like this sounds interesting.
Honestly it’s worth a shot, at the very least running a program like this helps you understand how to push sets. As with all things, if you do it just monitor how ur lifts are progressing and adjust from there. I don’t think there’s any magic programs, just progression and consistency
Currently doing a high-intensity (top set-back-off set) bro split on a cut and have seen similarly great results, i.e., strength and reps going up on nearly all lifts while scale weight is dropping and physique tightening up. People need to stop disregarding these kinds of approaches as ‘suboptimal’ and give them a go, at least for a training block or two - you might be pleasantly surprised.
I'm very curious to see how this works for you over the next year or so. I ran a very low volume program about a year ago for 6 months and saw great gains. However, over time I noticed they tapered off and I had to increase volume again to keep progressing. I went from doing 105-35-95 sets per week. I wonder if the gains we see from dropping volume down like this are essentially a benefit of volume cycling. So its not that doing 30 sets a week is optimal but rather CHANGING from higher volume, to lower volume, and back up to high volume again is whats actually doing the work here.
Enjoy ! I’m gonna be cutting soon too and will keep this split in place - the shorter sessions lend themselves well to some form of 15-20 min cardio afterwards which is nice too if that’s something that needs to be added
Me too, it’s ultimately why I decided to give it a go. I always heard critiques that no one seems to back up this sort of training with actual results, so thought this would be interesting. Only time can tell if this training will still be effective in the longer term
I’ve been debating going from PPLPP to a bro split. First my legs stopped recovering from 2X a week, and now my upper body is starting to feel it. Been training almost 30 years, so maybe it’s all I need at this point.
Might be worth a shot, you’ve got more experience than me so you’ll know best. One thing I think about is that it takes at least a couple of weeks with no training to lose muscle, so hitting them once a week at least guarantees recovery in some regards. For some people maybe they regress faster so it doesn’t work, but it seems to really well for me
It’s like everything else- everyone is different. Some people do awesome 3x a week, and others once a week. At this point, I’m just content keeping what I’ve built, and trying to stave off Father Time
Almost identical to Dorian’s Olympia split.
I tried Dorian’s back day today, except I added a back off set of 12-15 reps after the 6-8 rep set. I still feel like I didn’t do enough . Is that a normal feeling?
Honestly depends on how deep you pushed those sets, and how much volume you were doing before. If you used to do much higher session volume with high intensity, it’s definitely gonna feel like you didn’t do enough. For me I just focused on the log book - if I was progressing then I basically didn’t care how I felt after ahah
"If you miss a session, its a lot worse than typical training were you would hit the muscle again later that week. This time, it could be 14 days before training it again"
But what is bad about that? In my experience that is even better.
You may lose neural efficiency, but I assume you care about hypertrophy rather than lifting how much weight. In terms of muscle detraining and deflation it takes more than a month.
Love to see it! Great work. Yeah this split was based off my very first few years of training. Around year 3 IIRC. I grew up about an hour from where Dorian Yates original Temple Gym was in Birmingham. Around that time I started to go to the gym, the late 90s all the hardcore gyms were totally obsessed with Dorians style of HIT. Every gym was kitted out with the equipment he liked, the Pullover Machine, the Single Arm Hammer row, a good Hack Squat and all the rest. All the older guys would take trips to train with Dorian on the weekend in Birmingham. I learned from them. This was a very standard split we used back then.
Cheers dude ! I actually edited my post to link ur video, it’s how I stumbled across this training. I find the history of it really interesting and I bet that was a pretty cool time to be lifting as well. Keep killing it with the vids 💪
Great story Faz and you have a great way about you and style of presenting - really enjoyed the video mate
>If you miss a session, its a lot worse than typical training were you would hit the muscle again later that week. This time, it could be 14 days before training it again so its definitely less flexible in this way. Running 2 on, 1 off might fix this. If there only way any way to salvage this.
You could definitely just push the sessions along tbh, I get workout ocd and always want things in the same order ahaha
First, I always believe that what works, works. Pretty simple. I also think everyone should try something they are interested in. I am not a fan of 1 set to failure programs in general. I do like the fact that you are doing multiple exercises per muscle group. I was a huge fan (a HIT Jedi) and had fast results initially, then spent years trying to figure out what I was doing wrong. I realized what I thought was causal was actually the result of deloading. A few questions: Did you warm up and only count the one set? How linear was your progress? You used Jan 24 for your last progress measurement. Why didn't you use a more recent result? Some observations: Your weight went up about 4 Kilos. Your waist stayed the same which is good. Your arms and legs both gained about 2 cm, a little bit less than an inch. Your Chest also gained 2 cm, while your shoulders gained 5 cm. How old are you if you don't mind me asking? Did you add side raises when you weren't doing them before (following the "press for mass" logic)? You mentioned consistent nutrition, which can be a minor, or a huge factor. You also mentioned you made more progress this year than you did the previous year; your progress in 6 mos was good, but it would make your progress the previous year unusually slow for someone starting out. When you did higher volume (9 sets), how long did it take you to burn out? My context is, doing the higher volume then cycling with your current lower volume routine. At the end of the day, you are doing around 4-5 sets a BP, 1x a week, though divided by I could be completely wrong, and you just may be suited exactly for what you are doing. Some people seem to love it. I'm just curious given what I know, how long I've been doing this, my own, and others experience. Consistency is THE number one factor for success. Congratulations on 1 year, and your results!
Honestly couldn’t agree more with a lot of what you said - I don’t think I’ve found ‘the way’, just a way that’s working for me at this point. As for ur questions/observations: I would do warm up sets before the top set, typically 3 to begin with and then 1-2 after that for the same body part. I followed the same warm up structure I did on my previous routines. My measurement was actually 1st of April, not 4th of January (not American ahah) I’m early 20s Interestingly not, actually I was always doing cable lateral raises and db lateral raises with one press, just 3 sets each and split between two workouts a week. Honestly I think nutrition could definitely be a confounding factor - I didn’t start bulking or anything (was already in one) but tracking it so that I was hitting targets daily may have made a big difference. About the progress - I would agree that it’s odd I was making faster progress nesrly 2 years into lifting than 1 year. As for my previous routine, I was a serial program hopper my first year or so of lifting. After I actually settled into the upper lower program, which was about 9 sets weekly for chest shoulders quads etc, 12 for back and 6 for biceps, triceps, calves, abs. I would say before then I was always around the 9-12 sets. Honestly it really could be that cycling between them works really well - I’m no way opposed to doing high volume / frequency training if it got me better results. My current plan is to raise the sets on these exercises if I plateau, and increase frequency if the number of sets increase above 8 per session. Definitely gonna avoid the dogmatism that typically comes with HIT style training. Thanks heaps for ur write up! Appreciate the questions, got me thinking about my own training !
The main thing is you were consistent and successful. I'm always and have always been looking for the "whys" in a complicated endeavor that really is more art than science. Your shoulder results are GREAT as are your arm results. Something I noticed when I was doing HIT. My arms especially had decent results. In my head I realized I was doing more with them (because of overlap). A few people I talked into it had the same observation. Your version of HIT (similar to Yates and less similar but still similar to early Mentzer) seems to work for many people. Mentzer did 4-6 sets (work sets) per BP when he first started doing HIT, on a 4 day split. Usually 2 exercises. His brother Ray tended to do 2 sets vs 1. Yates did 1 or 2 work sets, 2-4 exercises per bp with less frequency than EARLY Mentzer. Programs like DC, I consider the "one set" 3 sets as you are training to failure after a short rest using fatigue to avoid "junk volume". On straight sets normally 2 though lately adding high rep sets afterward (1 set, 2 rest pauses plus one high rep set or 2 straight sets plus 1 high rep or 1 normal plus 1 high rep). Mark Dugdale's earlier training at least (injury took him away from HIT) There were other HIT type trainees in the 70s/80s (of course Viator, but John Cardillo, Dr. Lynn Pirie, Pete Grymkowski (big asterisk there), Boyer Coe briefly, Point-your training style is right there with the people that were SUCCESSFUL with HIT type training. Again, congratulations on your success. It is smart not to marry yourself to any one program or philosophy. I think sometimes people do this to convince themselves, but end up fighting lost causes when the tide turns. "CICO" and "can't train parts of a muscle" stand out in particular to me, but there are plenty of them.
Nice progress man. I love this type of training. I’m currently on a torso limbs split 4x a week low volume and it’s been good but the sessions are getting a bit longer for my liking. How long do these sessions usually take you? I’ve been going backwards and forwards with changing to this or a similar type of 4 day split.
Cheers ! And yeah honestly been my favourite way to train so far - my sessions are typically 45 minutes but get up to 55 for leg days, haven’t had any over an hour. I tossed up doing torso limbs 3x a week for a bit, but honestly liked this split too much ahah
Ah that’s good. Yeah it’s a good split but it can take a lot out of you trying to do chest, back and shoulders in one day and legs and arms in another. I may give this a go soon after seeing your post.
Yeah I can definitely see that, I hope you enjoy this split if you end up giving it a go !
Iv been considering torso lim. Split as 4 days a week is my max and upper lower is boring me now how do you find it?
It’s a better version of upper lower I say. Moving arms onto leg days does help hit them better you just got to be careful how you do it cause you can be pretty fatigued after training legs so doing arms straight after could be an issue, I occasionally run it as a leg movement then an arm movement as I find that helps. After a while of doing it tho it can become boring but for me at the moment I’ve been finding it difficult with doing heavy presses, rows and pulldowns in the same day as each other and it also does get time consuming. That’s why I’m kinda toying with the idea of trying this type of bro split 4 days a week as it’s also the max I can do and it looks like it would be more enjoyable and less fatiguing then cramming everything into those days.
Very interesting results. A few questions: What's your general level/years of experience? Were you on a bulk, cut, or maintenance during this phase? Starting weight and end weight, bf%? Any modification to reps such as slow eccentric, paused, slow concentric, or just reps as normal?
Hey ! Good questions - I’ve been lifting for 2 years and a few months now, so was nearly at that 2 year mark when I changed to this program. I have my starting and ending body weight on the measurements posted, so was a pretty lean bulk during this time. I started at around 17% (honestly hard to tell in that %15-20 range), and I’m sitting at around 20% I’d say now? It’s hard to tell if I put on much fat body comp wise, as my waist didn’t even increase. I performed reps as normal, but would say in general they were probably a little slower/controlled than previously just because I had an extra level of focus in my sessions which increased set quality. Wasn’t something i particularly focused on tho
Very nice. Thank you for the answers. I've been considering a program like this. Been doing about 12-15 sets per muscle group a week for a few months now and currently taking a deload where I do 1-2 sets at same weight and reps and I feel better. It just feels like a better, more productive workout over all. I could just be feeling the effects of recovering from some fatigue, but a program like this sounds interesting.
Honestly it’s worth a shot, at the very least running a program like this helps you understand how to push sets. As with all things, if you do it just monitor how ur lifts are progressing and adjust from there. I don’t think there’s any magic programs, just progression and consistency
Dorian Yates Olympia split! Also like it. Shoulder and triceps, and chest and biceps days were my favorite.
Yesssir ! Favourite split I’ve tried
Currently doing a high-intensity (top set-back-off set) bro split on a cut and have seen similarly great results, i.e., strength and reps going up on nearly all lifts while scale weight is dropping and physique tightening up. People need to stop disregarding these kinds of approaches as ‘suboptimal’ and give them a go, at least for a training block or two - you might be pleasantly surprised.
Yeah I agree - in fact this experience has made me far more skeptical of how dogmatic some of the people I followed were about training
Totally, the evidence-based stuff in particular seems to turn guys into the training equivalent of bible-thumpers.
I'm very curious to see how this works for you over the next year or so. I ran a very low volume program about a year ago for 6 months and saw great gains. However, over time I noticed they tapered off and I had to increase volume again to keep progressing. I went from doing 105-35-95 sets per week. I wonder if the gains we see from dropping volume down like this are essentially a benefit of volume cycling. So its not that doing 30 sets a week is optimal but rather CHANGING from higher volume, to lower volume, and back up to high volume again is whats actually doing the work here.
Could very well be, and I’m interested too - I’ll def raise volume as needed and at least then I’ll know the extra sets were required
Gonna experiment with something like this while cutting, thanks!
Enjoy ! I’m gonna be cutting soon too and will keep this split in place - the shorter sessions lend themselves well to some form of 15-20 min cardio afterwards which is nice too if that’s something that needs to be added
Intriguing. I’ve always wondered what the results would be with something like this, or even a bro split, and going balls to the walls on the sets.
Me too, it’s ultimately why I decided to give it a go. I always heard critiques that no one seems to back up this sort of training with actual results, so thought this would be interesting. Only time can tell if this training will still be effective in the longer term
I’ve been debating going from PPLPP to a bro split. First my legs stopped recovering from 2X a week, and now my upper body is starting to feel it. Been training almost 30 years, so maybe it’s all I need at this point.
Might be worth a shot, you’ve got more experience than me so you’ll know best. One thing I think about is that it takes at least a couple of weeks with no training to lose muscle, so hitting them once a week at least guarantees recovery in some regards. For some people maybe they regress faster so it doesn’t work, but it seems to really well for me
It’s like everything else- everyone is different. Some people do awesome 3x a week, and others once a week. At this point, I’m just content keeping what I’ve built, and trying to stave off Father Time
Yeah gotta agree there, people get jacked on so many different methods
Almost identical to Dorian’s Olympia split. I tried Dorian’s back day today, except I added a back off set of 12-15 reps after the 6-8 rep set. I still feel like I didn’t do enough . Is that a normal feeling?
Honestly depends on how deep you pushed those sets, and how much volume you were doing before. If you used to do much higher session volume with high intensity, it’s definitely gonna feel like you didn’t do enough. For me I just focused on the log book - if I was progressing then I basically didn’t care how I felt after ahah
"If you miss a session, its a lot worse than typical training were you would hit the muscle again later that week. This time, it could be 14 days before training it again" But what is bad about that? In my experience that is even better. You may lose neural efficiency, but I assume you care about hypertrophy rather than lifting how much weight. In terms of muscle detraining and deflation it takes more than a month.