Insight | Pick a training split you will actually keep: weekly templates compared

The Short Version

The best weekly split is the one you will keep doing: Jeff Cavaliere puts it bluntly, "A split not done is not effective" [1][2]. Andy Galpin offers ready-made three-, four- and six-day weeks and tells people to plan conservatively, starting with three days rather than missing a fourth [3]. Andrew Huberman's own seven-day template gives legs, torso and arms one hard day each and spreads three kinds of cardio around them [4][7], and his fitness tools episode sets the base at two to four resistance sessions a week alongside zone 2 work [5]. Pavel Tsatsouline adds that very different systems, from the bro split to Soviet high frequency to American once-a-week cycles, all work when they are run well [6]. Read side by side, these templates let you pick a structure that suits your calendar and recovery instead of copying one that will not last.

What They Said

Jeff Cavaliere: start with what you will actually do

When Huberman asks Jeff Cavaliere for the outline of a basic program for a typical person who wants to keep or add some muscle, stay fairly lean and look after their heart, Cavaliere answers with a ratio rather than a split: roughly 60% strength training and 40% conditioning [1][2]. In his words, "I think it's like a 60, 40 split, which would be leaning towards weight training" [1]. Over a five-day training week, that could mean strength on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and conditioning on Tuesday and Thursday, in a gym or at home [1][2]. He calls this roughly the minimum effective dose for getting the benefits of both, and says anyone who wants to become a much better conditioned performer will need more [1][2].

On session length, the two men compare notes. Huberman says that after about 30 years of lifting and running, workouts that run past about 60 minutes leave him recovering poorly, catching colds and getting weaker, while about 10 minutes of warm-up, around 50 minutes of hard work and 30 to 45 minutes of cardio on separate days keep him progressing [1][2]. Cavaliere says this matches what his team recommends: an hour or less where possible [1][2]. His summary is that "you can either train long or you can train hard, but you can't do both" [1][2]. He adds that as people age, the length of a workout causes more trouble than its intensity, provided they warm up properly, and that his own warm-up is now a much bigger part of the session than it was at 20 [1][2].

The question of splits is put with a neat observation: almost everybody follows a weekly schedule, "Although the body, of course, doesn't care about the week" [1]. Cavaliere's first rule for choosing a split is whether you will stick to it [1][2]. He personally does not love full-body splits. If you dread training everything, feel wiped out by the end, or cannot fit the longer sessions into your schedule, it does not matter how effective the split looks on paper, because "A split not done is not effective" [1][2]. As he puts it in the conversation, "So you need to find one that fits" [1].

His alternatives start with push/pull/legs, run either once through the week on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday, or twice for six sessions [1][2]. The rest day can sit between the two cycles or at the end of the six days, and each choice has a cost. A rest day between the cycles gives more recovery, but the day off shifts around the calendar from week to week [1][2]. For people who chose a seven-day schedule because it is easy to keep in their heads, he notes, "it starts to mess with that off day" [1]. He likes grouping similar movements, such as all the pulling on one day, because the muscles work together and the session has one clear goal [1][2].

Cavaliere also defends the old-school bro split, one muscle group per day, which leans more toward looks than strength [1][2]. It works for many people because they enjoy it, get their pump and can focus on one muscle, and it helps people who do not really feel an exercise until their second or third set to lock in [1][2]. Smarter versions now exist, he says, such as training biceps one day and back two days later, knowing the biceps will be worked again [1][2].

He takes up two more scheduling questions. Training twice a day can make sense in theory, for example a pushing session in the morning and a pulling session in the evening, because you return with fresh focus and whatever sits at the end of a long workout tends to suffer: "I think effort drives the results" [1]. In practice, most people find it hard to get going twice in a day, which he compares to starting a car on a winter morning [1][2]. If you cannot split a session, he suggests switching the order next time, so the same half is not always shortchanged [1][2]. When cardio and weights share a day, he puts the conditioning after the weights so it does not blunt the strength work, and notes that even tired, your heart still gets the conditioning benefit [1][2].

Underneath all of this is a point about recovery that weekly splits ignore. Huberman says his legs respond best when trained only every five to eight days, which does not fit the usual 48- to 72-hour rule [1][2]. Cavaliere says that is completely real: different muscles recover at different rates, those rates vary between people and over time, and weekly splits force every muscle onto the same schedule even when a biceps might be ready again the next day [1][2]. He calls cracking individual muscle recovery the holy grail of training [1]. Until then, soreness is the most usable local guide, with 48 hours a guideline rather than a rule, and a grip test on an old dial bathroom scale serves as a whole-body check: if grip output drops by around 10% or more, "you really should skip the gym that day," even if a session is scheduled [1].

His closing message ties the scheduling advice to everything else: consistency "really is the determinant," and the point of offering so many options is to help people find the split, eating style and training that make them want to show up [1][2]. "If we had one gift we could give to everybody, it would be the love of fitness," he says [1].

Huberman's own history with splits

Huberman's experience runs through several of these conversations. As a 16-year-old, he wrote to Mike Mentzer, paid by Western Union for a phone consultation and was given a split of shoulders and arms, then legs, then chest and back, with days off in between [1][2]. In his telling, Mentzer "gave me a very straightforward split, which was shoulders and arms" [1]. That routine worked because he almost always recovered between workouts [2]. In his conversation with Pavel Tsatsouline, he credits Mentzer's high-intensity, low-frequency approach with taking him from 150 to 210 pounds [6].

He later settled on training about every other day, because a six-day push/pull/legs routine feels overwhelming both physically and mentally, while three or four days a week lets him walk in with real fire [1][2].

Huberman's seven-day template

In his fitness toolkit episode, Huberman lays out the week-long program he has used in some form for over three decades, saying he had just turned 47 [4]. He describes it as "something that I personally use in fact I've used it for over three decades" [4]. It is not a rigid plan. He modifies it by the year, the month and even the day, "because I, like you, live in the real world, and sometimes I've been traveling, or I miss a workout" [4]. He borrows Andy Galpin's line, "concepts are few methods are many," to frame it: there are endless programs, but only a few principles underneath them [4].

His week, as given in that episode, starts on Sunday [4]:

• Sunday: 60 to 75 minutes of zone 2 cardio, usually jogging, sometimes swapped for a long hike, at times with a weight vest or loaded pack [4].
• Monday: legs (quadriceps, hamstrings and calves), ideally around 7 a.m. He says, "in fact make leg day your first day of strength and hypertrophy training" [4].
• Tuesday: no endurance or resistance training, only heat and cold contrast: three to five rounds of about 20 minutes in a hot sauna and about five minutes in cold water [4].
• Wednesday: the whole torso, pushing and pulling, plus neck work [4].
• Thursday: a warm-up and then 30 to 35 minutes at about 75 to 80% of all-out effort [4].
• Friday: high-intensity intervals, such as 20 to 30 seconds all-out on an assault bike with 10 seconds of rest, repeated 8 to 12 times [4].
• Saturday: biceps, triceps, calves and neck directly, with the torso worked indirectly a second time through moves like dips and chin-ups [4].

The logic of the order matters as much as the list. The long, slow Sunday session does not leave his legs too sore for Monday, whereas a HIIT session would [4]. He trains each muscle group directly once a week and indirectly a second time, because he recovers slowly, and Friday's intervals double as the indirect second leg stimulus [4]. He picks two exercises per muscle group, one loaded in the stretched position and one with peak contraction in the shortened position, and keeps resistance sessions to about 10 minutes of warm-up and 50 to 60 minutes of hard work, because beyond about 60 minutes cortisol rises and, for him, impedes recovery [4]. Small muscle days can take up to about 75 minutes when equipment is busy, since there are more exercises to move between [4].

He alternates sets and reps by month. For three to four weeks he trains heavy, in the four-to-eight rep range with three to four (up to five) sets and two to four minutes of rest; the next month he moves to eight to twelve or even fifteen reps, two to three sets and 60 to 90 seconds of rest [4]. He finds he starts to lose ground if he stays heavy for more than four weeks [4]. Cold exposure stays on its own day, because he cites several quality studies showing that ice baths right after strength, hypertrophy or endurance training can blunt the adaptations you are after [4].

What keeps the template alive in a real week is a set of flexibility rules. Any session can shift one day forward or back [4]. If Tuesday's heat and cold is missed, it moves to Wednesday, with cold at least four and ideally eight hours after resistance training [4]. He thinks top-down: each week, get one long endurance session, one moderate faster session and one all-out session, plus hard training for legs, torso and arms once each, with calves and neck [4]. Spacing matters more than exact days: never put HIIT the day after legs, and keep two or three days between them [4]. After a poor night or a very stressful day, he usually skips and slides the schedule forward, since training then tends to make him sick and cost more days [4].

The same template in his end-of-year AMA

In a live Ask Me Anything at the end of 2023, Huberman describes the same structure again, at 48, saying he has followed essentially the same program since he was 16 [7]. Each week brings three cardio sessions: a long, slow one of 60 to 90 minutes, such as a weighted hike or a jog; a 35-minute run at a pace where he could not hold a conversation; and a session of about 12 minutes, such as one minute on and one minute off, or 20 seconds on and 10 off for eight rounds [7]. There are also three resistance sessions: legs, torso (with light neck work for the upper spine) and smaller body parts [7].

His description of the days here differs a little from the toolkit episode. Sunday is the long run or hike, and "Monday is always legs" [7]. Tuesday is off, and Wednesday and Thursday hold the shorter run and the torso work, which he flips depending on how his legs feel; Friday is the faster cardio and Saturday the smaller body parts [7]. He says, "I don't get too obsessed with the spacing between those workouts," though the sessions are not stacked against one another [7]. He also repeats the sliding rule: "these days of the week always have the ability to slide one way or the other," so after a trip he moves sessions around to finish the week with everything done [7].

He explains why he likes this shape. Training legs once a week leaves room to recover, while Friday's hard pedaling hits them indirectly: "you can certainly recover because you're only training legs once a week" [7]. Workouts other than the long Sunday one rarely exceed about an hour, with 10 minutes of warm-up and 50, sometimes 60, minutes of work, cut to 40 or 45 on busy days [7]. For tracking, he leans on subjective signs such as sleep, appetite, energy going into workouts and morning resting pulse, backing off when his pulse is up or he feels ill, and he rates each workout's intensity from 1 to 10, usually six to eight [7].

The base layer: two to four resistance sessions

In his episode distilling the series with Andy Galpin into practical tools, Huberman sets out what most people's programs should include [5]. The research-based minimum is 150 and ideally 200 minutes a week of zone 2 cardio, and on top of that come two to four separate cardio sessions and two to four resistance sessions [5]. He is frank about the upper end: "Now we have to acknowledge that most people are probably not going to hit the upper threshold of all of those three things" [5]. "Most people simply do not have the time and or discipline" to get 200 minutes of zone 2, four resistance sessions and four more cardio sessions every week [5].

His own version uses three cardio sessions (a long, slow jog or hike, a 25- to 30-minute moderately hard session and a short interval session) and three resistance sessions (legs; chest, shoulders, back and neck; and smaller body parts such as arms and calves) [5]. He stresses it is a template, not a mandate [5]. The first of the tools he lists from the Galpin series is to stop treating zone 2 as a scheduled workout. Galpin told him he does not really consider zone 2 cardio exercise at all, and that the best way to get it is to walk briskly and move more through the day [5]. Huberman now spreads a 200-minute minimum across daily life, which frees his structured time for three resistance sessions and two other cardio sessions [5].

He also adopted a 12-week block of training in the 3-to-5 rep range [5]. Because his schedule and recovery would not allow legs three to five times a week, he kept his usual weekly split and simply did his working sets in that range [5]. The broader lesson of the episode is flexibility. Real life happens: "travel, work, illness, family" [5]. Of all the tools, "The key thing is to actually implement them" [5].

Andy Galpin: plan the week you really have

Andy Galpin's contribution is a method for building a program, followed by worked examples [3]. He opens with research showing that people following a specific training plan get better results than those without one, regardless of which plan it is, and names adherence and a lack of progressive overload as the two main reasons people stall [3]. He compares a plan to a shopping list: a 90-minute wandering workout may only need 60 minutes, which makes it easier to show up [3].

Several of his steps bear directly on choosing a split. Step two is naming what will stop you, from injury history to a hectic job to travel, and working with life's non-negotiables rather than against them, because "life will win" when it comes to children and work [3]. Step three is laying out your real calendar, including deadlines, holidays, travel and kids' events [3]. Step four is deciding, conservatively, how many days a week and how many minutes you can truly train, counting travel, warm-up, showering and getting back to work [3]. It is better to plan three days and add a fourth than to plan four and keep missing one, and he points out that these limits create freedom by narrowing your options [3].

Step five is choosing exercises that are balanced across the week, not necessarily within each workout, by movement pattern, muscle group and side of the body [3]. Step six is order: do what matters most first and put it on the day when your schedule and energy are most reliable [3]. Galpin even ran a nine-day cycle for a Major League Baseball pitcher who hit all-time velocity records [3]. He places easy, appealing sessions on low-motivation days: when NFL combine prospects skipped Saturday recovery sessions, he started them with a biceps-and-triceps "gun show" circuit before sending them to recovery work [3]. Huberman explains in that episode that he puts long, slow cardio on Sunday and legs on Monday because he is best rested after the weekend, and he repeats Galpin's line that consistency always beats intensity [3].

Then come the templates. For people who can only manage three days, Galpin suggests day one for speed and power followed by hypertrophy, day two for strength followed by high-heart-rate work, and day three for long, steady endurance, each in under an hour with mostly whole-body exercises [3]. This does not replace daily activity such as walking, which he separates from structured exercise [3]. The four-day version is whole-body strength in the 5-to-10 rep range, then a longer endurance day, then a muscular endurance day of 11 to 30 reps or options like yoga, Pilates, dance or spin, and finally a medium-intensity day with rolling intervals and about five to six minutes of near-maximum heart rate work [3]. For six days, run the three-day cycle twice with one day off [3].

One detail makes these weeks sturdier than most: the workouts are done in order, not tied to weekdays, so a missed day simply shifts everything back [3]. He builds the weeks into a year, too, with quarters that change emphasis. In his sample, lifting runs three or four times a week while building muscle in the first quarter, twice a week in the second and third, and once a week in the fourth, when endurance takes priority [3]. He notes that strength can be maintained with as little as about five sets per week for eight weeks or more, and that each quarter ends with a week off, with a deload halfway through [3].

He is also clear about where a plan stops being a plan. Occasional changes are fine, but constant changes mean you no longer have a program and should write a new one [3]. He allows off-plan sessions with friends as long as they will not cost him more than about three days, because shared workouts become lifetime memories and "physical activity should be fun" [3]. Huberman's own rule for training with others is: "you can train with me but I'm not going to train with you" [3].

Pavel Tsatsouline: different systems, different mechanisms

Pavel Tsatsouline comes at the question from the history of strength training [6]. When Huberman raises recovery and his early Mentzer-style training, Pavel explains that different body systems recover at different rates, a concept called heterochronicity, and that radically different programs can succeed by exploiting different mechanisms [6].

The Soviet weightlifting system trained frequently, sometimes several times a day, with loads that allowed overnight recovery, spreading work into small doses because the body can handle much more that way [6]. He compares it to Nassim Taleb's parable of a king who had a boulder broken into pebbles rather than dropping it on his son [6]. The classic American powerlifting system of the 1970s to 1990s, with lifters like Ed Coan, Marty Gallagher and Kirk Karwoski, did the opposite: one or two hard sets per lift once a week, in cycles of about four weeks that peaked with a personal record in week four [6]. When lifters hit a wall, they backed off and restarted lighter [6]. The downside, Pavel says, is that the American system offers little practice, so it works best for skilled lifters, and it can leave you too sore for other sports [6]. Later Soviet research found that athletes could train hard at most two weeks out of four [6].

On the bro split, Pavel points out that golden-age bodybuilders like Franco Columbu, Dave Draper and Clarence Bass were extremely strong, and that a once-a-week bro split can work if you train heavy with medium reps [6]. The Soviets concluded that strength work should mostly stay between one and six reps, with fives and sixes giving a strong combination of size and strength [6]. His harsher criticism is saved for trainers who throw random variety at clients in the name of keeping things fresh [6].

His own signature method, greasing the groove, is a high-frequency template of a different kind. Use a weight of about 75 to 85% of your one-rep max, "heavy enough to respect and light enough not to fear," do about half or fewer of the reps you could do, rest at least 10 minutes between sets, and typically train two or three days in a row before taking a day off [6]. You can rotate up to about three exercises [6].

For people who want strength and endurance at once, he suggests separating them in time and emphasis [6]. Maintaining a quality takes far less work than building it: lifting 80% of your max for three sets of three once a week can maintain strength for months [6]. He mentions Stuart McGill's balanced week of two days each of strength, mobility and endurance, and suggests that experienced trainees try serial specialization, giving one quality three days, another two and another one, then shifting the emphasis roughly monthly [6]. For older and more experienced lifters, shorter cycles of about six to eight weeks are a legitimate choice [6].

He also limits what goes into each session. Soviet data suggest 10 to 20 reps per exercise as a minimum, 20 to 30 as optimal and 30 to 50 as a maximum, with only two or three exercises per session [6]. Heavy neural strength work should be done fresh, and hypertrophy work should be followed by 36 to 48 hours without endurance training [6]. His advice for beginners is a warning against endless switching: "Great news, you have so many choices; bad news, you have too many choices" [6]. Pick one program with a track record and stick with it, he says, and his overall message, borrowed from his late friend Jim Wright, is "consistency over intensity" [6].

Where They Agree, and Where They Don't

Common ground

The clearest agreement is that adherence decides which split is right. Cavaliere makes it his first rule [1][2]. Galpin opens with research showing that following any specific plan beats following none, names adherence as one of the two main reasons people stall, and builds his method around the days you can really train [3]. Huberman's tools episode ends on implementation and flexibility [5], and Pavel tells beginners to pick a proven program and stay with it [6]. The phrase about consistency recurs: Cavaliere calls it "the determinant" [1], Huberman repeats Galpin's line that consistency beats intensity [3], and Pavel's message is "consistency over intensity" [6].

They also converge on session length. Cavaliere and Huberman settle on an hour or less [1][2], Huberman builds his template on 50 to 60 minutes of hard work after a 10-minute warm-up [4][7], Galpin's three-day sessions run under an hour [3], and Pavel calls Marty Gallagher's advice to fill an hour a safe guideline [6].

A third shared idea is that the calendar should bend. Huberman lets any session slide a day [4][7], Galpin ties workouts to an order rather than to weekdays [3], and Cavaliere notes that the placement of a rest day in a six-day push/pull/legs cycle changes how the week sits on the calendar [1][2].

Real differences

The sharpest difference is over frequency. Huberman trains each muscle group hard once a week, with an indirect second hit, because he recovers slowly [4][7], and his legs respond best to a five- to eight-day gap [1][2]. Pavel describes the Soviet approach of training often with loads that allow overnight recovery, and his own groove-greasing practice runs two or three days in a row [6]. Both camps have reasons. Pavel explains that the once-a-week American cycles and the high-frequency Soviet system work through different mechanisms, while warning that the once-a-week approach offers little practice and suits skilled lifters [6]. Huberman's choice rests on his own recovery, with a six-day routine feeling overwhelming to him physically and mentally [1][2].

Full-body training splits them too. Cavaliere does not love full-body splits, because they take longer and can leave people dreading the session [1][2]. Galpin's three-day plan is built on mostly whole-body exercises in under an hour, and his four-day plan opens with a whole-body strength day [3]. The difference lies partly in purpose: Galpin's weeks are organized by adaptation (speed and power, strength, endurance) rather than by body part [3], while Cavaliere is weighing how people feel about a session [1][2].

On the bro split, Cavaliere and Pavel both defend it, with different conditions. Cavaliere values the focus, the pump and the time to lock in on one muscle, and recommends smarter versions that account for overlap [1][2]. Pavel says it can work if you train heavy with medium reps, pointing to how strong the golden-age bodybuilders were [6].

The two versions of Huberman's own week also differ in detail. In the toolkit episode, Tuesday is a heat and cold day, Thursday a 30- to 35-minute moderate session and Friday the intervals [4]. In the AMA, Tuesday is off and the torso work and the 35-minute run swap between Wednesday and Thursday, depending on his legs [7]. In the toolkit, he insists spacing matters more than exact days and that HIIT never follows legs [4]; in the AMA, he says he does not get too obsessed with spacing, as long as sessions are not stacked [7]. The skeleton is the same in both, and he presents both as adjustable [4][7].

Finally, cardio placement varies. Cavaliere puts conditioning after weights when they share a day [1][2]. Huberman prefers not to do cardio the day after legs and keeps cold exposure away from training [4]. Pavel advises that hypertrophy work be followed by 36 to 48 hours without endurance training [6].

Why It Works

The sources give several reasons a sustainable split beats an ideal one. Galpin's starting point is that structure solves the two biggest causes of stalled progress, poor adherence and a lack of progressive overload: if you cannot remember what you did last time, you cannot reliably do a little more [3]. A plan sized to your actual week is one you keep running, which is why he would rather you plan three days and add a fourth than plan four and keep missing one [3].

Recovery explains why one template does not fit everyone. Cavaliere says muscles recover at different rates, those rates vary between people and over time, and weekly splits put every muscle on the same schedule anyway [1][2]. Pavel's term for this is heterochronicity: body systems recover at different rates, which is why opposite programs can both work [6]. Very hard, brief, infrequent sets and frequent, moderate practice exploit different mechanisms [6]. Pavel shares a Russian specialist's theory that hard, brief sets cause specific microtears that trigger satellite cells to build muscle, while the Soviet approach relies on the body's ability to handle much more work when it is spread into small doses [6].

Session length and spacing also have reasons. Huberman says that beyond about 60 minutes cortisol rises and, for him, impedes recovery [4]. He keeps legs and HIIT apart because sprints would compete with leg recovery, and he places cold exposure away from training because studies show cold immersion right after training can blunt adaptations [4]. Friday's intervals give his legs an indirect second stimulus, since protein synthesis can be stimulated roughly every 48 to 72 hours [4].

Pavel's reasoning for frequent, modest sessions comes from motor learning. Spaced practice beats cramming, and strength is largely a skill: as weightlifters grew stronger, the electrical activity in their muscles fell for the same weight, so the nervous system became more economical [6]. Maintenance is cheap, so a single weekly session can hold a quality while another is built [6].

Finally, motivation is part of the mechanism. Cavaliere says effort drives results [1], and he warns against a split that leaves you dreading the session [1][2]. Huberman chose three or four days a week because they let him walk in with real fire [1][2]. Galpin places appealing sessions on low-motivation days for the same reason [3].

Where It Applies, and Where It Doesn't

These templates are aimed at people training for general fitness, health and looks rather than a single sport. Huberman says plainly that a powerlifter or marathoner will train differently from the foundational program he describes [5]. Cavaliere's 60/40 week is for the typical person who wants to keep or add some muscle, stay lean and keep a healthy heart, and he says anyone chasing much better conditioning will need more [1][2].

Experience changes the picture. Pavel says the classic American once-a-week cycles work best for skilled lifters, because they offer little practice [6]. He recommends serial specialization for experienced trainees and shorter six- to eight-week cycles for older and more experienced lifters [6]. For beginners, his advice is to pick one proven program and stop shopping [6].

Age and recovery matter too. Huberman recovers slowly and trains each muscle hard once a week [4]. Cavaliere notes that with age, workout length causes more problems than intensity [1][2]. Pavel's high-frequency methods depend on loads light enough to recover from overnight [6].

Life circumstances are the biggest filter. Galpin's quadrant method asks you to divide 10 points among business, relationships, fitness and recovery, and if your fitness points cannot support your goal in your timeline, you change the goal, the timeline or the allocation [3]. Cavaliere notes that busy lives, like his wife's with twin boys, can leave little time for chasing personal records [1].

The templates also do not cover everything. Galpin separates daily physical activity, such as walking, from structured exercise, and says a three-day plan does not replace it [3]. Huberman now gets his zone 2 through daily movement rather than scheduled sessions [5].

None of these sources claims its own week is the only answer. Galpin calls his 10 steps simply his approach [3], Huberman calls his program a template rather than a mandate [5], and Cavaliere's whole point is offering options [1][2]. If you have an injury, a heart condition or other health concerns, talk to a doctor or a qualified trainer before taking on a new program.

What To Do With It

1. Count your real days first. Following Galpin, lay out your actual calendar, then decide conservatively how many days and minutes you can train, counting travel, warm-up and showering. If in doubt, plan three days and add a fourth later [3].

2. Pick the template that matches that number. With three days, try Galpin's speed-and-power, strength and endurance rotation [3]. With four, use Galpin's four-day sequence [3]. With five, use Cavaliere's Monday, Wednesday and Friday strength days with conditioning on Tuesday and Thursday [1][2]. With six, run push/pull/legs twice, or Galpin's three-day cycle twice, with one day off [1][2][3].

3. Choose a split you look forward to. If you dread full-body days, use push/pull/legs or a smarter bro split that accounts for overlap, such as back two days after biceps [1][2]. If you love one-muscle days and train them heavy with medium reps, Pavel says that can work too [6].

4. Keep sessions to about an hour. Aim for roughly 10 minutes of warm-up and 50 minutes of hard work, as Huberman does, which Cavaliere says matches his team's advice of an hour or less, and train hard rather than long [1][2][4].

5. Tie workouts to an order, not to dates. Use Galpin's rule that workouts run in sequence, so a missed day shifts everything back, or Huberman's rule that any session can slide one day forward or back [3][4].

6. Protect the spacing that matters. Do not put HIIT the day after legs; keep two or three days between them, and do cardio after weights when they share a day [1][2][4].

7. Put your most important session on your most reliable day. Like Huberman's legs on Monday after a rested weekend, give your priority its best slot, and put easy, appealing sessions on days when motivation runs low [3].

8. Check recovery before you train. Treat a very sore muscle as a reason to wait, and if your grip on a dial bathroom scale is about 10% below normal, consider skipping that day, as Cavaliere suggests [1]. After a terrible night or a very stressful day, Huberman slides his week forward rather than forcing the session [4].

9. Rotate emphasis rather than switching programs. Pavel suggests maintaining one quality with a small weekly dose, such as three sets of three at 80% of your max, while giving another quality more days, and shifting roughly monthly [6]. Galpin's year changes emphasis by quarter, with a week off at the end of each [3].

10. Stick with it long enough to work. Occasional changes are fine, but if you are changing the plan constantly, write a new one, as Galpin says [3]. Then give it time, because in Pavel's words, it is "consistency over intensity" [6].

Sources

1. Jeff Cavaliere on Designing a Training Program That Lasts: Splits, Mind-Muscle Connection, Stretching, Pain and Nutrition · Huberman Lab
2. Jeff Cavaliere: Optimize Your Exercise Program with Science-Based Tools | Huberman Lab Podcast #79 · Huberman Lab
3. Dr. Andy Galpin: Optimize Your Training Program for Fitness & Longevity · Huberman Lab
4. Fitness Toolkit: Protocol & Tools to Optimize Physical Health · Huberman Lab
5. Science-Supported Tools to Accelerate Your Fitness Goals · Huberman Lab
6. How to Build Strength, Endurance & Flexibility at Any Age · Huberman Lab
7. Summary Ama 14 2023 Philanthropy Evening Routine Light Therapy Health Metrics More · Huberman Lab