Push-pull-legs is still one of the most popular training splits, but I’ve never been a huge fan of the traditional version.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with it. If you enjoy training 5–6 days per week and your arms aren’t a priority, it can work perfectly well.
But for someone training four days per week, particularly if arms are a priority, I generally prefer modifying it.
Rather than having an entire push day, pull day and leg day, I’ll often spread some of that work across the week.
A example week might look like this:
DAY 1 - PUSH Emphasis
✅ Main emphasis: chest and pressing
✅ 1 pull movement
✅ 1 quad movement
DAY 2 - Rest
DAY 3 - PULL Emphasis
✅ Main emphasis: back and pulling
✅ 1 push movement
✅ 1 hamstring/glute movement
DAY 4 - Rest
DAY 5 - LEGS
DAY 6 - SHOULDERS & ARMS
DAY 7 - Rest
You still get the basic structure and simplicity of push-pull-legs spread across four days a week and your shoulders and arms get a session where they aren’t being trained in a fatigued state.
It’s not necessarily a better split. But for someone training four days per week with arms as a priority, it’s one I much prefer.
Stefan Ianev Trainer & Educator
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07/09/2026
When progress slows, the instinct is usually to find some way of doing more.
And sometimes that’s exactly what you need.
But sometimes the issue isn’t that you need a bigger stimulus.
It’s that the way you’re currently creating that stimulus has become too costly to keep
progressing from.
That cost can show up in different places.
Training closer to failure can increase fatigue.
Heavy loading can start beating up your joints and connective tissue.
Short rest periods can limit performance across sets.
Certain exercises can become harder to recover from.
Even something like tempo can change the type of stress you’re exposed to.
This is why I don’t think of fatigue management as simply doing less.
Sometimes it means changing where the stress is going.
You might...
✅ Move away from heavier loading for a period and use more controlled tempos
✅ Change an exercise that’s starting to irritate something
✅ Increase your rest periods
✅ Move slightly further from failure
✅ Shift into a different rep range
You’re still training hard enough to create an adaptation.
You’re just changing what that training is costing you.
06/09/2026
Happy father's Day to all the Aussie dad's out there 🇦🇺
Double progression is still one of the simplest and most reliable ways to progress your training.
Pick a rep range, establish a load you can comfortably perform at the bottom of that range, then gradually build your reps before increasing the weight and starting the process again.
For a lot of people, this can work extremely well for a long time.
But eventually you may reach a point where extracting another rep from the same set configuration becomes increasingly difficult as you get closer to your limit.
That’s where I’ve recently been experimenting with Adaptive Set Progression (ASP).
Essentially extending double progression by redistributing the workload, opening the RIR back up, and creating another runway for progression.
I’ve linked my ASP reel to this one if you want to see how that works.
01/09/2026
When we talk about muscular endurance, we usually think about how many reps someone can perform in a single set.
But another quality I think is equally important is how well you can repeat that performance across multiple sets.
For example, two people might both get 15 reps on their first set with the same load...
But one maintains 13, 12 and 12 reps over the next three sets, while the other drops to 12, 9 and 8.
The difference in total work accumulated over those four sets is quite substantial.
Regular hypertrophy training will develop this repeat-effort capacity to some degree.
But just like strength, it can also be emphasized more directly through periods of higher-rep, shorter-rest and higher-density training.
If repeat-effort capacity is currently limiting how much productive work you can perform...
There may be value in developing that capacity before simply adding more volume.
This is one of the reasons metabolic capacity has a place within my BioAdaptive model.
Some people claim that volume load is completely irrelevant for hypertrophy.
That conclusion largely comes from research comparing different loading conditions, where higher and lower loads can produce similar hypertrophy despite very different volume loads.
But what often gets left out of that discussion is what happens when the absolute load is kept constant or similar.
Under those conditions, matching the amount of work tends to produce similar hypertrophy, while performing more work can produce greater hypertrophy.
This is why I care about developing different training capacities.
✅ Increasing force capacity can allow you to perform more reps with a given load.
✅ Improving metabolic capacity can help you maintain rep output across repeated sets.
✅ Redistributing your set configuration can allow you to accumulate more work while better managing fatigue.
All of these can increase the amount of productive work you're capable of performing.
25/08/2026
Why would you ever want to make a set less efficient?
That was one of the questions I got last week after I presented my Adaptive Set Progression model for the first time.
And naturally, I can see why some people would think that.
I think it’s also part of the reason the original post didn’t land quite the way I anticipated.
So I wanted to take a minute to break down some of the rationale behind it... particularly the relationship between stimulus, fatigue and proximity to failure.
Hopefully this helps connect some of the dots.
And if you want the full breakdown of the Adaptive Set Progression (ASP) model check out my previous carousel.
Progression doesn’t always have to mean pushing harder... but you do have to gradually do more work.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been experimenting with a different way of progressing both my own training and with some of my clients.
Instead of continually pushing the same sets closer and closer to failure...
Once effort starts getting sufficiently high, I’ll add a set and redistribute roughly the same workload across more sets.
This pulls each set further away from failure, reduces the effort required per set, and creates room to start progressing reps and load again.
I’m calling it Adaptive Set Progression (ASP).
The important distinction is that I’m not suggesting lower effort is inherently better, or that you should just keep adding sets indefinitely.
It’s about periodically redistributing workload before effort becomes the bottleneck, then continuing to progress from there.
Check out my previous post if you want the full breakdown.
18/08/2026
To my knowledge, I haven't seen this exact progression strategy described before.
I've been experimenting with it in my own training and with clients, and for now I'm calling it Adaptive Set Progression (ASP).
That doesn't necessarily mean nobody has used or described something similar before.
If you're aware of an existing progression model that uses the same approach, let me know. I'm more than happy to give credit where it's due.
The idea itself is fairly simple.
Rather than continually progressing the same number of sets until effort becomes the limiting factor...
Periodically add a set and redistribute roughly the same workload across more sets.
More sets → lower effort per set → RIR resets → progression runway opens up again.
I break down exactly how it works in the carousel above ☝️
James had already been training for nine years before we started working together.
He wasn’t lazy or inconsistent. He was already doing a lot of things right.
But sometimes it’s the last 10–20% you’re missing, or simply having someone in your corner, that makes the biggest difference.
That’s what helped James break through his plateau and make more progress in nine months than he had in years.
If you’ve been stuck with your training, feel like you’re doing everything right but still aren’t seeing the results you want...
Send me a DM and let’s have a chat.
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