The PERFECT Pull Workout (PUSH | PULL | LEGS)

The push, pull, legs workout split is one of the most often used training splits for building muscle and strength. In this video, I’m going to deliver the next in the perfect workout series to give you the best pull workout for building a bigger back, traps and biceps. As always, I’m breaking down a

What’s up guys, Jeff Cavaliere, athelanx. com. Today, by popular demand, the perfect workout series is back. You guys have asked for it, today I deliver the perfect Push-Pull Legs Split. Well, today we’re going to start with the pull portion of the PPL.

Now guys, I understand that when we talk about perfect beauty is really, truly in the eye of the beholder. But you guys have asked for a PPL split that will allow you to build muscle with hypertrophy as your focus, I’m going to deliver it here today. I’m going to break it down for you guys, the schedule the sets, the reps, everything, so you can make sure you’ve got everything you need to make the gains you’re looking for. So, what are we talking about anyway when we say a Push Pull Leg Spilt? Well, we’re taking the pushing muscles, which consist primarily of chest, shoulders and triceps, and we’re training them on one day.

We have the pulling muscles, which is basically back and biceps, but there’s a lot more to it, as I’ll explain. And you’ve got your leg day, which goes in there as well. And you split them up in a fashion of pull, push and legs. You had the opportunity of some push pull leg splits to either rotate that one more time. So, it’s six times and then you have a day off on Sunday and then you come back, that’s called a Synchronoss split.

But we favor an asynchronous split, adding an additional off day in between your legs and pull sessions. Which I think is really important, especially here in this hypertrophy focused version of this split. So that being said, guys, let’s start breaking down what we’re going to do in both pull one and pull two. That’s right, there’s two different ways we’re doing here. Let’s start with pull one.

All right, so I mentioned those two pull workouts and the reason being, again, with hypertrophy in focus here, guys, what we’re going to find is that pull one will actually set up and then complement pull two and vice versa. So, we get this well-rounded approach. I don’t have to choose just one and neither do you. But we start with pull one here and it starts with our basic foundational compound lift pulling here the deadlift. Now we’re performing this deadlift as a one by five.

That’s not simply just one set. You guys know you want to ramp up to that with four warm up sets to get to 80% of your one rep max for your one set of five. Again, what you do here to ensure progress is add weight in your next session when you encounter this workout again, if able, if you’re not able to achieve the five reps and of course, you stick with the way you’re at right now until you can. We move to the next exercise, though, and this is now the chest supported row when we’re doing this three sets of eight to 10 reps. And what I like about this is a few different things.

Number one, this is going to help offload a little bit of that low back. So, when we get in this chest supported set up here, we have a little bit of relief for the low back, and we can focus a little bit more on the lats as we pull. But more importantly, I am a tremendous believer that we do not do enough upper back strengthening work. We don’t do enough upper back work, period. So, you’re going to go from the deadlift, we’re working on our entire back from the low back all the way to the top, to now one that’s going to focus a little bit more on the upper back, especially if you flow your elbows a little bit.

Now, I mentioned, if you’re feeling fatigued from the deadlift and the upper back is starting to feel too fatigued, you can just tuck your elbows a little bit more, which will shift this more to the lats. But I encourage you to try to keep that upper back work going by keeping those elbows a little bit out to the sides. We then come into our next exercise here, giving that upper back a bit of a reprieve, but go into a more lat focused exercise, the dumbbell pull over. Now, there’s a reason why Arnold called this the squat of the upper body, it is a tremendous way to build the lats. And what we do is we get that good stretch in the bottom position and we power through not by extending our elbows or using our triceps by powering through initiating with the lats as you see here.

You’re doing two to three sets in the 10 to 12 rep range, choosing a weight that allows you to fail within that range. If for some reason you’re starting to do 13 or 14 or 15 reps as you encounter subsequent workouts, well, obviously you need to increase the weight and vice versa. If you can’t get it to this range, you’re choosing too heavy a weight and you need to adapt. We come back to the upper back one more time. Again, we need to hammer this area and we do so with one of my favorite ways to do it and it’s the dumbbell high pull.

Now, some might look at this and say, “Jeff, I think you’ve lost your mind because this looks like an upright row. ” It’s actually the direct opposite of an upright row. Mechanically for your shoulder, this is externally rotating, not internally rotating like we would in an upright row. So, it’s actually one of the safest things you can do to train your shoulders and to bulletproof them. At the same time, we’re shifting that focus to a vertical pole and getting the upper traps and upper back and into the rear delts.

Which brings us to now the bicep portion of our pole workout. And again, some people skip this entirely, thinking they’ve got enough work already. Again, when you’re looking for a hypertrophy focus split guys, you’re going to want to have some direct bicep work. And one of my favorite ways to do this is with the bicep chin curl. Now, it’s always a good idea, if possible, to do some decompression work following a deadlift.

And here we get to do that by simply hanging from the bar. But instead of doing a traditional chin up, we take something called the chin curl where we close the angle of the elbow down as we approach the top of the bar. So, we’re actually mimicking the mechanics of a barbell curl. Instead of bringing the bar up to you, you bring your body to the bar once again, closing down that angle. And we actually now don’t just leave it at that, we superset this with, I know, a tricep exercise on pull day.

You’re going to see as we build out this entire PPL split guys, there’s a reason why we do this. We want to get some additional volume on the arms that oftentimes get shortchanged a little bit in these PPL splits, and we’re going to show with a basic overhead tricep extension. What we’re getting here is some long head work for the triceps, again something that oftentimes gets overlooked, utilizing the stress position as the main focus here. We’re going three sets to failure of the bicep chin curl and three sets of 10 to 12 on the back end of the superset. And then no pull workout is complete, really, no Athlete-X workout is complete without some additional corrective work at the end of this.

And one of my favorite all time movements to hit the entire posterior chain, to round out this perfect pull workout, is the Angel and Devil. The Angel and Devil is, like it sounds, it sounds so easy, but it’s so damn hard. It’s devilish because this will light up your back like a Christmas tree. And no, not just the lower back portion of your back that looks like a Christmas tree, but your entire back because every single muscle of the upper back, the mindscape, the lower back, the lower traps, the paraspinals, they all get activated in this exercise. This is kept in a much higher rep range of 15 to 20, for three sets, with the focus being on quality, not quantity.

Think about doing 15 to 20 sets of one rather than a set of 15 to 20. Which