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Do you feel overwhelmed trying to figure out what workout split or schedule is best for you? I've got your back, sis. While there are a ton of options and combinations, specific strategies can help you dial in what is going to work best for your life and your goals. We go over everything including fat loss, general fitness, muscle building, and training specifically for hiking. Let's dive in!
To try a free week of my signature Fit for Hiking program to get you fit from the trails (gym AND at-home options) start HERE.
To try a free week of my signature Fit for Hiking program to get you fit from the trails (gym AND at-home options) start HERE.
For next level fat loss strategies, hormone/gut health help, serious performance goals and unparalleled support, apply for Mountain Metabolic coaching. Learn more HERE.
For more free wellness resources, hiking/travel guides, and other blog posts, check out my website HERE.
What is Fit for Hiking?
Where fitness and outdoors meet. In this space we chat all things hiking, exercise, wellness, adventure, motherhood, and metabolic health from a female perspective! Get ready to learn + be inspired to live your fullest, most adventurous life!
Hi, my name is Brady and I'm a long time fitness professional and midwest girl turned mountain living hiking addict. And combining my knowledge of fitness and passion for hiking, I've helped hundreds of women get lean and strong for the trails. Think of this as your one stop shop for both education and inspiration on all things female wellness, trail talk and adventure. Hiking, female metabolism, motherhood, nutrition, travel and fitness are all topics you'll hear discussed here. If you are outdoorsy and active, looking to level up your health, unlock your potential, and become inspired to live your most vibrant life, you're in the right place. You're listening to the fit for Hiking podcast. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the fit for Hiking podcast. This is your host, Brady, and today we are going to be diving into the topic of what the heck? Workout structure makes sense based on your goals and your life and what's going on with your, you know, on your weekly basis. For you. I think that there is kind of just a lot of confusion around, um, workout splits and. If you should be doing, um, you know, like a, a leg day versus an upper body day. Full body workouts. What's the right answer that's going to get you the results that you want? Um, based on your goals. Right. So we're going to talk about it. And a workout split essentially means having certain days that you exercise a certain body part or a certain type of workout. Okay. So this is the structure that you follow week after week in a progressive format, meaning that you are ideally building on what you do each week, but you're still following that same structure. So you're not just changing the workouts every single week, but you are ideally increasing the load that you're using every week. So meaning that you're going a little bit heavier in your weights, you're bringing some more intensity. Um, some way you are progressing week to week. Um, and this is hard to do if you're just doing haphazard workouts. Okay. So this is for someone who's actually following a schedule or a format or wanting to do that. And I definitely I get the allure of just like the random workouts or kind of like ClassPass style, where you just show up to a gym and it's different every day. You're doing a different style every day. You don't ever repeat a workout. Yes, it's fun. It's more spontaneous. However, these aren't always the best types of workouts for actual results. You're never building on anything, so it's hard to actually see a whole lot of change in your physique when your body doesn't ever adapt to anything and have to get stronger, right? Um, if you're not really ever giving it a challenging enough stimulus to change, it's not going to change. So in order to do that, there needs to be some built in progression. Um, and that's where having a structure and a format and a schedule makes so much sense. And it's just going to get you better results. Right? Like, what's the point of doing your workouts, putting in the time, but you don't have a schedule, you don't have any structure, so you just don't really see the results that you want to see. When someone could be putting in the exact same amount of time as you, but they actually have a structure that they're following and have a plan that they're following. And so they're much more likely to see the changes reflected in their body. Um, so if you're struggling to see results and you don't really have any sort of proper schedule right now, then this would definitely be an episode that I recommend that you listen to closely. I also feel like taking some notes on this one might be helpful if you are able to, depending on kind of what you're doing while you're listening to this. If you're able to jot down some notes so that you can remember kind of the basics, at least for how to put all this together on your own, I think that would be very helpful for today's episode. Um, and it's important to first share that there really is no one magical workout split that's best for every single person. If that were the case, then. We wouldn't need to do this episode. There wouldn't be so much out there that's kind of confusing, right? If there was just one thing that works for every single person. Um, so the goal is simply to exercise each muscle group in a challenging way. Knowing that frequency with frequency, your results are going to improve, right? You can't just like, do this stuff for a week and expect results. You have to show week after week. Um, but you also do need to factor in the equation of your own life, meaning your schedule, your consistency, the realistic number of times that you're going to exercise on a weekly basis most of the time where you're exercising and what your actual goals are. So that's why there's no one size fits all. Because someone could be listening to this episode and they are dying to gain some muscle. Maybe you've just always kind of had a thinner frame, and you'd really like to put on some muscle mass. Someone else may be listening to this, and they want to, uh, just crush it on the on the trails. And that's their goal. It's more performance based. Someone else might be listening. They want to focus on fat loss. So we're going to go over all of these main goals and what the best workout split might be for you if you fall into that category of having that particular goal. Okay. So let's get into it. Our first one that we're going to talk about is someone who's kind of more of a beginner. Maybe you just generally want to get into better shape, just general fitness. Okay. You don't have any like intense body composition goals or performance goals, but you want to be a healthy person and just kind of get into better shape and have a good, good routine. Um, this person is likely working out about 2 to 3 times a week. Okay, realistically, if you're starting out, I'm not going to say let's start out five days a week, because if you haven't been doing anything that's going to feel very out of reach and you're way less likely to be consistent with something if you're overwhelmed by it. Okay, so if you're listening to this and you are like wanting to start dabbling into exercise but you haven't been doing anything, don't be tempted to go the route of, I'm just going to go all out and start working out every single day of the week. Um, 75 hardstyle, you are going to burn out. And that is why there's not a very good success rate for 75 hard people on the back end. Yes, they might stick through it, they might do the whole 75 days, but most people aren't keeping up with doing two days, seven days a week after those 75 days. Right? We want to set realistic expectations so that you don't feel like you failed if you, quote unquote, fall off or can't keep up with such a rigorous schedule. Um, so let's talk about what this looks like. Um, working out 2 to 3 times a week. In this case, I recommend doing 2 to 3 full body lifting sessions with frequent weekly walks. Um, if you prefer to get a little bit of cardiovascular work in. So if you're wanting to focus on improving heart health or cardiovascular endurance is also a little goal of yours. Then I would say I would go with two full body lifting sessions a week, and one of those workouts. Then out of the three is going to be a cardio session instead of a lifting session. Um, I still think walks pretty much rule of thumb for everybody. You're going to be helpful. Um, so daily walks are always going to be a thing, but especially if you're not doing any formal cardio, you really want to be getting out for walks as frequently as you can. Definitely multiple times a week for a couple miles at a time where it feels like you are challenging your cardiovascular system a little bit. Um, so 2 to 3 days a week, either doing three lifting sessions and daily walks, or two lifting sessions with a cardio session. Um, if you want to just get stronger, improve health and get leaner, you really don't need formal cardio. Um, as long as you are walking. But it's important that you're not just sitting on the couch between your workout days and doing absolutely nothing, right? We want to make sure that we're living active lifestyles outside of our workouts. Because our workouts are such a small amount of time in the grand scheme of 24 hours or our week. Right? So we got to be getting up and active, especially if you're not going to be doing any formal cardio. Um, what does a full body workout look like? Since we're talking about full body workouts in this, in this setting, the reason I recommend Full Body, if you're only doing 2 to 3 sessions a week, is that you want to be hitting as many muscle groups as you can as frequently as you can. And if you're only doing a few sessions a week, we want to make sure that we're maximizing those sessions and activating as many muscles as we can during those sessions. Okay, so full body can look a couple different ways. One is hitting every single major muscle group in every workout. These are probably going to end up being a little bit longer because you're doing them less frequently, right? If you're only working out 2 to 3 times a week, probably gonna want to dedicate a little bit more time so you can actually hit every single muscle group. So basically what I mean by that is we're going to do at least one exercise for your glutes, quads, hamstrings, back, biceps, triceps, shoulders, chest and core. That's kind of a lot of muscle muscle groups to hit in every single workout. Um, like I said, you only really need to do one exercise of each, but you're doing that ideally twice a week so that you still have a little bit more frequency of hitting those muscle groups. Another option is doing what's called an upper pull, lower push versus upper push, lower pole split. So if you don't exercise, you're probably like, what is she saying? Um, so let me explain what this means. Upper pole would correlate to your upper body pulling muscles. So think about when you're pulling on a rope or pulling on something. You're working your back and biceps in that scenario. So you're pulling muscles for your upper body are going to be your back and biceps. Your lower push muscles are your quads. So if you're like pushing up off of the ground, you're using your quads to get up. So that would be what an upper pole lower push workout looks like would be hitting your back, biceps and quads okay. Versus. And you have another separate day where you're hitting upper push muscles, which would be like doing a push up think pushing up off of the ground. You're hitting your chest, triceps and shoulders and lower pull is going to be your hamstrings and glutes. Okay so separate day you are hitting that. So you're kind of hitting opposing sides of the body. So for instance with upper pull it's the back side of your upper body. And lower push is the front side of your lower body. This is why I say maybe taking some notes today in case this is kind of just going right over your head. Um, so this is a really lovely split, because if you only have two days a week to lift, you're still able to hit multiple muscle groups upper and lower in the same workout, but you're splitting it up in a strategic way so that you're not going to be super sore everywhere. And you can hit those muscle groups a little bit harder. So on a day, for instance, when you have upper pull, lower push, you're going to be doing multiple exercises for your back and biceps and multiple exercises for your quads instead of just doing one exercise for your quads, one exercise for your back, one exercise for your biceps until the next workout. So you're going to get a little bit higher volume for each muscle group in that one workout. And then the next time you exercise, you're hitting the opposing muscle groups. And again, you're getting a little bit more volume with those. So that's a really good spot. If you only have two days a week to exercise, where you can really confidently get some good volume on every single muscle group. Um, the only thing is the core. If you're wanting to hit your core in a more specific way, then you're going to need to pick a day to kind of add that in. And maybe that's after a cardio session or something like that. Okay, so those are two of my favorite ways to do full body. And if you are a beginner or you're just working out a few days a week, full body is the way to go to make sure that you're hitting all of your muscle groups as frequently as possible. I still do full body workouts most of the time because inevitably, with having a kiddo and having a business, there are some weeks where like, maybe I'm only working out three times and that's just how it goes based on how busy my schedule is. So that means I want to make sure that I'm hitting all of my muscle groups every single week instead of like, what if I had planned on doing five days that week? So I did an upper body day, and then I accidentally missed my lower body day, so I completely skipped my lower body. Right? So you see what I'm saying? You're more likely to actually hit every muscle group if you have that planned in to do full body versus a body part split, which we'll get into into when that actually makes sense a little bit later. All right. So let's talk about fat loss. If fat loss is your primary goal right now, this person is going to want to dedicate at least 3 to 4 days a week to exercise and definitely add in every single day walks. That is crucial. We really want to make sure we're increasing our non exercise activity and the amount of work spending every single day. That's not done in a way where we're just getting super hungry, adding in tons of cardio, uh, driving up stress. So the daily walks are going to be crucial if you have a fat loss goal on top of your workouts. Um, so I would recommend in this case three lifting sessions and one cardio session a week and then your walks. So this split will really be a matter of preference, which you're going to find out is actually the case in many, many times. Other than I would argue, if you only have like 2 to 3 days a week, I really, really recommend doing the full body splits we just talked about. Other than that, if you're doing a little bit more frequency with your workouts, preference is going to come into this big time. So whether that's full body, upper pull, lower push up or push lower pole, which we just went over, were somewhat of a mix, especially if you're upwards of four lifting sessions a week. You could do a little bit of a mix here. And I'll do this with some of my clients, because I want to make it fun and exciting for them. Even though they are following a structure, we might not do the exact same structure every single training block, but we are going to kind of mix up some of this, so we might do one upper body and core day, one lower body day, and then two full body days. But again, it's important that if you have these body part split days where you're just doing like upper body only or core only or lower body only, that you are actually consistent with going to the gym all of the days that you plan. Because then if you end up only hitting upper body that we can completely missing legs, that's pretty uneven. Then you're not hitting a very big part of your body, right? So that's what we want to avoid with the body part splits. If you're going to take the body part split approach, you really need to be consistent and actually hitting all of your workout days that week. Um, so you could mix it up. And, and if you are doing full four days a week in the gym, you're doing a couple full body days and then a couple where it's like upper body core only and lower body only. Um, as long as you're frequently activating each muscle group with progressive overload and intensity, you're going to see improved muscle mass and definition regardless of the split. So this means that if you're completing the same amount of weekly sets for each each muscle group, the split is kind of irrelevant. Okay, so as long as you are getting the same or semi equal volume of like reps on your quads, reps on your chest, reps on your back, then the split is really going to be more dependent on your preference. Um, we really want to enjoy at least somewhat the structure of our workouts. So this is where preference is very important. Um, if you don't enjoy your structure, you're less likely to show up to your workouts. So as long as you're evaluating the volume and making sure that you're getting the volume that you want in that week to create muscle change in your body, then you want to also factor in your preference and see what you like. Personally, for me, like I mentioned, I really like full body workouts. I always feel like I'm getting more out of them because I am able to hit both my lower body and my upper body. I tend to do more of like the upper polo or push split, um, simply because I like having, um, a little bit more volume of each muscle group within the workout while still hitting upper and lower body. I find that that's just my personal preference. So some of this does take some experimenting. I've been lifting now for, you know, 15 years. It really does make a big difference when you experiment and kind of figure out what you like and what you like. Might shift over time, too, and that's okay. Um, the other main component of fat loss, other than your workouts and your neat so you're not exercise activity, which we talked about with the walking is going to be the food quantity. So you really do need to be sure that you dial this in as well, because workouts are only going to get you so far if you're not willing to look at or adjust how much you're eating on a daily basis. So definitely if you're already incorporating a really awesome workout structure where you're you're working on building muscle or maintaining muscle while you're in a calorie deficit, um, or you just have no clue if you're actually in a calorie deficit and you're only focusing on the workouts. I definitely would say the next step is to figure out if you're in a calorie deficit and what that looks like for you, and that's what we kind of help our clients do in Mountain Metabolic, because a lot of people come into the program really not super aware of what their nutrition actually looks like from a quantity standpoint, how much we're actually intaking as far as food on a daily basis, factoring in like the mindless snacking and alcohol and little snacks and sips in the weekends versus weekdays. Uh, all of this really does add up. And if we don't take a close look at it, that can kind of be the reason why we tend to stay stuck where we're like getting stronger and maybe seeing more muscle, but we're not seeing necessarily the leanness or the definition that we want or the fat loss component. Okay. So if you're seeing yourself getting stronger from your workouts, you're gaining muscle, you're feeling good in that way, but you're not necessarily losing weight. And that's what you want to see happen. You want to feel leaner. Then that's when you know we need to evaluate nutrition. Um, okay. Next up we're going to talk about the goal of muscle game. So someone who wants to gain muscle is going to want to dedicate about 4 to 5 lifting sessions per week. Um, frequency and volume are just going to be crucial for adding muscle. You're going to have to work a little bit harder to get that muscle on your body. Um, in addition to remaining in a consistent calorie surplus with adequate protein. So just like we were talking about with fat loss, um, that you're only going to go so far with your workouts if you're not willing to look at your nutrition. The same is very much true for when muscle gain is your goal. If you are only focusing on the workouts, but then you accidentally find yourself eating at maintenance or even in a deficit, maybe you have a hard time eating enough, then you're not going to gain the amount of muscle that you want. You might get leaner, you might feel a little bit stronger, but you're not going to necessarily add the mass that you're looking for. Um, so having some awareness around what your maintenance calories look like and then how much extra you need to be eating in order to put yourself in a good calorie surplus, and then doing that consistently, you know, week after week, month after month, depending on what your goal looks like, how much you're wanting to gain, all of that. Um, okay. So when the main muscle gain is the main goal. A body part split makes a lot of sense. So we talked about this earlier that I don't love body part splits. If you only have like 2 to 3 days to commit to the gym. However, if you're dedicating more sessions in the gym, um, and you're really wanting to like get a ton of volume per muscle group, which you do. If you're wanting to focus on growth in a particular area, then a body part split is awesome. And this can look like doing one day for back and biceps, one day for quads and core, one day for chest, triceps and shoulders. One day for hamstrings and glutes. So that's four days right there in the gym. And you're going to be hitting those muscle groups really hard, getting as much volume as possible for those muscle groups. Um, and then if you have an additional day, you can make it kind of more full body where you're just doing kind of more of like a conditioning style, um, muscular endurance, or you can do more of a cardio session if you still want to make sure that you're, you know, working on your cardiovascular health while you are also in a surplus and trying to gain some muscle. So it kind of depends on on what you're wanting to do with that fifth day, but you have some options. Um, the only downside, I would say, of this structure is that you're more likely to be extremely sore after these workouts because you're hitting that same muscle group like a crap ton across the span of whatever time you have in that workout, 45 minutes to an hour. Plus, you are really hitting one muscle group. Or maybe a couple. Like for the instance of chest, triceps, and shoulders, it's three muscles, but you're going to be doing a lot of exercises where they're all working in tandem because they're all upper body push muscles. Okay, so a lot of like these chest presses and chest flys and push ups and things like that, you're going to be working your chest, triceps and shoulders all together. Okay. So likely you're going to be a little bit more sore after workouts like this because you're not spreading out the volume across a ton of different muscles, if that makes sense. Like you are with full body or the upper push or pull structures that we've talked about. Um, so if you find this debilitating, if you try this out and you're like, Holy crap, I'm just so sore. Like after a quads day, I literally cannot sit down on the toilet and I just don't like being that sore. It feels like then I'm way less active the next day. Um, then doing more of, like an upper push, lower pull, upper pull, lower push split may be better for you because you're working more muscles each session. And so you're kind of spreading it out and you're able to do more frequency instead of hitting it all in one session. So you can experiment with that if muscle gain is your goal. Um, let's talk about if you are a hiker. So if your training goals specifically rotate around hiking performance versus body composition goals. Here are some ideal schedules for you. Um, and really there's again, it's going to be up to preference. There's no one perfect schedule. That's why I have a couple listed out. And you might want to take some notes on this. Um, so that you don't let it pass you by. So one option would be Monday full body strength day. Tuesday rest and walk Wednesday full body muscular endurance really hitting a lot of lower body. So muscular endurance is going to be a little bit more like high rep lower weight where you are hitting the muscle over and over and over again like you would in a hike, but you aren't necessarily using like an extremely challenging weight. Thursday is going to be a steady state cardio training, and Friday is going to be core and back focused. Saturday long hike if possible, or a long incline walk workout and then Sunday rest and walk. So that's a sample schedule for you where you'd be doing three kind of more strength days, one cardio day and then a hike. All right. Our next option for a workout structure if you're a hiker would be Monday upper pull lower push for strength Tuesday steady state cardio Wednesday core and walk Thursday upper push lower pole string Friday cardio intervals and Saturday. Either a long hike or an incline walk workout. Sunday rest and then our next optional structure would be Monday full body strength Tuesday walk, Wednesday steady state cardio and core Thursday walk, Friday full body muscular endurance Saturday hike or long incline walk Sunday rest and walk. So that's going to be two strength days, two cardio days including hike. Okay, so that's probably your least volume schedule. Like if you're only doing two strength days, one cardio day and then getting outside on the weekends, that's a good structure for you. General workout notes, things that you just always want to include. If you are putting together and learning how to structure your own workouts, you're always going to want to include. Hinges, which are kind of like deadlifts working on your hip and hamstring strength. Squats, single leg step movements, pull muscle, pull musculature. So kind of pulling with your back muscles, push and core exercises. And for hikers particularly focusing on single leg back and core exercise is going to be helpful. If you think about what you're doing while you're hiking, you're going to be doing a lot where you're needing single leg, quad glute, hamstring strength and stability. And if you're carrying a pack on your back, you're going to want to have a strong back and core to support what's happening and keep you upright with good posture. Um, and oftentimes in just like general group classes or bodyweight workouts, things like that, we really tend to neglect our postural muscles. So our back all the way down to our hamstrings and glutes, which leads to really poor structure. And we tend to sit in a very forward rounded setting for work. Right? We're like sitting kind of round in our shoulders forward, hunching a little bit as we type. Um, and we're not activating our back muscles at all. So making sure that you're hitting your back is really, really important by doing those pull exercises back and biceps. Um, and just in general with hiking, strength should definitely be a foundation with addition to aerobic conditioning, um, which will be increasingly important as you get closer to like bigger or longer duration hikes. I think a lot of people are under the impression that if you're a hiker, all you need to do is cardio, and what has been really cool and rewarding in the Mountain Metabolic program is how many hikers come to me and go through the program, or they work with me for a few months and then they go on a big hike and they're like, oh my gosh, I had no idea how important and vital strength training would be to how good I feel on my hikes. I have no knee pain, I feel amazing, I feel so strong and just doing cardio like wasn't getting me to that point. Um, so if that's you and you're a hiker and you've always just traditionally done more conditioning, cardio focused exercises, um, definitely getting some cross training with, with some strength training, single leg stability work, getting stronger in your squats and hinges and back and core is going to make a very, very big difference with how you feel both on and off the trail. Um, if you're kind of unsure of what exercises are going to be the most effective for you, how to put all this together. Maybe you're listening to this and you're like, this is so overwhelming to me. I totally get that. And it is a lot of information. I try to break it down and make it as bite sized as possible, but if it's feeling very overwhelming to you, or you just don't have the mental capacity to put it all together, um, and you feel like you just want to outsource something like this so you can make it as easy as yourself on yourself as possible to just implement and follow through to get results as fast as possible. I'd love to talk with you about if Mountain Metabolic coaching is the right fit for you. Um, we personalize everything to you, put it all together in an easy to follow structure with demonstration videos and app that you'll use that has a customized dashboard for you. Um, we're adjusting the workouts as we go. You're providing feedback and notes on how the workouts are going for you, um, week to week. And it is just such a great way to get some momentum going, build the habits, gain some knowledge, and all of that. Plus nutrition audits, setting tangible goals with your nutrition that makes sense with your metabolic baselines as you come into the program. So it really kind of is the holistic approach. If you're wanting to not only get stronger and see some results in the gym, but also maybe see some body composition changes or train for something big. Um, also, right now listeners get 100 off of coaching just for listening to the show. So just let me know on our call that you listen to the show. However, this is only going to be going on until November 15th. Okay, so November 15th is the cutoff for this podcast listener discount. So if you've been kind of on the fence for a while, maybe listening to some episodes, unsure of if you want to take the leap, now's a really good time to do that. Um, okay. I hope that this has been helpful for you guys on how to make sense of your workout splits for your goals. If you have questions or want to chat more, you can always reach out to us at the Fit Underscore for Hiking Instagram page. If you want to apply for Mountain Metabolic coaching to get on a call with me, it's a free call. There's no pressure. We just kind of chat about what you're looking for, what you are hoping to get out of coaching, and then I go over what the program looks like. Um, you can apply at the link in the show notes. Thank you so much for tuning in, and I will chat with you in the next episode. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the fit for hiking podcast. As always, I hope it leaves you feeling inspired and informed on how to take your health and adventure into your own hands. For more content like this, be sure to follow along with my daily posts at Ponytail Underscore. On a trail that's ponytail underscore on a trail. You can also stay up to date on my new episodes being released at Fit Underscore for hiking, and find more free resources at Pony Tail on a trail.com. Happy and healthy trails.