Bro Split with Calisthenics
“Yo bro what muscle are you training today?”
The bro split. One of the most commonly used workout schedules you see in gyms today. You have the classic international chest day on Mondays. On this day you battle to find a bench. Then there is the infamous leg day that many “bros” tend to skip.
So what exactly is a bro split? The term bro split came from a typical bodybuilding body part split. Certain days during the week you hit different muscle groups. A typical split can look like this
Example Bro Split Schedule
Tuesday: Back
Wednesday Legs
Thursday: Shoulders
Friday: Biceps and Triceps
Each muscle group gets hit once per week, with a lot of intensity and different exercises targeting the same muscle. During that workout you do not focus on any other body parts. All focus and attention is dialed down on to one or two muscle groups for the day.
There are pros and cons with this type of training. The pro is that you hit the muscle hard and from a lot of different angles. The biggest con is that you are only hitting it once a week, making the frequency pretty low. If you think about it, within a year you are only hitting chest 52 times. We here at Calisthenics Revolution are bigger components of hitting the muscle groups more frequently. However, it is good to switch it up every once in a while and this is a great way to do just that.
If you are a complete beginner, we do not recommend you perform a split like this. Focus on the bigger compound movement and do full body workouts. We only recommend this to people that are intermediate to advanced and want to change up their routine. We will give guidelines to setup your own routines given this schedule, along with an awesome example workout you can implement right away.
Guidelines
- Work the muscle group once per week
- In the workout do 14-18 sets of 10-15 reps (can go lower or higher in reps for certain exercise depending on strength)
- We recommend choosing around 4-6 exercises
- Rest Periods: Rest around 1 minute in between sets. So if you see 3×10. That means you do a set of 10 reps, rest a minute, do a set of 10, rest a minute and do a final set of 10. That would complete 3×10.
We will use the same schedule as we put above. However will add in an optional day on the weekend to work on skills and tricks. Along with that day, feel free to throw in some cardio and abs when desired.
Monday: Chest
Tuesday: Back
Wednesday Legs
Thursday: Shoulders
Friday: Biceps and Triceps
Saturday or Sunday: Fun Day
Monday: Chest
- Dips: 5×10 (add weight if necessary)
- Pushups Wide Grip: 4×12-15
- Pushups Medium Grip: 4×12-15
- Ring Flys: 3×15
- Push Up 90 degree hold: 1 set max time
Tuesday: Back
- Wide Grip Pull Ups: 4×10-12
- Medium Grip Pull Ups: 4×10-12
- Inverted Rows: 4×12
- Front Lever Raises 3x max reps
- Controlled Slow Pull Up: 1 set of as slow as possible down and up.
Wednesday: Legs
- Box Jumps: 3×10
- Pistol Squats: 3×5-10
- Walking Lunges: 3×15 (each leg)
- High Step Ups: 3×12
- Body weight Squats: As many reps as possible in 5 minutes
Thursday: Shoulders
- Handstand Parallette Press: 4x max reps
- Wall Assisted Hanstand Press: 4x max reps
- Pike Press 4×10
- Push Ups: 4×10
Friday: Biceps and Triceps
Towel Chin Ups: 3×10
Close Grip Push Ups 3×10
Head Bangers: 3x max time
Bodyweight Tricep Extensions: 3 x 10
Bodyweight Ring Curls 3×12
Bench Dips 3×20
Saturday and Sunday
For these days work on your hand stands, levers and any other tricks. We also love to incorporate workout challenges. You can do things such as walking lunges for a mile or doing hill sprints for 20 minutes. Mix it up and have “fun”!
Your abs will get hit in a lot of the exercises you perform during the week but if you want to add in some additional feel free to do so. We suggest hanging leg raises to be your go to ab exercise.
If you have any questions on any of the exercises or anything at all, shoot us a message!
