How I Naturally Transformed My Body Composition in 1 Year
By: Emily Rudow
Tags: Health, Fitness, Nutrition, Fitness Tips, Self Improvement

My Training Splits

Over the past three months, I’ve noticed the most improvement in my physique by breaking out my training splits to upper body push/pull days and then incorporating 2x core days and 1x leg day (or I would split up legs into two days with my core). For those that are new to the terms (as I was six months ago), a push workout is where your muscles contract when weight is pushed away from your body. These muscle groups include chest, shoulders, triceps, quads, and calves. A pull workout, in turn, is where your muscles contract when weight is pulled towards your body these muscle groups include your traps, back, biceps, hams, obliques.

So, as opposed to breaking out my training days such as the following example:

Split 1

Monday — arms/back

Tuesday — core + legs

Wednesday — arms/back

Thursday — core + legs

You could do something like this:

Split 2

Monday — Pull upper body workout (biceps/back)

Tuesday — Pull leg workout (hamstrings/obliques) + core

Wednesday — Push upper workout (chest/shoulders/triceps)

Thursday — Push leg workout (quads/calves) + core

Split 1 was the workout I had been using for years and split 2 is more along the lines of how I train now. However, as I write this, I only use the push/pull method for my upper body. Now, into the breakdown of the exact routine I’m using now.

Strength training

For each session, I’ll choose five different exercises for each muscle group and aim for the 8–15 rep range for most exercises (also including a few exercises with higher reps). I’ll repeat each exercise three times (or three sets per exercise):

Monday — Upper body pull — (biceps/back)

Tuesday — Core + legs

Wednesday — Upper body push (shoulders/triceps/chest)

Thursday — Core

Friday — Upper body pull — (biceps/back)

Saturday — Upper body push (shoulders/triceps/chest)

Sunday — No strength

My upper body sessions usually take around an hour or so, and lower body + core around 30–45 minutes. I stick to my upper body splits religiously; however, I’m loose with my leg days. Depending on how I’m feeling, I’ll split my leg day out in two (with core), just once with core, or I’ll separate it out altogether and do legs in its own session on Sunday. This varies week by week.

I’ll typically follow the same routine for a few weeks, and then I’ll add in a few new exercises for each major muscle group and switch up the order. In order to see growth, your workouts need to be challenging and each set should push your muscles to fatigue. Otherwise, they will have no reason to grow. I used to always tell my clients to lift until they physically cannot lift anymore — then do one more rep.

On the topic of muscle growth, an important term worth mentioning is progressive overload. Progressive overload involves increasing weight, reps, frequency of training, and/or decreasing rest periods week-over-week. This is vital in order to see any physical changes to your body. I’m not going to add too much detail about the subject in this post, but I will add some additional reading on the topic in the footnotes if you’re interested in learning more.

Cardio

If you’re one of the people that believe cardio is the way to lose weight, you’re right, but also, very wrong. Let me explain. Cardio burns calories, and at the end of the day, in order to lose weight, you need a calorie deficit. You need a deficit of 3,500 calories to lose 1 lb of body fat. You can expedite this process by doing more cardio, as it typically burns more calories than strength training. However, if you’re only doing cardio, you’re much more likely to experience big fluctuations in weight gain and loss, as your body composition will remain relatively the same. If you do strength training, on the other hand, you build muscle, and muscle burns more calories than fat does.

By doing strength training, although it can be deceiving as it doesn’t burn more calories at the moment, the lean muscle mass you build will burn more calories in the long run while also increasing your resting metabolism. There’s been a long-standing myth (which I fell prey to as well), that for every pound of muscle mass you have, you burn an extra 50 calories per day during rest. This has been disproven and replaced with a more accurate statistic: 1 pound of muscle burns approximately 7–10 calories per day, and every 1 pound of fat burns around 2–3 calories per day at rest. Strength training is also what will really move the needle with your body composition. Cardio has its place. for sure. As aforementioned, cardio can burn more calories (so you can eat more), is great for heart health, reduces the risk of disease, etc, etc.

Now that I’ve provided a brief summary on cardio, here’s a breakdown of my what my cardio split looks like:

Monday — Steady-state run 8km/5 mile run (outdoor or treadmill)

Tuesday — High-intensity interval training treadmill 8km/5 mile run

Wednesday — Steady-state run (lower mileage day usually 5–7km)

Thursday -High-intensity interval training treadmill 10km/6.25 mile run

Friday — Steady-state run 8k run (outdoor or treadmill) run

Saturday — High-intensity interval training treadmill 8km/5 mile run

Sunday — Slow long run (+10k/6.25 miles)

I incorporate high-intensity interval training (HIIT) runs three times per week to help build up my lactic thresholds and endurance.