In all my years of coaching, I’ve found that most athletes do the best with strength training 4 days a week. This is enough workout volume to build serious functional strength, as well as muscle mass. I’ve created this awesome 4-Day Split Program for athletes that want to build a lot strength, and functional work capacity in a short, efficient gym workout. Keep reading for all the details.
If you’ve seen any of my other programs, you know that I write a lot of different fitness plans. I’ve got traditional functional fitness programs, with WODs, and metcons, hybrid training plans, and pure bodybuilding programs. Recently I’ve been working on creating programs that can really benefit beginner and intermediate athletes. After all, that’s where the vast majority of gym goers are .
For this program, you can expect to be strength training 4 days per week, utilizing full-body workouts, with an optional Zone 2 cardio day. I’ve included many traditional heavy compound exercises, and some other strength training movements you may be less experienced with. Check out this quick overview of The Best 4-Day Split Program for Functional Strength.
4-Day Split Program for Functional Strength
- 4 Day split, with optional 5th day of easy cardio
- Rest days are flexible around your schedule
- Designed to build full body strength, and muscle mass
- Each training session is 45-60min
- Can be done with basic dumbbells, a barbell, and rack
- No complex olympic lifts, or high skill bodyweight movements
- 7 Week total program length
If you’re a research nerd, then you’d like to know what kind of workout split does the best at building lean muscle mass, and strength. Surprise, Surprise, I’m just that kind of nerd. My first step in writing this program was to investigate that issue by delving into the research.
In the next section I’ll review some of my findings about the best splits for hypertrophy, and strength. I bet you’ll be surprised by the results. I would also encourage you to join the email list below, for more fitness content like my weight loss, and strength training guides.
Muscle Building and Strength Split Research
Most athletes and inexperienced coaches don’t actually know what causes you to gain strength, and muscle mass, in your upper body and lower body. You would think this would be rather obvious, but most don’t actually care to look into these details. The resistance training research is pretty clear, there are three primary drivers for building muscle.
When you lift heavier weights you create mechanical tension, which your muscles can interpret, causing them to send signals to your body to build muscle tissue. Similarly, your muscle cells experience damage when worked hard in the gym. This also causes your body to send signals for muscle growth and repair.
Lastly, your muscle cells create metabolic waste products when they contract over, and over. These are a completely natural and normal part of working out. These by-products also send growth and repair signals to your body. While this is well and good, it doesn’t really explain how you gain strength .
The Science of Gaining Strength
There are only two primary methods for gaining strength. The first is to increase muscle mass. While not always true, a larger muscle can normally exert more force than a smaller muscle. This is why you’ll generally find that the strongest athletes carry the most muscle mass for their size.
The other primary factor is how efficiently your muscles work. Your muscles contract in motor units, which is simply a nerve that sends a signal to a group of muscle cells to contract. Some of these muscle cells are larger, and can contract more forcefully.
Your body does not use all muscle cells all the time, even when lifting heavy weights. When asked, your muscles contract the amount of motor units they think will get the job done. One of the primary benefits of lifting heavily, is that you teach your body to recruit these motor units more quickly and efficiently. In fact, this accounts for the majority of strength gains when you first start weight lifting.
To summarize both of these points, you gain strength by building muscle, and teaching your musculature to be more efficient via lifting heavy things repeatedly. However, we still don’t know the best split to maximize strength and muscle mass.
Should You Be Strength Training 4 Days a Week?
This is where the art of programming comes into play. The best program split for you is the split that allows you to recover from the work, and increase training volume over the long term. Sure, you can kill yourself in the gym for a few weeks, but that isn’t a viable long term plan.
If we turn our attention to this excellent research study by Dr. Brad Schoenfeld, we see that there is no difference in strength or muscle size, between training twice a week or strength training 4 days per week, provided the total number of sets, and reps is the same.
This meta-analysis asked the same question, and came up with the same answer. These 15 studies point to the fact that it doesn’t matter if you’re using 4-day workout splits, or 5-day splits, it only matters how much volume you’re doing in those workouts.
In my experience I’ve found that strength training 4 days per week allows for the right amount of volume for advanced beginners, and intermediate athletes. You’ll notice that my more advanced programs, have 5-day split or 6-day split routines because these athletes need the extra days, to build in extra volume. Volume will drive the changes you’re looking for!
If you’re looking to learn even more about programming, and other fitness goals, then I highly encourage you to read my book on the topic. You can get your copy up below.
The Best 4-Day Split Program for Functional Strength
As I mentioned above, this program will have you strength training 4 days per week. I’ve written the program so that you can do it with minimal equipment. Even most home gyms will have everything you need to make great progress with this plan.
Before we get to the first week, I want to review a few important points. First, you need to be honest with yourself. If you haven’t been lifting much recently, you might do better with this program to start. You need to have safe form on all the lifts to attempt this program.
Secondly, I would like you to attempt a current 1 rep max in the big four lifts: bench press, strict press, back squat, and deadlift. Alternatively you can pick a weight that’s above 80% of 1 rep max, and go for max reps. Do that for each of these primary strength training exercises. You can then put your weight and reps in this calculator to get an estimated one rep max.
As a newer athlete, I want you to complete a thorough warm up, spending time lifting just the bar and light reps to practice good form. Remember, the percentage based sets need to begin after you work your way up to those sets. Here’s a sample warm up that I would recommend prior to starting the work sets.
Strength Training 4 Days a Week: Sample Lower Body Warm Up
- 3-5 minutes on a C2 Rower, or Assault Bike at easy pace
- Light stretching of the primary major muscle groups
- 20-40 Air Squats, spending time sitting at the bottom of some reps
- Warm Up sets with the bar then: 30%, 40%, 50%, 65%, 1st work set
Now that you have a good idea how this program will work, we can get into the first week. I encourage you to read through all weeks of the program, as I will provide tips and advice on different sections under each week. This will ensure you do the program correctly and safely. Let’s get to Week 1.
4-Day Split Program Week 1
Welcome to week 1. You should expect to be quite sore this week as your body gets used to this style of program. There are four planned sessions this week, with each day being an upper and lower body split.
The blocks in red are portions of the program that will help build muscle mass, and some anaerobic conditioning. These are intense training sessions, that are short in duration, and high in power output. They are a great way to work several different muscles simultaneously.
For session one you should complete your warm up, and then start working up to your first set of back squats. I highly recommend using a weight lifting belt, to keep your back safe for these squats. Once you finish them you’ll warm up your seated barbell press.
After those primary weight training exercises are finished, I recommend taking a 5 minute break. You can then start to warm up for the high intensity work. Once the red block is completed, you can transition to your cool down, which we will talk about in the recovery portion of this program. Next, let’s discuss week 2.
4-Day Split Program Week 2
In week 2 we will continue strength training four days per week. Each set is slightly heavier than last week. You’ll also find that the weights should be moving fairly well this week, as your body has already started to increase your muscular efficiency.
It’s important to note that you can move around your rest days as needed. For most athletes a 2 days on, 1 day off, 2 days on, 2 days off pattern will work well. However, it’s ok to move that around from week to week. As long as you get the work in, and take your rest days, you can make progress.
In Session 6 you can see that we will be doing bench press, and deadlift, working up to a heavy set of 1. You’ll then start the red block with a superset. This is an old school bodybuilding technique that works very well to build mass, and functional strength.
In the red block you will be doing a set of narrow width push ups, for max reps. You will then immediately start a max rep pull up set. After this you can rest for one minute before repeating the next set. If you find you can’t do many reps of these pull ups, then check out this article on some awesome scaling options. Now we can move to week 3.
4-Day Split Program Week 3
As expected we’ve increased the weight for the heavy barbell lifts this week. The pattern remains the same, with a few changes, to keep the body from acclimatizing to the workout program. It’s important to note that you’ll often see the term TM, which stands for technical max.
A technical max is the heaviest weight you can move with perfect form. It will be slightly higher than a rep max, which is the highest weight you can move, with acceptable form. The goal is to practice moving heavy weight correctly. Do your best not to use too much weight for these TMs.
In Session 11 you can see that it’s leg day, and we are squatting and benching again. You’ll also notice that the reps are higher. While you can build strength with higher reps, these are better at building muscle mass. This is why there are fewer overall sets for each primary lift.
For the red block you can see that we have a 10 min increasing ladder. I like this workout style, as it allows you to warm up into the really hard parts of the session. Once the clock starts, you will do 2 reps of the weighted box step ups, and 2 sit ups. You will then go to 4 of each, and then 6 of each.
You will increase in this fashion, resting only enough to keep going, until 10 minutes have elapsed. As you’ll discover, the last few minutes are intense! Now, on to week 4.
4-Day Split Program Week 4
The weights start to become very challenging this week. You’ll note that you’re working up to a heavy set of 1, at TM. I encourage you to be honest with yourself here. If you find you’re barely finishing the rep, with ugly form, then drop the weight a few percent. This is about quality practice with heavy weight.
Conversely, if you have no form change, from the first set through the last set, you can experiment with a little heavier weight. You’ll find that at the four week mark, you really start to notice strength gains.
If you take a look at session 16, you see that we have heavy sumo deadlifts, and single arm bench supported rows. Both movements build a lot of back strength, and you can use lifting straps to assist your grip as needed. Try to avoid using them all the time, for every rep.
Execute the superset as you’ve been doing for the other workouts. You’ll do your pull ups, and then move straight to the landmine press, before taking your 1 minute break. Now let’s review week 5.
4-Day Split Program Week 5
In my experience this is the week where you really start to struggle with the weights. The percentages are approaching your rep maxes on each set, and it really requires you to focus for each rep. It’s completely normal to feel that way.
Remember, your body learns to recruit more muscle fiber, more efficiently, with each and every heavy rep. You have to spend time struggling here to build true functional strength.
You’ll notice that at the bottom of the program I’ve included an optional bonus session. This is pure Zone 2 aerobic exercise, which is designed to improve your aerobic fitness, and ability to recover quickly. Unless you’ve come from a serious endurance training background, you need to work on your aerobic fitness. Cardiovascular exercise is truly the base physical activity that all training relies upon.
Zone 2 cardio refers to the level of output that you can maintain for hours. You should be able to hold a conversation at this level or nasal breath. This is low heart rate training that relies on body fat for fuel, not carbs in the form of glycogen.
I recommend nasal breathing for a minute or two, every so often, to make sure you aren’t working too hard. Now let’s move to the penultimate week of the program.
4-Day Split Program Week 6
This, second to last week, is the hardest week of the program. By now you’ve definitely noticed your fitness and strength levels have increased. This is why I’ve made the workouts even more difficult. Don’t hate the player, hate the game!
It’s also likely that you’re feeling a bit run down. This is ok. I’ve found that I often perform the best when I have a few sore spots, and am a bit tired. It sounds counter intuitive, but I’ve noticed this in other athletes as well. Make sure you’re warming up thoroughly, and paying attention to your recovery and nutrition.
After you finish this week of training, take 3 days of rest before starting week 7. As you’ll see, week 7 is our test week, where we see just how much strength and fitness you’ve built over the last few months. Let’s take a look.
4-Day Split Program Week 7
Welcome to the final week of the program. You can see that each session has you working up to a new 1 rep max. You should do your warm up just as you have been, and then take your warm up sets for each lift. Make sure to take no more than 3 attempts at a new PR.
Your first attempt should be a small PR, and the next attempt should be what you think you can get. The last attempt is where you can be aggressive, and see just how far you can go.
After you set your new personal record, take several minutes to relax. You can then work on the red block. You’ll notice that each of these is a repeat of a red block earlier in the program. The goal here is for you to totally crush what you did in that old workout.
Now that we’ve covered the details of this program, that has you strength training 4 days per week, let’s cover some other information that will allow you to stay healthy, and make the most progress you can. If you want a great follow up program then check this out.
Strength Training 4 Days a Week: Nutrition and Recovery
The most important thing about nutrition and recovery is to spend a lot of money on very complicated therapies you don’t really understand. Just kidding, that’s terrible advice. Rest assured you don’t need to do anything complicated to make great progress with this fitness plan.
First, I recommend reading this article on basic nutrition for strength athletes. I’m often surprised how little even advanced athletes know about the basics of nutrition. You can then download my nutrition calculator which will give you a great starting point for macros and calories.
The most important part of recover is to eat enough food for your total daily needs, and to sleep adequately. These are the biggest returns on investment.
The next most important thing to do is to cool down after each workout. I highly recommend reading this article on recovery methods. Long story short, easy cardio like walking or cycling after a workout, drastically improves recovery, allowing you to train harder, and build more mass. It’s also completely free. Next I’ll cover some of my final thoughts.
Strength Training 4 Days a Week: Final Thoughts
As an intermediate athlete I want you to know that you can make incredibly fast progress. As someone who’s been training for decades, I envy the amount of training growth you can experience. If you want a snap shot to your future strength and muscle gains then check out this research based article.
It’s important for you to know that your progress does not require perfection. If you miss a day in the gym, or binge eat some ice cream, all is not lost. You need to work on building consistency above all things. I don’t care if you do everything perfectly for two weeks and then fall apart.
I would much rather have you be consistently pretty good, and work through the entire program. If you do this long enough you’ll be amazed how far you can go. If you have any questions put them in the comments section, and I’ll do my best to answer. Now get out there and get training. Don’t forget to join the email list.
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