Ditching the "Bro Split" - Why Training Smarter is the Key to Building Muscle After 40

If you’ve spent any time in a gym over the last couple of decades, you are probably intimately familiar with the classic "bro split." It’s the routine most of us grew up reading about in fitness magazines, and it’s the default setting for almost anyone deciding it’s time to get serious about lifting.

You know the schedule: Monday is chest day, Tuesday is back, Wednesday is shoulders, Thursday is legs, and Friday is arms. You dedicate five or six days a week to completely destroying one specific muscle group per session, and every week looks exactly the same.

When you’re in your twenties, you can get away with almost any training style because your body is a highly efficient recovery machine. But as we age, our approach to building and maintaining muscle has to evolve. If you're over 40 and still running a strict bro split, you aren't just working harder than you need to, you are leaving a massive amount of growth on the table.

Here is why the traditional one-muscle-a-day split might be holding you back, and what you should be doing instead.

The Missed Growth Window

To understand why the bro split is inefficient, we have to look at the reality of muscle recovery and muscle protein synthesis (the biological process of building new muscle).

When you train a muscle hard, you trigger a growth response. However, that window of elevated muscle building doesn't last all week; it typically peaks and returns to baseline within 48 to 72 hours. This means you only need about two to three days for that muscle to recover, repair, and grow.

Think about the math of a typical bro split: if you train your chest on Monday, you are resting it for six whole days before you hit it again the following Monday. That means for three to four days, you are doing absolutely nothing to stimulate that muscle. You're completely missing out on the biological opportunity to trigger growth.

When we optimize our programming, we should be looking to hit each muscle group two, or even three times a week. Frequent, high-quality stimulation is the key to signaling your body to hold onto and build muscle tissue as you age.

The Volume Trap and the Pacing Dilemma

The other major flaw with dedicating an entire day to just one muscle group is what I call the "volume trap."

If you're forcing yourself to do four, five, or even six different exercises for the exact same muscle, you run into a serious pacing dilemma. Let’s say it’s leg day. Are you going to go all-out on heavy barbell squats for your first exercise, completely fry your central nervous system, and have absolutely nothing left in the tank for the lunges, leg presses, and extensions that follow?

Most people subconsciously solve this by pacing themselves. If you know you have to survive an hour of chest exercises, you hold back on the bench press so you can make it through the incline flyes. But if you aren't really pushing hard on those primary exercises, you're just pacing yourself to the finish line. You end up accumulating "junk volume", reps that make you tired and sore, but don't actually stimulate new muscle growth.

Furthermore, hammering a single joint and muscle group with 20 sets in a single day is a recipe for severe inflammation and excessive soreness, which can be incredibly hard on older joints and tendons.

The Solution: A Smarter Split for Longevity and Growth

Instead of mass-hitting one muscle to the point of severe overtraining and then waiting a week to do it again, a much better option is a split that targets one to two muscle groups per day with less overall volume per session.

The benefits of a higher-frequency, moderate-volume approach:

• Maximum Effort, Zero Pacing: When you only have to do two exercises for your back instead of five, you can give those two exercises 100% of your effort. You don't have to pace yourself to survive a bloated workout.

• Better Joint Health: Spreading your weekly volume across multiple days prevents you from overloading your joints and connective tissues in a single, punishing session.

• More Growth Opportunities: By training a muscle, giving it a couple of days to recover, and hitting it again, you are maximizing the muscle protein synthesis window all week long.

Effective Alternatives to the Bro Split:

• Upper/Lower Split (4 days a week): Monday and Thursday focus on the upper body; Tuesday and Friday focus on the lower body. Every muscle gets hit twice a week with adequate rest in between.

• Push/Pull/Legs (3-6 days a week): Grouping muscles by their function (Pushing muscles like chest/shoulders/triceps, Pulling muscles like back/biceps, and Legs).

• Full Body (3 days a week): Highly effective for older lifters who want maximum frequency and have limited days to get to the gym.

• My Personal Favorite (6 Days per week): Day 1 - Chest & Back, Day 2 - Sholuders & Arms, Day 3 - Legs, with Calves and Abs/Core at the end of each workout. I do that twice a week.

The Bottom Line

Building a great physique later in life is entirely possible, but it requires strategy. You don't have to kill yourself in the gym to get results. Work smarter, push harder on fewer movements per session, and stop waiting a full week to train a muscle again. Give your body the frequent stimulus it needs to grow, and the adequate recovery it needs to thrive.

Best Overall Workout Split and Program For Muscle Gains and Strength

First of all, thanks to all those that gave me their feedback about what video content they would like to see from me in terms of Health and Fitness Videos!

There where some really good recommendations for sure. One reoccurring idea was "Workout Program Suggestions". Things like Workout Splits, Sets and Rep Ranges, Types of Exercises, Workout Frequency... These are just some of the questions that if I could sum them all up into one Video would be a video talking about how to best use your time in the gym to get the most out of your strength training workout.

Now we all have very different goals in terms of why we strength train. For some people that will be for powerlifting, or maybe bodybuilding, or perhaps to help build strength for a sport you may be a part of. I think in general most people strength train or weight train simply to build muscle and get stronger so not only do they look better, but also feel better and be able to do more physically in real life.

No matter what your reasoning is, the goal when going to the gym should be to get the most out of your valuable time. I would say most people I see at the gym are not seeing their full benefits usually because they are going through the motions basically doing the same workout over and over again, and not pushing that little extra bit it takes to take things to the next level. So essentially they are at best maintaining what they have.

If you are happy with the results you are currently getting from your weight training, then don't change a thing until those results are no longer happening. If you are not happy with your current results, than you will have to change what you are doing to see positive results again. That usually means a program change that involves either more weight being lifted, more reps or more sets. So more volume of weight total being lifted during the entire workout. This usually will require that you track your workouts so you can compare past workout efforts to current workout efforts.

In this video I also talk a lot about how best to optimise your workout program in terms of my favorite workout body part splits, how often to hit each muscle per week, and how many days per week to weight train for best results.

Why the Scale Doesn’t Really Mean Anything

I lost 30 pounds approximately in around 3 months during my recent heart health issue. That averages around 10 pounds per month of weight loss.

So if I started out fairly lean before the 30 pounds of weight loss then I must have been totally shredded after losing 30 pounds? Unfortunately that is not how things work.

Let’s get into the math a bit of what happened:

10 Pounds is equal to 35,000 calories as an energy comparison when in fat stores, normally to lose 10 pounds of fat in a month, one would need to be in a 1200 calorie deficit everyday consistently. So if was burning 3000 calories per day via my BMR (Base Metabolic Rate) and combined activity, then I would need to be eating 1800 calories per day to be in a 1200 calorie deficit.

So unless I was in such a deficit every day for those 3 months, how is it possible to lose that much weight so quickly?

I can guarantee I was not in a calorie deficit during this time, there where of course days where I ate very little but other days I ate like a horse and during this time my actively was either zero to not much above zero. Meaning I was most likely only burning around 2000 calories or just above per day. I would need to be eating 800 calories per day to be in a 1200 calorie deceit to lose so much weight!

So what the heck was going on then?

Muscle has a water consistency of around 80% while fat has a water consistency of 20%.

Out of 10 pounds of muscle, 2 pounds is cellular, while out of 10 pounds of fat, 8 pounds is cellular. As you know, water has zero calories so the energy from either muscle or fat has to come from the cellular tissue. This means fat has approximately 4 to 5 times the energy per pound compared to muscle so you should be able to gain 4 to 5 pounds of muscle while losing 1 pound of fat while maintaining a neutral calorie input.

Example of what this means:

If I weighed 180 pounds and gain 8 pounds of muscle while losing 2 pounds of fat, I would end up weighing 186 pounds without having to eat in a calorie surplus.

This is one reason why a person can be in a moderate diet (calorie deficit) and actually gain weight at the same time. This can happen when a person is dedicated to weight training at the same time and is able to put on a fair amount of muscle during the diet phase. As a person get’s leaner this does get harder to do as fat stores are not as prevalent and the bodies ability to continue to gain muscle has it’s limitations.

How to get the Most Out of Your Workout Split

There are many ways to program how you weight train, some people like to hit each muscle super hard once per week usually splitting each workout focussing on one to two muscle groups per workout but hitting each muscle group really hard with multiple exercises.

Then there is the other extreme where you hit every body part each workout but only doing one quick exercise per body part, this can be a bit of a marathon for sure…

I have tried both and both do work but which one is best or perhaps is there something in the middle which will get the absolute most out of each weight training session.

Personally I believe volume at the end of the day is the most important factor. What I mean is if you add up all the sets and all the reps you did for the week and totaled the weight you lifted. Then more is better. This is also assuming you spend the same amount time in the gym each week weight training.

One other factor we need to make sure we consider is recovery time. How much do you really need? Most people would say at least 24 hours but 48 hours is a good rule of thumb especially if you trained a muscle pretty hard with multiple exercises, sets and reps. I would even go so far as to say that in some cases three days may be required for a muscle to fully recover, especially a large muscle group like your legs after a full leg training day with squats, deadlifts and accessory work. But let’s stick with 48 hours in most situations.

So if we use 48 hours as a baseline for muscle recovery then that means you could workout each body part 3 times per week based on a two day split meaning you hit half your body one day and then the other half the next day repeating daily with one day off per week.

If that seems like too much time in the gym for some people with busy schedules then you could do a two day split four days per week and train each body part two times per week. Still good!

The real question is, would it be better to do a two day split and hit each body part two to three times per week or would it be better to do what is commonly called the Bro-Split and train each body part once per week but hit it crazy hard with three to four exercises per weight training session?

There is one more factor we need to consider before going into this further and that is muscle atrophy. Muscle atrophy is when a muscle does not get stimulation and essentially starts to lose size and strength because of lack of use. But how long does it take before noticeable muscle atrophy begins? Most people will say even after a week it can start to happen but I would say two to three weeks is when it really become more noticeable. Does that mean muscle atrophy is not happening on a more micro scale during the week if you are not using a muscle for say three to four days post recovery? I believe it happening on a small micro scale but even if I am wrong and you are not training a muscle for several days post recovery then you are at a bare minimum not utilizing potential training opportunities with that muscle group. So in the example of the Bro-Split hitting a muscle on only once per week, you may be experiencing a micro amount of muscle atrophy since that muscle group is not being stimulated much for at least four to five days at a time between workout session.

Getting back to training volume which again I feel is the measuring stick for workout efficiency which at the end of the day should get you the best results. To me it is pretty obvious that training a muscle with one exercise to failure and then moving on to a new muscle will yield the most weight moved in a workout or weight training session and for the week. Using the example of three exercises per week for a muscle group, If you hit a muscle with multiple exercises in a session then you either have to pace yourself the entire time or go all out on the first exercise with each follow up exercise having less and less strength available, so moving less and less weight. If you where to split the three exercises up into three separate weigth training sessions (Monday, Wednesday, Friday), then you will have full available strength for each exercise session.

The key is to be smart about how you break down your two day split as to not overlap already worked muscles. I find it best to hit Chest, Back and Shoulders with Calves and Core on day one and then I hit Legs and Arms with Core on day two. I also make sure to only do one press exercise on upper body day. For example if I start with a chest press then I would do back between chest and shoulders followed by something like shoulder raises so as not to hit my already weekend triceps doing a shoulder press. And similarly if I started with a shoulder press I would do something like Flies for Chest. The key is to really mix up your workouts and always be doing a different exercise for each muscle group. Here is an example of what I mean… Shoulders Day One - DB Shoulder Press, Shoulders Day two - Raises with DB or Cables, Shoulders Day three - Upright Row or Machine Shoulder Press.

Now what works for me may not work for you and some people just like to workout a certain way because that is what they are use to and at the end of the day being motivated to get into the gym consistently is really the most important factor. Of course you have to do the work when you are at the gym but if you are hitting the gym often and training hard you will see results no matter what workout program you use. You can give my methods a try and see if it works for you or not?

Workout at Strength Camp Langley

I haven't posted a workout video in a while so I thought I would play around with my Insta360 One R and see how well it would do in this type of workout situation, The lighting was a bit dark in the area I was doing Walking Lunges so I did get a lot of noise with it but it worked rather well on the other side of the gym where the lighting is much better. I love the ability to manually zoom and pan the 360 video after the fact to make it look like I have my own custom video person.

In this workout at Strength Camp Langley I performed a full body workout only using 4 basic exercise consisting of 4-6 sets with rep ranges around 8-15. I started off with Walking Lunges for legs getting up to a weight of 135 pounds on the Barbell, I then did various Shoulder Raises (Front, Side, Rear) and then finished off with a Dumbbell Fly press combo for Chest. This workout took me about an hour and I burned 522 calories with an average heart rate of 140 and a max of 172. Who needs cardio!