The Thinking Lifter Blog by Philip Stefanov

You’ve probably heard of the upper lower split routine 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 routine. 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.

Our nutrition plays a huge role in our fitness success. Good eating practices allow us to build muscle, lose fat, and feel good. Bad eating leads to an inability to lose fat, difficulty with muscle gain, and general tiredness.

The problem is, there are many ideas and anecdotes for what ‘good nutrition’ should be. With that in mind, I’ve put together this guide on flexible dieting.

Today, we’ll go over:

• What flexible dieting is
• How to calculate your calories and macronutrients
• How to get started in 9 simple steps

Without further ado, let’s dive in.

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.