The Unf*ck Your Fitness Podcast

164. Creating Optimal Workout Splits that Fit You and Your Fitness Goals

• Kristy Castillo

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When you’re working hard on your fitness journey and you’re putting effort in with your workouts, you want those workouts to be EFFECTIVE.



One of the best ways to achieve that is to structure your workouts using workout splits!



I’m sharing my thoughts on how often you should be lifting (especially if one of your goals is to build muscle), examples of muscle group splits (i.e. full body, lower body, etc.), why both compound AND isolation movements matter, and more.



While it’s important to understand the different muscle groups and how you can match these to your fitness goals, you don’t have to know every.single.detail either. This doesn’t have to be crazy complicated or keep you from working out in the first place - I promise!



I hope this episode provides you education and insight into ideal workout splits, and how you can make this fit seamlessly into YOUR life!



In this episode, we cover:

  • Number of days/week you can work out (aka LIFT)
  • Ideal workout splits, dependant upon how many days/week you’re lifting
  • Possible muscle group splits + the only ‘rule’ you really should follow
  • Using a good mix of compound & isolation exercises
  • Examples of full body compound movements 
  • Effective superset workouts


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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Un-Fuck-Your-Fitness Podcast. I am your host, Christy Castillo, and I'm here to give you real talk and cut the BS so you can actually enjoy building a body you love. I'm a personal trainer obsessed with giving you simple action steps to take you from feeling stuck to feeling sexy. Let's go. Hey guys, what's up?

Speaker 2:

Welcome to today's episode we are going to be talking about workout splits today and my thoughts on workout splits the best workout splits way to split things up, all of the things. So I'm really excited. I hope that this is very educational and I also hope that it gives you some insight into why muscle groups matter, why workout splits matter, but also why it's so important to adjust, just like everything else, to your life and your goals. So I want to talk about full body workouts, upper body, lower body and then muscle group splits. So, as far as the best workout split, I get a lot of questions like how do I create a workout split for my goals for this? Many days a week, how many reps? How many sets Do I superset, do I not? What are compound exercises? There's a lot that goes into it, so I definitely want to get into this, but I'm also not going to get into it so much that it's so detailed that you forget the basis of just showing up and doing what you can matters the most. So I'm not going to get into so much detail that we actually create an exercise program or that we actually create a workout, because I want you to know just enough that it's like that's amazing information. I can take it, christy, and work with it and create some workouts for myself, not overthink it and move along right. There's so much information out there on this topic, just like everything else, that it can be very, very overwhelming.

Speaker 2:

So let's talk about workout days, like how many days a week you can definitely build muscle and change your body on three days a week, three workouts a week. Many days a week. You can definitely build muscle and change your body. On three days a week, three workouts a week. Four days a week is even better. Five days a week is probably ideal as far as getting the most movement, like the best movement for each muscle group. Five days a week is probably the best. I mean, building muscle for four days is perfect. Five days is great. Like I said, it gives you a little more flexibility on muscle groups using more isolation exercises, which we're going to kind of talk about later in the episode but it gives you a little more. It gives you more room. You have an additional workout to play with, basically. So why would that not be great, right? And I also think that five workouts a week most people are not in the gym lifting so heavy that five workouts a week is going to be too much. There are situations where five workouts would be too much for certain people. There are weeks where some weeks where I lift so heavy for myself for other people it would not be that heavy, but for myself it's so heavy that my body feels wrecked after my fourth workout for the week and I think I really need. I really need a day off. But I really do think that in general, five days is great, but there are a lot of people who cannot work out five days a week for whatever reason, whether that be excuses, whether that be sometimes of the year just too busy and we can't fit it in. Whatever it is right. So if you are someone who is working out three days a week, lifting three days a week, I should probably talk about that for a second. When I'm talking about workouts, so I'm talking about the best workout splits.

Speaker 2:

In this episode, what I'm really talking about is lifting. So I'm not talking about going to the gym and doing cardio. I'm not talking about going for a run. I'm not talking about going into the gym and lifting teeny tiny weights and just kind of going in without a plan and not knowing what the fuck you're doing and just hoping for the best. I'm talking about having a good program, good workouts, good schedule.

Speaker 2:

Where you are not necessarily, yeah, progressive overload, we want to be increasing our weights when we can. Progressive overload does not mean you have to increase your weights every single week or your reps every single week, or increase anything every single week. Some weeks you will not get stronger, who cares? But you should be like okay, last week I did this with you know 15, I did curls with 15 pound weights, you know, for six reps. This week I'm going to pick up the same weight and try to do eight reps, that's fine. Or if you're getting to six to eight reps and you're like, oh, I can pump out a couple more, then increase your weight, don't overthink that part.

Speaker 2:

But what I'm talking about in this episode is good lifting days okay If you're just doing like beach body workouts, or if you're just, like I said, doing some yoga. And if you're I don't want to be like just, but that's not what I'm talking about in here If you're doing Pilates, like I said, yoga, if you're going biking spin classes, that's a completely different subject on how many days, you should be doing that along with lifting and stuff. But that's kind of the thing that makes this separate per person. So if you're lifting, I'll just start saying lifting. If you're lifting three days a week at the gym, let's say you're doing two additional days of Pilates. Three days is perfect for lifting. So if you're doing things on the side, three days is great. Four days is ideal of lifting. And then if you're only lifting and adding in some walking, a little bit of jogging, like me, five days lifting is perfect.

Speaker 2:

So three days a week, the ideal workout split, the best workout split in my opinion, would be three full body workouts. You could potentially do an upper day, a lower day and one full body day, but that's like I just like the idea. If you're only going to be lifting three days a week, I want you to be doing upper and lower workouts like exercises each one of those days. That's just my personal preference. It has worked so well for me in the past when I did three days of full body workouts and lifted heavy, my body changed drastically. Four days a week you could also do four full bodies, or what I think would be better is two full bodies and an upper body day and a lower body day. So two full bodies, one upper, one lower.

Speaker 2:

I like that for a four-day lifting split because you're getting a lot and it's also mixing it up. So you're getting a lot of days. That's three days where you're working lower, three days where you're working upper right, because you have the two full body days you're working some upper and then a separate upper day, and then two full body days you're working lower, plus a lower body day. So technically three days where you're hitting all those muscle groups upper and lower, and I think that's great, plus the upper and the lower. Kind of keep your for me. It gives me something to look forward to. I'm like, oh, I have a full lower body day. My lower body is going to be trashed after this workout. It's going to hurt, so good. Same for my upper.

Speaker 2:

I hate doing upper body lifts, but it does kind of get me giddy when I'm like, okay, I get something different here. I don't have to work the full body. It's just we're really crunch time on the upper body and we're moving on. So I like for a four day split, two full bodies, an upper and a lower, for five days a week if you're lifting five days a week. If you're lifting five days a week, I think personally, doing three full body days and upper day and a lower day is perfect. That also gives me personally the perfect amount of time to hit upper and lower together. So I'm doing like two or three upper body movements and I'm doing two or three lower body movements for each of those full body days and then I have an upper day and a lower day to really get after it, really do some isolation movements and work on maybe different things that I personally want to grow my biceps. So I'm going to, you know, put a lot of bicep movements inside of that upper day and really just get those really tired right. So I think personally, those are my favorites.

Speaker 2:

But I am a full body workout lover and I have come about this in my later years, later in life, where I've just fallen in love with full body days. It allows me to lift heavy and also recover. So I don't have to do a full, you know, two or three lower body days. I'm just doing two lower body movements on each full body day. I'm really doing heavy squats, heavy hip thrusts, and then I'll do heavy chest press, heavy rows, do some core and I'm done right. So it's really nice because I'm lifting super heavy, but I'm not so sore that I can't walk the next day. I can also recover and it's done wonders for my body. I think a lot of that too is the way that I eat and my autoimmune issues that I have. I'm really tired, I'm achy, some inflammation in my body, so I get sore very, very easily. Just in general, just waking up, I'm sore. So after a workout it can be even worse. So when I was kind of trying to figure out how to live with my autoimmune issues and also work out because I'm not a person that gives up and says, oh, I can't work out anymore I'm like, how can I do this? Full bodies were the way to do that Before that and this would be the other alternative for a five-day split.

Speaker 2:

You could honestly do this in a four-day split as well. But muscle group splits I personally don't care how these are set up, but I'm going to go into it. So if you think about muscle groups, you have your hamstrings, quads and calves for your legs right, and then you have chest back, shoulders, biceps, triceps. So it would be ideal, if you're going to build out your own workout, to write down all of these muscle groups and then you can split them easily into five days a week, which is why I prefer muscle group splits for five days a week. If you want to do the muscle group splits, you can also work them into four days a week, but it will just mean that your workouts will need to be longer, because ideally you want to hit these muscle groups twice a week. So to fit that all in is kind of tricky. You don don't have to do them. I'm not talking about hitting biceps hard twice a week or hitting triceps hard twice a week, but you do want to split these up. So a lot of times what this looks like for my own clients when I'm building out their workouts Back in January I did Fit Club was like this it was muscle group specific and that was just for the kind of phase that we were in and that I was in as well.

Speaker 2:

But oh, I forgot glutes. I am so sorry. I said hamstrings, quads and calves. Add glutes. Holy shit, who forgets glutes, Christy? That is terrible. I'm looking at my notes here. That's crazy. Okay, anyways, you can honestly kind of break this up unless, to be honest, unless you have very, very specific goals and you have like a bodybuilding show coming up, something like that. It's not going to exactly matter how you break this up, and I say that because I've done so much programming myself, like physically. I've gotten programs from people long time ago and and they would have glutes and hamstrings day and then it would be a chest and back day and then it would be shoulders and quads day and then it's biceps, triceps, calves day. So it doesn't really matter how you break it up.

Speaker 2:

For me personally, chest and back hurts my body. That's a very common muscle group split. That's a very common workout. You will see people doing chest and back. It was a couple of years ago, anyway, it was really. That was kind of the main thing that you saw. It was like you're hitting glutes one day and then you're like glutes and hamstrings one day, and then you're hitting back and biceps one day and then or it'll be like chest and back one day. Chest and back. For me it's a lot of that area. If I'm working my chest and my back, you're obviously gonna get some shoulder movement in there. You're gonna get a little bicep movement in there.

Speaker 2:

Muscle groups are helping the bigger muscles. For me it just makes my shoulders super tight. It makes my neck super tight and I don't love it. So I do prefer a back and biceps day. I do prefer even a back and hamstring day. You could do like posterior chain day. So I'm not going to get into the exact specifics of that, even though I know that's the title of this best workout split, but I want to do the overall split. I want to give you some breakdowns of different exercises and what they mean so you can put this together for yourself.

Speaker 2:

Because, like I said, just being honest, it doesn't really matter, especially at first and especially if you are still in body recomp, like a beginning of body recomp, it's not exactly going to matter. Like you can kind of split up these muscle groups however you want to split them up. And even in a full body day, as I'm kind of going to get into like some samples here let's say you're putting in squats and then you're also doing hip thrusts and then you're doing a chest press and then you're doing a back row and you're doing a shoulder press. Let you're doing a back row and you're doing a shoulder press. Let's say that's your entire full body day. You're lifting six to eight reps super heavy. That's going to be a hard workout, end with some core, that's fine.

Speaker 2:

And then the next day, for your full body, you're going to mix it up a little bit. You're not going to be doing any of those right, you're going to be working more calves, you're going to be working maybe more hamstrings, maybe biceps and triceps instead of the muscle groups from the first day. So that that's a little bit on how to kind of build a full body workout. But it's just taking your hamstrings, quads, calves, glutes, chest back, shoulders, biceps, triceps, taking those muscle groups, obviously, breaking that down into what exercises work those muscle groups and then putting together a workout that works for you. There are specific ways, obviously, to grow specific body parts, to grow like you want to build out your shoulders and you want to build out your glutes, to give that hourglass figure. So there are definitely certain movements you wanna do and doing them more often to grow those body parts or those muscle groups.

Speaker 2:

But it's not that important, especially if you are someone who this episode is kind of for that person who doesn't know how to build a workout. Then if you don't know how to build a workout, you don't need to worry about the specifics of the particular movements. That will come with time. When you're like, if you don't know how to build a workout, you don't need to worry about the specifics of the particular movements. That will come with time when you're like, oh, you'll get an idea of like, oh, I love to do squats and then I love to do chest press, and then I love to go back to my legs and do hip thrusts and then I like to go back and do my back rows. The only really rule that I really, really, really want you to follow is doing your compound exercises first, because they use multiple muscle groups. You can lift heavier You're going to be more tired and then move into your isolation exercises that are like your bicep curls, tricep extensions, the smaller muscle groups, because you want to start your workout always doing the hardest movement that's going to take the most amount of effort. That way, when you're tired, you're just doing your little biceps and doing your little triceps. So that's the definite rule that I would say. So now let's talk about what to put into these splits, now that we kind of have them created. Definitely you want a good mix of compound exercises and isolation exercises.

Speaker 2:

I just have a couple of examples here that I want to talk about. So compound movements. Compound exercises are exercises that involve multiple joints and multiple muscle groups simultaneously. So if you think of a squat, multiple joints are moving. You're bending at the hips and you're bending at the knees, so your gl. Think of a squat. Multiple joints are moving. You're bending at the hips and you're bending at the knees, so your glutes, your hamstrings, your quads and your calves and your core, honestly, are all involved in that movement. So it's compound. So examples of these are squats, hip thrusts, romanian deadlifts, lunges, split squats for your lower body, and then upper body would be bench press, pull-ups, push-ups, bent over rows, overhead shoulder press, a regular dumbbell shoulder press and dips. Those are really good ones to keep in mind when you are building a workout.

Speaker 2:

You want to start with those compound exercises. They are so good and once you start focusing on and kind of learning the difference between these exercises, it's going to make more sense as to you know if you're doing a program and you're not really tired. Let's say you're doing a program from someone who's really focused on biceps, triceps, shoulders not so much the glutes, not so much like a full body workout, especially like an upper body workout. Say you're doing a program from someone who's really focused on biceps, triceps, shoulders not so much the glutes, not so much like a full body workout, especially like an upper body workout. If you're just doing biceps and triceps and shoulder like your lats, those aren't big muscle groups. So if you're doing, if you do those three movements, you're not going to be as tired as if you did squats, hip thrusts and Romanian deadlifts, because they're compound movements. So just the fact that you are well, the fact that you're lifting, the fact that you are moving so many muscle groups and so many joints all together allows you to lift heavier, which allows you to also get your heart rate up faster, and you're going to be more tired. So you want to start your workout with compound exercises and then you want to go into isolation exercises.

Speaker 2:

Isolation exercises only involve a single joint movement that focuses on the contracting and the extending of one muscle group. Think about a bicep curl. I am only moving my elbow. That's the only joint moving and the only muscle group involved is my bicep. I'm thinking about my bicep contracting and bringing up my elbow. So there's one muscle group and one joint. So this is good for targeting specific muscles, right If you want to grow your bicep, that's a really good way to do it because you're only focused on your bicep. You obviously are not going to do a squat if you are trying to build your bicep. It's also really good for correcting muscle imbalances. So focusing on that movement with a single arm, that is perfect.

Speaker 2:

A lot of the compound movements I shouldn't say a lot, but some of the compound movements let's say a squat you have either the dumbbells up at your shoulders or down by your sides or a barbell. When you do a squat, obviously both of your legs are working at the same time. A split squat is so good to work each leg separately because they have to work on their own. So if you have any muscle imbalance, a isolation exercise is a really, really good idea to be able to correct that specific muscle imbalance. A lot of times we know I'm right-handed, so my right arm is a little bit stronger. My left arm is a little bit like what is going. What's going on, it's a little more flimsy. My form kind of sucks. So what I'm doing let's say I grab a barbell and curl that up I'm using obviously both of my arms to do that. My right arm is gonna take most of the load just because I'm right-handed. So to do specific dumbbell movements for bicep curls or for anything else like that, it's really, really helpful to correct those imbalances and make sure that you're super strong on every limb, every muscle group separately.

Speaker 2:

Isolation exercises are also good for improving technique. So, if you like, I just said my right hand, my right side of my body, my right arm, my right leg is going to take over any movement that involves both legs or both arms. My right side is like no, I got this. You can just back off left side of the body, I have got this, but that's not really helpful. So in order to get my mind muscle connection on the left side of my body, I really have to focus. If I'm doing a single leg deadlift with my left leg, I really, really have to focus on it. Where my right leg super strong, not clumsy over there I got this. My left side not so much.

Speaker 2:

So isolation exercises a lot of people think that they're like oh, just a bicep curl. And I even say like just throw in some bicep curls. You know, I don't mean just. I mean they're very important, but it feels like compared to like the big compound movements. A lot of times the isolation exercises can just kind of get pushed to the side, but they're very important. So some examples of these are chest flies, bicep curls, hammer curls, tricep kickbacks, overhead tricep extensions, lat raises, front raises, lat pulldowns and straight arm pulldowns and leg extensions and probably even leg curls extensions and probably even leg curls. So anything that you're just using. If you're just, yeah, yes, a leg curl, I said probably even leg curls, as I'm thinking. I didn't have that on my list, but it's one joint movement and it's one muscle group, so, yes, that would be an isolation exercise. So anything where you're just moving that one joint and that one muscle group is an isolation exercise. And then anything if you so, if you're thinking which is this? If you are moving, multiple joints and multiple muscle groups are working, it's a compound exercise. Chances are you'll also be extremely out of breath with the compound exercise, so that's great.

Speaker 2:

Another thing I want you to think about is full body compound exercises. I love these and a lot of trainers hate these and talk a lot of shit about them. I actually love them. These would be things like a dumbbell snatch, a clean and jerk or, if you want to go into like you're holding dumbbells and you do an RDL and then you come up and you go straight into a bicep curl or you do a reverse lunge while holding one dumbbell over your head, into like a shoulder press. So you're holding your arm up with a dumbbell, a heavy dumbbell, doing a shoulder press, and then you either go back into a lunge holding your arm up or bring your arm like do the complete shoulder press and then go back into a lunge. Either way, you are working your upper body and then your lower body with the same movement. These are so good and a lot of people don't like these, a lot of trainers or I hear a lot of hate about these. Because, yes, technically, if you're doing an RDL, you should be able to do that with heavier dumbbells than you're going to do the bicep curl. So let's talk about the RDL into a bicep curl. Obviously, if I'm doing straight up bicep curls and straight up RDL separately, I can lift so much more for an RDL than I can for a bicep curl.

Speaker 2:

But this particular movement is so good for some cardio. You're going to get your heart rate up, your core is going to be working and it's just such it's mind muscle connection. You have to think about it. You need to get everything kind of working, and I love this because you are working multiple muscles and multiple areas of the body at once. Do not underestimate these. I don't care who says don't do them. I don't care who says they're stupid and a waste of time. They're not. They have a specific place in your workout. I like them at the end to kind of get your heart rate up, to get you moving and grooving, to feel like, oh my God, I'm out of breath. We love that during, you know, after a workout. So I think that's perfect. So that is exactly how I want you to think about your workouts, especially when you're doing a full body.

Speaker 2:

Again, examples would be pick two compound movements for your legs so squats and hip thrusts. Pick two compound exercises for your upper body bench press and pull-ups, and then we go down to isolation exercises. You can throw in some bicep curls, some hammer curls, some tricep kickbacks, end with some dumbbell snatches and that's a great workout for just getting started figuring out how to create your workouts. Okay, again, if you have someone to go to that can create these for you, perfect. But I know a lot of people are like I can do this on my own. I don't have the resources, and that's fine. I want you to know that just having these lists of exercises, pulling two or three from each, superset them. If you want to, you don't have to. I'll talk about that really quickly in a second. But this is perfect. You guys, don't underestimate your own knowledge and your own body in telling you yes, that was a great workout. You'll know if it's a good workout and I want you to create these.

Speaker 2:

By the way, if you're doing three full body workouts per week, you create three full body workouts per week. You create three full body workouts and you do those workouts for four or five or six weeks in a row. That's all you need is to create three workouts that are so freaking good and you'll know by the end of that four or five or six weeks if you're making progress. If you're lifting heavier, your body is changing. Get a smart scale, see your muscle mass going up, then it's a good workout, and it doesn't matter who tells you otherwise, because you'll be like no, it is because I'm seeing progress. Same with four days a week. Same with five days a week on the upper and lower body days. So let's build out like a sample lower body workout. You would pick three compound exercises and you would pick three isolation exercises for your lower body and you'd be good to go. That would be perfect. It's the same concept and then throw in one full body compound at the end if you want to and, like I said, you're good to go here's what I want you to keep in mind for the rep ranges and supersetting. You can build muscle doing the opposite of what I'm about to say. So again, no rules, but I do want to cover this quickly.

Speaker 2:

Generally, if you're building muscle, you want to do. You don't want to superset. You want to load whatever, let's say the bar. You want to load the bar. You want to do your squats six to eight. If you're building muscle, you want to do so. Your six reps, you put the bar back, you wait a minute till you can. You want to be ready to lift again. There's no like wait exactly a minute and then do your next rep and then wait exactly a minute. You want to be fully rested so you can go into your next set of squats and perform it just as well as you did the first.

Speaker 2:

The goal is to not be winded, exhausted. The goal is to be able to lift freaking heavy every movement. So rest until you are ready to do that. You would do your six squats. You would rest Six squats. You would rest Six squats, maybe you can do eight. You push it out. You're like I got this, I can do eight reps, perfect. Then you move on to your hip thrusts. You do all your hip thrusts. Then you move on to your bench press. You do all your bench press. Then you move on to your pull-ups. You do all your pull-ups. Then you move on to your snatches.

Speaker 2:

Okay, if you are wanting to superset, go ahead, but make sure you superset squats with a bench press. Don't superset squats with hip thrusts or squats with anything else lower body. You want to give your lower body a rest. That's my only ask. If you're supersetting and that's exactly what I do so I would do squats and then I would do back rows, I would do hip thrusts and then I would do chest press. I only wouldn't do that if I needed to use the barbell for both muscle groups, right, then I'm going to do squats and I'm going to superset it with bicep curls and I'm going to do hip thrusts and I'm going to superset it with tricep dips or something because I want my lower body, which just worked in the squats, to be resting while I'm doing my next movement. So my lower body is rested for my squats and my next movement. Does that make sense? I hope so.

Speaker 2:

So you want to be in the six to eight rep range to build muscle, and I love the 10 to 12 rep range to maintain your muscle, to lift a little bit lighter on, like a deload week, something like that. And an eight to 10 rep range is great too. If you're just kind of maintaining, I love that rep range. It's kind of in between Eight's, probably my favorite rep number. Honestly. It allows me to lift a weight that is heavy, but not so heavy that I can only do like four or six reps. So eight to 10 is a really, really great rep range as well. But if you want to think about it in terms of creating your own, if you're building muscle, six to eight, if you're maintaining, do eight to 12. And then if you can only get in, you know eight to 10 reps, that's perfect. So I hope this was really helpful in teaching you how to build the best workout split, and I will talk to you in the next episode to build the best workout split, and I will talk to you in the next episode.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for listening to today's show. Go ahead and leave a rating and a review and, of course, follow the podcast so you don't miss out on any future episodes. And I would love it so much if you came to connect with me over on Instagram at ChristyCastilloFit. I will see you next time.