What's up guys, Jeff Cavaliere, athelanx.com. Today, by popular demand, the perfect workout
series is back. You guys have asked for it, today I deliver
the perfect Push-Pull Legs Split. Well, today we're going to start with the
pull portion of the PPL. Now guys, I understand that when we talk about
perfect beauty is really, truly in the eye of the beholder. But you guys have asked for a PPL split that
will allow you to build muscle with hypertrophy as your focus, I'm going to deliver it here
today. I'm going to break it down for you guys, the
schedule the sets, the reps, everything, so you can make sure you've got everything you
need to make the gains you're looking for. So, what are we talking about anyway when
we say a Push Pull Leg Spilt? Well, we're taking the pushing muscles, which
consist primarily of chest, shoulders and triceps, and we're training them on one day. We have the pulling muscles, which is basically
back and biceps, but there's a lot more to it, as I'll explain. And you've got your leg day, which goes in
there as well. And you split them up in a fashion of pull,
push and legs. You had the opportunity of some push pull
leg splits to either rotate that one more time. So, it's six times and then you have a day
off on Sunday and then you come back, that's called a Synchronoss split. But we favor an asynchronous split, adding
an additional off day in between your legs and pull sessions. Which I think is really important, especially
here in this hypertrophy focused version of this split. So that being said, guys, let's start breaking
down what we're going to do in both pull one and pull two. That's right, there's two different ways we're
doing here. Let's start with pull one. All right, so I mentioned those two pull workouts
and the reason being, again, with hypertrophy in focus here, guys, what we're going to find
is that pull one will actually set up and then complement pull two and vice versa. So, we get this well-rounded approach. I don't have to choose just one and neither
do you. But we start with pull one here and it starts
with our basic foundational compound lift pulling here the deadlift. Now we're performing this deadlift as a one
by five. That's not simply just one set. You guys know you want to ramp up to that
with four warm up sets to get to 80% of your one rep max for your one set of five. Again, what you do here to ensure progress
is add weight in your next session when you encounter this workout again, if able, if
you're not able to achieve the five reps and of course, you stick with the way you're at
right now until you can. We move to the next exercise, though, and
this is now the chest supported row when we're doing this three sets of eight to 10 reps. And what I like about this is a few different
things. Number one, this is going to help offload
a little bit of that low back. So, when we get in this chest supported set
up here, we have a little bit of relief for the low back, and we can focus a little bit
more on the lats as we pull. But more importantly, I am a tremendous believer
that we do not do enough upper back strengthening work. We don't do enough upper back work, period. So, you're going to go from the deadlift,
we're working on our entire back from the low back all the way to the top, to now one
that's going to focus a little bit more on the upper back, especially if you flow your
elbows a little bit. Now, I mentioned, if you're feeling fatigued
from the deadlift and the upper back is starting to feel too fatigued, you can just tuck your
elbows a little bit more, which will shift this more to the lats. But I encourage you to try to keep that upper
back work going by keeping those elbows a little bit out to the sides. We then come into our next exercise here,
giving that upper back a bit of a reprieve, but go into a more lat focused exercise, the
dumbbell pull over. Now, there's a reason why Arnold called this
the squat of the upper body, it is a tremendous way to build the lats. And what we do is we get that good stretch
in the bottom position and we power through not by extending our elbows or using our triceps
by powering through initiating with the lats as you see here. You're doing two to three sets in the 10 to
12 rep range, choosing a weight that allows you to fail within that range. If for some reason you're starting to do 13
or 14 or 15 reps as you encounter subsequent workouts, well, obviously you need to increase
the weight and vice versa. If you can't get it to this range, you're
choosing too heavy a weight and you need to adapt. We come back to the upper back one more time. Again, we need to hammer this area and we
do so with one of my favorite ways to do it and it's the dumbbell high pull. Now, some might look at this and say, "Jeff,
I think you've lost your mind because this looks like an upright row." It's actually the direct opposite of an upright
row. Mechanically for your shoulder, this is externally
rotating, not internally rotating like we would in an upright row. So, it's actually one of the safest things
you can do to train your shoulders and to bulletproof them. At the same time, we're shifting that focus
to a vertical pole and getting the upper traps and upper back and into the rear delts. Which brings us to now the bicep portion of
our pole workout. And again, some people skip this entirely,
thinking they've got enough work already. Again, when you're looking for a hypertrophy
focus split guys, you're going to want to have some direct bicep work. And one of my favorite ways to do this is
with the bicep chin curl. Now, it's always a good idea, if possible,
to do some decompression work following a deadlift. And here we get to do that by simply hanging
from the bar. But instead of doing a traditional chin up,
we take something called the chin curl where we close the angle of the elbow down as we
approach the top of the bar. So, we're actually mimicking the mechanics
of a barbell curl. Instead of bringing the bar up to you, you
bring your body to the bar once again, closing down that angle. And we actually now don't just leave it at
that, we superset this with, I know, a tricep exercise on pull day. You're going to see as we build out this entire
PPL split guys, there's a reason why we do this. We want to get some additional volume on the
arms that oftentimes get shortchanged a little bit in these PPL splits, and we're going to
show with a basic overhead tricep extension. What we're getting here is some long head
work for the triceps, again something that oftentimes gets overlooked, utilizing the
stress position as the main focus here. We're going three sets to failure of the bicep
chin curl and three sets of 10 to 12 on the back end of the superset. And then no pull workout is complete, really,
no Athlete-X workout is complete without some additional corrective work at the end of this. And one of my favorite all time movements
to hit the entire posterior chain, to round out this perfect pull workout, is the Angel
and Devil. The Angel and Devil is, like it sounds, it
sounds so easy, but it's so damn hard. It's devilish because this will light up your
back like a Christmas tree. And no, not just the lower back portion of
your back that looks like a Christmas tree, but your entire back because every single
muscle of the upper back, the mindscape, the lower back, the lower traps, the paraspinals,
they all get activated in this exercise. This is kept in a much higher rep range of
15 to 20, for three sets, with the focus being on quality, not quantity. Think about doing 15 to 20 sets of one rather
than a set of 15 to 20. Which brings us to pull workout number two. And remember, I said it as a hypertrophy focused
PPL split, we have the option for a second pull workout here because what I've done is
designed something that's going to compliment pull one at the same time, stand alone with
its own benefits here as pull two. And it starts here with the Snatch Grip Deadlifts. So, we're deadlifting again, but not entirely
with the same focus. This is not meant for progressively overloading
this strength movement, it's meant for reinforcing the hinge pattern, which we know is incredibly
important. Beyond that, though, we're still going to
be able to get that upper back work with the Snatch Grip, that wider grip, we're going
to work the upper traps a lot more, we're going to work the demands on the upper back
even more and maybe even work the grip a little bit, which I'll get to in a second. But we don't have to not do the deadlift pattern,
we can still do it. We're doing it to make sure that while we're
getting some additional volume, we're not necessarily doing it with a heavier load. So, it's three by five and each one of these
are going to be done with a weight that you can handle for about eight repetitions. So, again not touching our maxes is on this
lift. Which then goes right into our second exercise
here, which is my favorite one of the classic compound pulling movements that people don't
do often enough, and it's the Weighted Pullup. This one I love to build those lats and just
build your overall pulling strength, but you have to make sure that you're loading heavy
enough. Six to eight reps as we're looking for here,
so if you're able to do a lot more pull ups, you're going to have to strap some weight
around you to get within this range. Now, one thing I'll point out is if your grip
was somewhat taxed by the Snatch Grip Deadlift, then you'd want to switch the order here. But we do a lot of group training work here,
we do a lot of carries and heavy carries. We do a lot of chin-ups and pull ups and dead
arm hangs, so we don't usually run into those issues. But if you're new to Athlean-X and your group
is giving out, make sure you switch the order of these first two movements. Which is an exercise number three, which is
the Dumbbell Gorilla Row and this is a good option when you don't want to consider the
dumbbell one on row. You know, I don't like that exercise in terms
of the asymmetrical setup and having one knee up on a bench in the inherent risk that might
have in terms of hernia. So, we get grounded, and we get balanced around
the dumbbell and we can explicitly pull from the floor. And we also have that additional benefit of
allowing the elbow to either stay tighter to our sides, if we're looking for more of
a flat focus or, as I've encouraged before, introduce more upper back work if possible
so allow the elbow to drift more to get those benefits. Then we go into our fourth exercise of the
day and this is now the Straight Arm Pushdown. This almost starts to cross over a little
bit into that corrective category because we have that important straight arm scapular
strength that we can build with this exercise. Another overlooked component of many pull
workouts, but we're basically extending the range of motion from what we had on the Dumbbell
Pullover. That brings us from here to here, the Sternum
Pushdown, brings us from here to here. But what it also does is it places a focus
contraction on the lats, getting us into this complete adduction at the sides. That gives us a good hypertrophy option here,
especially in this spot, the fourth one in to focus more heavily on the lats. We'll keep the rep range a little higher,
12 to 15 for two to three sets. Which then brings us into the arm focus portion
of our pull workout. And you guys know, I wouldn't complete one
of these two options without having one of my favorite pull exercises, which is the Barbell
Curl. And again, I don't think we should shy away
from going heavy here. Six to eight repetitions is a good reference
to train this exercise in to build bigger biceps. But as I did the last time, I'm going to superset
that with a tricep exercise to get additional volume here, just like we'll actually wind
up doing on our push days when we get to them with some additional bicep work. But this time the exercise selection is not
going to focus on the long head, but more the lateral and medial head of the triceps
with a classic Tricep Pushdown. It's three sets of six to eight on the barbell
curl, leading into three sets of 10 to 12 and superset fashion on the tricep push down. Which then brings us to our final and favorite
exercise of all of our pull workouts, it's the face pull. You guys know how much I love this exercise,
but we do know that it is a classic exercise with his capability of hitting the entire
upper back, the midscap and also the rotator cuff. It's one of the reasons why I placed it today,
as opposed to the first workout, which I thought was a little bit upper back, heavy in focus. This is the perfect time to do this, guys. And again, as always, with all of your corrective
exercises, treat them with quality first, not quantity, 15 to 20 repetitions. But if you have to think of it as 15 to 20
sets of one, then by all means do so, but make sure you don't forget to include this
at the end of this workout. And with that, guys, we have our perfect pull
workout parts one and two. Remember, you're going to do these in alternating
fashion. I'll keep them up here on the screen for a
second so you can make sure you screenshot them and keep them and start working on these. Remember, we're going to have the perfect
push and legs portion of these. I'll link those at the end of this video. The bottom line here, guys, is if you follow
a training plan, results will come. Our step-by-step training plans are all available
over at Athleanx.com. We actually have a push/pull legs work out,
laid out for you step-by-step, including the meal plan. It's the AX1 program, you're going to want
to check that out. If you haven't already done so guys, make
sure you click subscribe and turn your notifications on, so you never miss a new video when we
put one out. Also, leave your comment below and let me
know what you want me to cover in these future perfect workouts and I'll do my best to do
that for you. All right, guys, I'll see you soon.
