Make the most of a little-known but very powerful way of speeding up muscle growth. Use a first-class push-pull routine to pack on muscle in record time. This really works!
Push-Pull Routines Can Be Very Effective
The goal of every bodybuilder is to gain muscle and gain it fast. To that end, bodybuilders use various workout techniques. These techniques include working out a separate body part on different days of the week, switching between upper and lower body workouts and the push-pull routine.
What is a Push-Pull Routine?
A push-pull routine is a way of dividing up your upper body workout to focus on exercises that simulate a pushing motion and those that simulate a pulling motion.
Some examples of pushing exercises are the bench press, overhead press and squats. Pulling exercises include the dead lift, barbell or dumbbell row, biceps and leg curls.
Benefits of a Push Pull Routine
A push pull routine is preferable to other routines because it helps you avoid over training. Let’s take a five-day split workout routine that trains a different muscle on each day.
Let’s say you train your chest on Monday, arms on Tuesday, shoulders on Wednesday, legs on Thursday and back on Friday. This means your body is always struggling to recover from the previous day’s workouts.
On four of the five training days, your upper body is doing some kind of work and that may hinder your strength and muscle gains. With a push-pull routine, you will work on different groups of muscle instead of individual muscles and by varying the intensity of your workout, you can safely train more frequently in the gym.
In addition to allowing you to train more frequently, push pull routines help you burn more fat. Since you are letting your muscles recover while working other groups, your body is constantly building muscle. If you also have a healthy diet, it is using fat to help build muscle.
Examples of Push Pull Routines
There are many different versions of push-pull routines. They are all effective. You just have to choose the one that’s right for you.
One version of a push-pull routine involves splitting up your workout between pushing exercises, pulling exercise and leg workouts. You can choose to work out three days a week with a day or two of rest between gym visits.
You can choose to do pulling exercises on Monday that include deadlifts, rows, bicep curls and pull-ups. Tuesday would be a recovery day and on Wednesday you would hit the gym again but focus on pushing exercises.
Some exercises you might choose would include bench, triceps and overhead presses. Dips and pushups are also great choices to incorporate into your session on Wednesday. On Thursday, you would let your body recover again and then you would work your legs hard on Friday. Leg workouts are usually brutal, so you can use the weekend to recover and start the cycle all over again on Monday.
Five-Day Routine
Another typical push pull routine involves a five-day workout week. Since you are increasing the amount of time you spend working out, you will vary the intensity of your workout for two days. With this form of the push-pull routine, you would incorporate leg exercises into your workouts instead of training legs on a separate day.
If your training week starts on Monday, you would focus on doing heavy pushing exercises. Keep your repetitions low, weight high and train hard. On Tuesday you would switch to pulling exercises. The premise would stay the same. Lift heavy, use low repetitions – but do pulling exercises instead of pushing exercises.
You can use Wednesday to recover and then hit the gym again on Thursday and Friday. The only difference is that on these two days you would drastically lower the intensity of your workout.
You might choose to decrease the amount of weight you lifted on Monday by 50%, or you can do body exercises like pull-ups and push-ups. Of course, you are still adhering to the push-pull routine, so pull-ups would be done on the pull day and push-ups on your push day.
By varying intensity, your body is actively resting. This form of resting tends to decrease muscle soreness and increase strength and endurance.
Push Your Way to More Muscle
Switching to a push-pull routine will definitely help you build muscle faster. Push-pull routines can be a total body workout if you choose a five-day workout week, or they can just be a way for you to really focus on lifting heavy, building muscle and getting more rest days.
If you are looking for a new way to build muscle fast, the push-pull routine is the way to go.
