A common split is upper body one day, lower body the next day. Push-pull split further splits upper body workouts in push and pull workout splits; legs is the lower body exercises.
One can wonder where do back and abs exercises go? The concept is apart from hand muscles and chest, push and pull exercises build up back and abs as well,
Yes! There are alot of training splits and I understand how one can easily get lost among so many advice coming from so many "influencers" telling u that their way is the correct one.
Truth be told sadly usually the answer is "it depends". I encourage u to try different splits and see what works better for u according to things like how long does it take for you to fully recover, how busy ur life is (push pull legs is a 6-day split, which is difficult to fit into most people's lives).
This said, I'm now gonna list the most common splits, so hopefully it can help u start out!
(Note: I'll describe each split by #days followed by describing day)
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1) Bro Split
This one is a classic, I personally started with this one however lately is a become less and less popular due to lack of frequency. It consists on: 5 days - Chest/Back/Legs/Shoulders/Arms - or by other words a specific muscle group for each day of the week. With lack of frequency i mean each muscle group doesn't take a full week to be fully recovered, so technically ur not reaping all the gains that way.
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2) Full-Body Training
As the name suggests, in this one u hammer ur entire body in each workout. It is perfect for time-constrained people, because since u training ur entire body everytime you only need to go to the gym for like 3 days a week (ex. monday, wednesday and friday). Perhaps the best for beginners, as its probably the most efficient for building muscle/strength in function of the time invested (source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABE9TCKeE3g&ab_channel=REVIVALFitness really cool youtuber btw, not your typical influencer).
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3) Upper-Lower
I haven't tried this one yet, but it's a 4-day split consisting on separating the training into, as u guessed, upper and lower: 2 days for upper body and 2 for lower. Supposedly one of the best for intermediate to advanced lifters who might have already plateaud with the full body approach.
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4) Infamous Push-Pull-Legs
This is the one im trying right now, and on par with upper-lower is one of the most popular right now. It consists on: 6 days - Push/Pull/Legs/Push/Pull/Legs/Rest and repeat; where usually: in PUSH u do exercises for chest/shoulders/triceps, PULL for back and biceps and LEGS well this one self-explains haha
This way u "maximize" the idea that since a muscle group takes about 48hours to fully recover you're always hitting it as soon as it's fresh. However, it comes with the drawbacks that not only u have to go to the gym almost everyday (which can be a bit draining) but also not everyone recovers equally so some (especially begginers) might not recover well and get stuck with their progress. Theres the common meme of highschoolers with all the time in the world in their hands who spend like 4hours daily at the gym and end up not making as much progress as they could after many months of "no pain no gain, the more i spend the more i get brah", just because RECOVERY is super important as well, and as much as i hate to say it, especially if not under PED usage, overdoing it is a thing...
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Either way, sorry for the long explanation, but if u have any doubts or wanna discuss something else I'm here! BTW again i've only been into this fitness thing for a little over an year so even though I've done quite a bit of research I'm still far from an expert hehe
PetroviciChess wrote pretty much everything in this regard. It's a good note.
One thing I want to emphasize on that exercising regularly is more important than worrying about splits. Like he said, everything works, one needs to find out what suits with one.
Thanks! And yes definitely, thats the key takeaway really!!
Lately, I've been beginning to incorporate more strength training into my exercise routines, and I have been wondering if anybody has advice for me. I've heard of Push, Pull, and Legs but have never really understood it.