Push vs. Pull workout: What are the benefits

March 22. 2022

When you’re training for strength or gains, you should balance your workouts as well as your diet. And when it comes to workouts, there is a wide range of different styles of routines. Getting a lean body requires a lot of effort and calculation to get a perfect workout structure. You have to do a combination of all those different styles of workouts, which leads to maximal strength gains. So if this is what you’re looking for, even if you’re a beginner, this type of routine is perfect. 

Push vs. pull workout is a trendy routine – a style of training that targets your muscles based on the action you have to do to engage them. It structures your body just the way you want it. This style is based on combining a day of upper body pushing movement and a day of upper body pulling movement. You can do these workouts day after day or separate them by a rest day.

Pushing movements focus on the chest, shoulders, and triceps, whereas pulling movements focus on the back, biceps, and forearms. These workouts are combined with core and lower body days. Again, you can do them the following day or separate them by a rest day, depending on your experience level. A lower body day, aka leg day, includes working out the muscles located on the front and back of the thigh, as well as glutes and calves.

Benefits of this type

Push vs. pull workout has many benefits:

Allows optimal recovery

Traditional workout style involves training mainly two body parts per day. Even if you focus on one body part per day, when you’re working another part on the following day, you use the muscles you worked the previous day for the movement because the muscles are synergic. That can cause your body and muscles to overstress with time. Rest is as essential as workouts because your muscles grow when you rest. The push/pull method allows your muscles the needed time to rest fully because you do major muscle groups only once every three days.

Everyone can benefit

These workouts can be modulated and scaled up and back down, so they’re suitable for beginners as much as pros.
A training split for beginners can look like this: push, rest, pull, rest, legs and core.
As for the advanced lifters: push, pull, legs and core, rest, push, pull, legs and core.

Easy to understand

As already said, they are suitable and appropriate for beginners, meaning the structure is easy to understand. All you have to do is ask yourself if it is a pulling or pushing movement; there’s no need to know the Latin names or anything like that. There’s no need for more complex analysis or giggling around micro-muscle involvement.

Scalable and time-efficient

This method is adjustable and super flexible. You can add in, take out, or swap an exercise in the routine easily because you’ll still be doing the same movement.

Measurable progression

Based on the number of reps and weight you’re lifting, you can see the progress you’ve made. You can see how far you’ve come and how close you’re to your goal.

Why push vs. pull workouts?

First of all, this type of workout allows you to train your muscles without overstressing them. Secondly, the workouts are shorter; they are more frequent, but you do more during your workout because you focus on one body part while other parts and muscles rest. And to say at last, but not the least, your workouts can stay interesting as there are many varieties. This workout routine is also great because you can avoid hitting the progress plateau by changing your workouts every few weeks. You can also do a push vs. pull workout with your lower body – do quad one day and glutes and hamstrings on the other.

With this type of workout routine, you gain muscle strength, and if you combine it with lipo C injections, you can blast fat really fast.

Weekly workout plan 

Push workouts involve movements where you push the weight away from your body, such as:

• Pushups
• Chest press
• Triceps extension
• Chest flies
• Lateral raises
• Front raises
• Dips
• Leg press
• Forward lunges

Pull workouts are movements that involve pushing the weight toward your body. The exercise you can do on pull day are:

• Rows (one arm, barbell, double arm, renegade)
• Curls ( biceps, hammer, reverse, barbell, incline)
• Back extensions
• Pull-ups
• Deadlifts
• Glute bridges
• Squats

A push-pull workout week can look like this:

Monday: upper body push/lower body pull

Tuesday: upper body pull/lower body push

Wednesday: rest

Thursday: upper body push/lower body pull

Friday: upper body pull/lower body push

Saturday: rest

Sunday: rest

Remember, always try to challenge your body by changing the routine, increasing reps, weight, numbers of sets, and changing the exercises. Also, it’s imperative to warm up before the workout and stretch and cool down afterward.

What about your diet?

Figuring out how many calories you need to eat to gain muscle while losing excess fat can be tricky. There is no pattern for this, because we are all different; you can find help at our weight loss clinic, where we can develop the best plan.

Final thoughts

Whether you’re trying to work out more or more efficiently, this is a great workout routine. If you aim to build muscle, this approach is better than the traditional one, where you work a body part per gym session.

Now that you have a better idea of the benefits of structuring your push vs. pull workouts, have fun with pushing, pulling, and growing! And as for the diet, leave that to us, so schedule your call with us today!

Author

Nurse Walton

Born and raised in Chicago, IL, Chanay received her Practical Nurse licensure and went to work in clinical specialties such as Home Health, Assisted Living, Long-Term Care and Dialysis Centers. Through this work, she realized the importance of diet, nutrition and weight loss among her patients. This led her to open A Better Weigh, Inc. Medical Weight Loss Center in 2009.