The Push-Pull Workout

[01dragonslayer]

The tried and true workout program that builds muscle, burns fat, and busts plateaus.​

Push-Pull For Progress​

Training wise, I’ve tried it all: powerlifting style, Olympic style, and of course, bodybuilding style.

All of them worked, for awhile, but the one that I keep coming back to, the one that never fails me, is one of the most basic – in bodybuilding terms – routines of all. It’s the push-pull system.

In short, it’s training those muscles involved in pushing in one session and training the ones involved in pulling in another. There are a couple of distinct advantages to this type of program:

You Avoid Overstressing Body Parts​

Most people would have said you avoid overtraining, but I don’t think overtraining is all that common and that, if it occurs, it takes months of going to physical extremes.

That doesn’t happen too often.

However, it’s easy to overstress body parts in a very short time and thus hamper recovery. Training push-pull lets muscle groups rest completely.

In traditional workout schemes, you might work chest on one day, shoulders the next, and then triceps the next. That would constitute training the triceps and, to a lesser extent, the anterior delts, three training sessions in a row!

Push-pull avoids that by grouping all the muscles involved in pulling (back, biceps, rear delts, traps, forearms, hamstrings) and all the muscles involved in pushing (chest, triceps, quads, lateral and medial delts) together.

You Increase Physical Fitness and Burn Extra Fat​

By separating your body parts by function, you’re able to hit the gym more often because, presumably, the muscles you’re working that day aren’t screaming for momma. Also, by splitting a total body workout into two, you’re simply forced to go to the gym more often.

Doing so logically increases your physical fitness and burns some extra calories along the way.

Unfortunately, along with the advantages come a few potential disadvantages:

You Could Short-Change Certain Muscle Groups​

In many push-pull routines, you end up training triceps, biceps, posterior delts, and forearms in a fatigued state compared to the chest, back, and quads because the big daddy exercises (squats, deads, rows, benching) are typically done first in the routines.

Solution: Vary the order in which the movements are performed and prioritize the big lifts.

You Could Really Tax Your Nervous System​

Squats, pull-ups, deadlifts, and presses, by nature, tax the body. Typically, you need at least 48 hours of recovery between sessions where those movements are used.