Friday / Sunday split

[Dan30185]

Before jotting this down for thoughts, I will explain a little behind why I am doing this. I work from 5am to 6.30pm , as a boilermaker. By the time I get home, it's about 7pm, it's a mad rush to get showered, do dinner, bath the 2 kids and pop them to bed. Mon - Fri , Sat is a 5am to 12pm day , 7 hours . It's not realistic to pop to the gym at 9pm after the day is done and lift weight , then get home again and get up at 3.45am to do it all again the next day. I can't stop working the hours I work , my family's needs come well before my own, I've encouraged my wife working the 2 days a week she does, because it's good for her to still have her own time but I don't want the kids being raised by daycare, that's a shit go I believe. This is an arrangement that's been the case for 3 years now, but I'm wanting to kick my own physique goals still, I am at the moment retaining size based off my past ( satellite cells ) and in conjunction with a heavy job all day , I believe , that's all it can be. At the moment I'm 90kg at id say 14% bf, standing 174cm.

My plan is to lift a modified full body routine, twice a week , Friday , Sunday split. It's not ideal , far from optimal, but I feel it's my best bet , I'm hoping that twice a week frequency should be OK as long as I'm not overdoing volume on the Friday. Plan is at the moment for example to superset a lower/upper eg:

Rear barbell squats into calf raise
Shoulder press behind neck

Rack pulls ( arms just short enough to make deadlifts a pain )
Incline press

Landmine rows
Lat pull downs

Leg extensions
Barbell curls

Short and sharp , total of about 50 mins I reckon. What's the general consensus on something like this ? Has anyone had any meaningful growth trying something similiar

 

[hubbles]

Respect brother

With your busy schedule, that plan seems to be the only logical move. It can work and can still lead to muscle gains especially if you're focusing on compound lifts. As you'd know muscle growth is primarily stimulated by overall training volume and progressive overload.. so as long as you’re increasing weights or reps over time you will see the gains. It's also about consistency and making each workout count.

I work shifts myself and recall times when I faced similar challenges. It's not ideal, but you have to make do with what you have.

 

[Dan30185]

Respect brother

With your busy schedule, that plan seems to be the only logical move. It can work and can still lead to muscle gains especially if you're focusing on compound lifts. As you'd know muscle growth is primarily stimulated by overall training volume and progressive overload.. so as long as you’re increasing weights or reps over time you will see the gains. It's also about consistency and making each workout count.

I work shifts myself and recall times when I faced similar challenges. It's not ideal, but you have to make do with what you have.

It's rugged a bit, I've been doing more traditional splits, but it's just killing me , I'm not recovering and I'm not getting enough sleep. I've been doing it this way for a while but it's just not sustainable. My only concern is, Friday to Sunday isn't alot of time for repair, but as it is I'm not doing the best job at that, by minimising the volume a bit I'm hoping it's enough to still get some Hypertrophy, it will rest I think on how well I can manage myself on that Friday afternoon / evening. Did you notice much difficulty on such short turnarounds ? Realistically the only other way would to be an upper ( fri ) lower ( sun ) , but that's hitting muscle groups once a week , which may be OK for a new guy but likely not enough to do much otherwise

 

[hubbles]

I was lucky enough to have a few more days between sessions, but I’ve done the occasional back to back as well. To make it work, I’d go heavier on lower body Friday, then focus on upper body Sunday to spread the load a bit. Sure it's only hitting muscle groups once a week but given your schedule... it’s still a solid approach brother. With the right nutrition and by managing the volume and intensity you can still make gains on a split like this.