2892: Upper Lower Split Workout | How to Build Muscle 4 Days a Week

0:00The ultimate cookout starts with the ultimate ingredients. At Whole Foods Market, no antibiotics ever, burgers and kebabs are prepped and ready to throw on the grill. Fire up a juicy ribeye, grab creamy potato salad and savory flatbreads from the prepared foods department and round it all out with 365 brand condiments, chips and dips at everyday low prices. Whole Foods Market, make your summer sizzle. You want to get your backyard summer ready, but you don't want to break the bank? Wayfair gets it. Planning on dining al fresco or relaxing poolside? Wayfair has everything you need to prep your space.

0:37Shop now and save up to 70 % off during Wayfair's 4th of July clearance. Score huge deals on outdoor furniture, area rugs, and more. We're talking thousands of products for every style and budget. Plus, surprise flash deals July 6th. Don't wait. Shop Wayfair's 4th of July clearance now through July 6th at Wayfair.com.

0:54Adam Schafer:Way fair, every style, every home. If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump. Mind Pump. With your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Brand new MAPS program. Brand new launch. MAPS upper, lower. It's a classic bodybuilder split. You want to build your body, sculpt your body, shape your body, and you like to work out. It's a four-day split. You're in the gym or working out at home four days a week, upper, lower, day off, upper, lower.

1:32Adam Schafer:That's how the split breaks down. By the way, this program comes with an at-home version. If you just have dumbbells, you can also follow the program. But if you have a well-equipped home gym with a barbell and a squat rack, then you can follow the program as well as it's laid out. It comes with a men and women's version, so the program is a little bit different. Women like to focus more on glutes, a little bit more on shoulder versus chest. Guys, you get the classic breakdown. This program has workout demos, exercise demos, coaching videos. And if you sign up now, you get it for 40 % off. Plus, you get live coaching with our personal trainer, our mind pump personal trainer here, Cole.

2:07Adam Schafer:So, here's how you sign up. Go to mapsupperlower.com. Use the code LAUNCH. Get the 40 % off discount and the live coaching. And this episode is brought to you by Ollipop. So, Ollipop tastes like the sodas you had when you were a kid. They're delicious, but they're also very low in sugar. 50 calories per can. High in fiber. They're good. They taste good, and they're good. Well, I like them because I think they're good for me. A lot better than soda, that's for sure. And they have all kinds of crazy, amazing flavors. They have traditional flavors, but then they have something like raspberry cream.

2:39Adam Schafer:I had one earlier. It tastes like a lollipop or like a popsicle when I was a kid. But again, 50 calories. So if you like drinking soda, you don't want the sugar, you don't want the calories, here's what you do. Go to drinkolipop.com slash mindpump. By the way, you can get a free can of Olipop if you buy any two cans of Olipop in the store. They'll pay you back for one. It works on any flavor, any retailer. All right, here comes the show. All right, real quick, if you love us like we love you, why not show up by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over at mindpumpstore.com? I'm talking right now.

3:13Hit pause. Head on over to mindpumpstore.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show.

3:19Adam Schafer:All right, everybody. We have a brand new MAPS program. It's MAPS Upper Lower. This is a classic bodybuilder split. A lot of you guys have been asking for this, and we think this will fill the need. It's a great program. We're going to talk all about it today and give you guys the breakdown of what this program includes.

3:35Sal Di Stefano:This is our first true four-day-a-week split program. Yes, yes.

3:40Adam Schafer:So the reason why we created this, besides demand, right, people ask for certain things, is we have great full-body muscle-building programs, like MAPS Anabolic, classic muscle-building full-body routine. It's our staple program, yeah. Then we have high-volume full-body and high-volume splits. We have MAPS split, very high-volume. MAPS aesthetic, very high-volume. Not appropriate for most people. So a lot of people are like, oh, I want to do that program, but it's just too much for most people. It doesn't produce great results with them because they just can't recover from it. Now, if you're advanced, they're great programs.

4:15Adam Schafer:But what we didn't have was kind of a moderate bodybuilder split. We have a good beginner bodybuilder split with PPL, which we released relatively recently, right? It was, what, a few months ago? Yeah, this is a good follow-up to that. And PPL is super popular. It's a three-day bodybuilder split, push-pull legs. And so this is like a little bit of another step, right? It's an additional day a week, a little bit more volume, but still in the same vein of that kind of bodybuilder split type routine. So if you like routines that are kind of bodybuilder focused, where you can shape, sculpt the body, and you want more volume than three days a week, but you don't want the crazy volume of, let's say, split or aesthetic, this is a great in the middle.

4:56Sal Di Stefano:Well, this would be, to Justin's point, this would be a great follow-up to PPL. Yes. And we did just release that not long ago. So hopefully people that are finishing up with that, if you really like PPL, this is a great follow-up. Keep it going. Keep that momentum going. I think this would be a great program to follow right afterwards.

5:11Adam Schafer:Yeah, and this is a split. I've done this type of split many, many times.

5:14Sal Di Stefano:This is actually one of my favorite ways to train.

5:16Adam Schafer:Same here. So I like PPL is always just classic, right? Push-pull legs, very, very classic kind of first-time split. This upper-lower was one of my favorites. I did do the single-body part splits at one point, but they never produced the same kind of results. as like this kind of upper lower allows me to kind of hit the body twice a week, but breaking it up into the upper and lower body. And four days a week allows you three days of recovery. And I always got really great results with routines like this.

5:45Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, I'd say I started off my journey in the bodybuilder, one muscle group per workout type of a split. Then realized how valuable the full body routine was. And then I'd say this is kind of where I landed afterwards. I run more of a MAP-15 type of protocol these days. But for the, I'd say, the beginning of mind pump and a lot of what my training looks like now, if I run some sort of a split, it would look up or lower. I find I need a little extra oomph for leg day. Yeah. And so it gives me that kind of break to toggle. I feel like I can get up and do upper any time. It doesn't gas me as much.

6:31Sal Di Stefano:Legs take a lot out of me, deadlifting and squatting and lunging and doing movements like that. And so I feel like I can get after it in that day, and then I have a day of rest or a day of upper body where it's much easier for me to motivate myself to get there. I find that easier, and so I like this a lot.

6:50Adam Schafer:Yeah, I like – so full body routines are great. They work for most people. but when you're progressing and you're applying progressive overload, which can look like more weight on the bar or more reps or more volume. So a lot of people don't know that or don't realize that progressive overload also applies to more volume. When appropriate, adding another set is one way of getting the muscles to grow. And the data shows us clearly. The three ways that I listed are the main ways that you'll see in the data that signal or trigger or cause hypertrophy, muscle growth. And what happens with the full body split, once you start to progress, is adding more volume to the routine can get a bit tedious.

7:33Adam Schafer:If you're training the whole body in a workout, it could very easily turn into an hour and a half, you know, two-hour workout. Yeah. Especially if you're resting. You get long. Especially if you're resting two or three minutes in between sets, you know, to maximize strength gains. And so when that happens, it makes sense to split the body up into upper and lower. So now you can do more volume and the workout's taking you, you know, 45 minutes to an hour and 10 minutes versus, you know, an hour and a half to two hours. Well, I think too, that's a lot of the appeal is like, you can really emphasize certain body parts and muscles and really stay there, you know, and like really, especially legs and really build and develop that strength in legs.

8:13I have to devote a whole day to that sometimes. That's super beneficial.

8:16Sal Di Stefano:I trained a lot of clients on this too. So I had a lot of clients that wanted to come to the gym more than just three days a week. And so I found what it looked like was a lot of times I trained upper and lower with them. And then they trained them. They repeated those. Yeah, the really advanced ones. And so I did do a lot of clients with upper lower. So this is, I like that we wrote this because I know we hadn't written anything like this yet. It is a tool. It is a programming that I utilize myself a lot and I did use with clients a lot. So if you like going to the gym, going to the gym four days a week, and it's a little bit less taxing, to your point, than the full body, I love this split.

8:55Adam Schafer:It also puts you in the gym an extra day a week over a full body routine. And for me personally, and this doesn't have a lot of backing in terms of what it can produce in terms of results, but in terms of feel, it feels pretty awesome to do an upper body day, to feel a pump in your entire upper body. Yeah, you're going to really get a good pump this way. Yeah, chest and back and delts and arms all feel really pumped. And for those people who want to develop their lower body, to feel the entire lower body. That's another great point.

9:24Sal Di Stefano:I feel like this is why I like this too, is still the bodybuilder in me likes the pump feeling. And I don't get that with the full body routine the same way.

9:34Adam Schafer:No, no.

9:34Sal Di Stefano:Full body is you're hitting so much of everything, and you're only doing so many sets for each muscle group that I don't feel like I get as much of a pump, where when I just split the body in half from all upper body or all lower body, I definitely walk out with a pump in the lower body or the upper body. And so I still do like and enjoy it.

9:52Adam Schafer:Now, I want to talk a little bit about the breakdown of how the program is phased. So all MAPS programs, if you follow any MAPS program, you'll notice that they're all broken up into phases, meaning these are kind of mini cycles within the whole program. So the whole program, you know, maybe let's say nine weeks or 12 weeks, depending on the program that you get. But the program itself is broken up into kind of mini programs. Now, they're not mini programs in the sense that they're radically different, but rather the rep scheme and the sets can change and the exercises can change a bit with the same ultimate focus.

10:29Adam Schafer:So the ultimate focus of upper lower, maps up or lower, is to shape, sculpt, and build the body. It's definitely a bodybuilding routine. So it's not a powerlifting routine. It's not one for athletic performance. it's for building the body and shaping a sculpt like a bodybuilder would. And so that's the ultimate focus of the program, but it's broken up into three different phases. And each phase is a little bit different. And each phase, the reason why we phase programs is because it helps prevent plateaus. The body starts to adapt to a particular style or rep scheme of training and shifting out of that while maintaining focus on the ultimate goal, which in this case is kind of that bodybuilding shape and sculpt focus helps prevent things like nagging injuries, keeps things fresh and exciting, but it also helps prevent plateaus.

11:18Adam Schafer:The body tends to progress better when we start to mix with things or mess with things every few weeks. And so this program, like other MAPS programs, has three phases. And I want to discuss a little bit of the breakdown of each of these phases.

11:33Sal Di Stefano:Before you get into that, I think it's important to, we haven't talked about this in a while since you brought up the whole phasing in three weeks uh you you have to talk a little bit about why three weeks because especially for any of our peers or research nuts around like the body adapting and what most of the studies show for like that and why three weeks why not four to six which is what a lot of studies will show right so i think that's important to explain the logic to that because i this is something admittedly I got from you that is different than how I originally programmed myself. And I remember when you first explained it to me, the logic behind it makes a lot of sense why you would do that.

12:18Sal Di Stefano:Even though traditionally when I would program for myself, a lot of stuff looks like a four to six week type of phase versus a three week phase.

12:25Adam Schafer:No, it's a good question. So this applies more to the programming and not necessarily to exercises. Sometimes people confuse the two. So like, okay, barbell squats, you know, like the big three or like the big compound lifts or the main moving type of lifts. I thought I was supposed to do those all the time. Does that mean I stopped doing them after three weeks and switched to something completely different? No, it's very important that you continue to practice continually the main lifts. And of course you inject in auxiliary lifts or you alternate kind of how you apply them or variations of them.

12:59Adam Schafer:So you avoid injury, but those stay very consistent. But what does change are things like rep ranges and maybe set schemes do change. And the reason why you change them every three weeks is because what we want to avoid is a plateau. We want to change before the body plateaus. It's much easier to do that than hit a plateau, try to back out, and then try to get the body to move again. And what you tend to see is that plateaus tend to kick in around week five or six, maybe higher. And every three weeks, You just kind of avoid that. And the body tends to progress a little bit better that way.

13:32Sal Di Stefano:And so then the follow-up question to that for some people might be that, well, then why not change it every single day or every single week then? Too quickly.

13:39Adam Schafer:Yeah, good question. Too quickly because you want a period of time to get your body to acclimate and then to get the results from that particular rep range, for example. So if I change it up so often that my body's never really getting used to it so that I can really push intensity, drive the weight, whatever, then I'm also missing the gains. So it's a bit of a balance. Yeah, you want it to be measurable at the end of the day too, to be able to see and point back like I was making progress and then you want to like adjust it so you can keep making progress. So that's sort of the sweet spot. Totally.

14:12Adam Schafer:And so here's how it's kind of broken down. So it's a four day split and we recommend it's two days in a row, one day off, two days in a row, two days off. So during the week, it may look something like Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. Okay. So you're hitting upper, lower, a day off, up or lower again, two days off, start the week again, and you're ready to go. And so typically what you see is week over week, you'll see progress. Whereas the second workout in the week, not so much, not as much rest, but we're sending that signal. Boom, two days rest, you come back, you get really good, you start to see progress.

14:44Adam Schafer:As far as the set and rep ranges, I'll go over what they are and we kind of talk about why they are the way they are. The first phase is typically exercises are about three sets each, depending on the exercise can be as little as two. And we're going eight to 10 reps. Eight to 10 reps is a good rep range. Nice, moderate rep range. It's not super heavy, not super light. Great for muscle building. Then we get into phase two. We don't change it a lot, but we do up the reps to 10 to 12. Now, remember, this is a bodybuilding routine. So we are going to keep the reps a little bit higher. So phase two, 10 to 12.

15:19Adam Schafer:Then we get to phase three, and here's where it gets fun. Now it's five sets of five. Now it's five by five. Someone may be wondering, why do five by five at the end and not at the beginning? For example, MAPS Anabolic, one of our flagship programs, starts with a heavy low rep phase and then ends with a higher rep phase. Now, there was a strategy for that. The strategy was to show people strength gains right out the gates. That's just full disclosure. Now, there is a downside to it, which is this. When you're following a program, there is something known as cumulative stress that builds up over time.

15:53Adam Schafer:One of the downsides of going heavy low rep, then moderate, then high rep is that cumulative stress builds, builds, builds, builds, builds. With this program maps up or lower, the cumulative stress actually reduces a little bit because low reps don't have the same effect on the body when it comes to recovery. So you'll actually hit the end of this program hitting PRs and feeling really, really strong.

16:16Sal Di Stefano:I also like training this way personally for myself because I don't need to convince myself the benefits that come from strength training and five by five building. I think this program attracts somebody who's, I wouldn't say, you don't have to be an advanced lifter to this, but you're not a brand new novice lifter. And Anabolic was designed. That's why I love when you did that. I saw what you were doing when we've talked about this. We talked about it when we relaunched Anabolic that, you know, you're trying to show the average client, which was for us, mostly women. We had a lot of female clients, total results, and get them bought into the programming right away.

16:50Sal Di Stefano:And so showing them a five-by-five in the first phase was a brilliant way to do that. Now, when I think of somebody who's already bought in, knows that strength training, blah, blah, blah, I like training with a higher rep first. And a lot of that is getting in the rhythm, getting the technique, getting on my body. A lot of practice. Yeah, a lot of practice into it. And then working up to, okay, I'm feeling good. I'm in a rhythm. Now let's really load and see what I get out of it. I personally like to train this.