The Thinking Lifter Blog by Philip Stefanov

You’ve probably heard of the upper/lower split before. It’s everywhere, and countless people tout it for its effectiveness and flexibility.

You might have even tried it yourself. At first glance, it looks simple enough:

Split your training into upper and lower workouts. But, as you probably imagine, there is more to it.

Below, we’ll go over the most important considerations regarding the upper/lower split. More specifically, how to schedule and program it, how to build your workouts, and how to progress.

As far as organizing our training goes, we don’t have that many options.

Sure, there are many splits out there, but the effective ones are just a handful. Today, we’ll be talking about one of them – the push/pull/legs split.

Below, we’ll go over absolutely everything you’ve ever wanted to know about it – from its overall design to the smallest of details.

For the first three years in the gym, I never bothered to learn the pull-up.

Yes, that’s right. I had been training consistently for about three years and had someone asked me, I couldn’t do a single pull-up to save my life.

Yet, I always felt incredible admiration for the dude who could jump up, grab the bar and bang out a set of ten solid pull-ups like it was nothing.

So I finally decided to get myself together and start progressing.

But… how does one improve upon something they can’t even do? It certainly felt like an impossible task at first.

When it comes to long-term progress, consistency plays a huge role. And whether you’re trying to build muscle or lose fat, you need to keep your nutrition in check.

But despite that, many folks never develop the habits necessary to make progress. Usually, they’ll obsess way too much over their training and put little thought into what they eat.

But seeing as training is only one aspect of fitness, we also need to pay attention to our nutrition if we want to make the best possible progress.

The general misunderstanding is that, to build muscle or lose fat, you need to eat 100 percent clean.

Today, I’d like to discuss a more liberal (or flexible, if you will) approach to eating, why I feel it’s superior to all other diets, and how I use it.

Without further ado, here are my thoughts on flexible dieting.

One of the most prevalent ideas in fitness today is that of quality vs. quantity:

The amount of training volume we do and its relation to quality parameters like training form.

Several great studies from recent years have pointed our attention toward the importance of volume for gym progress. In other words, doing more work tends to deliver better results. To a point, of course.

And while I wholeheartedly agree that volume matters a lot, I don't necessarily agree with the methods and habits some folks use to get the work in every week.