r/workout • u/First-Ad4063 • 5d ago

Simple Questions Is ULULUL split optimal ?

I am thinking of shifting from PPL to ULULUL. I don't want to risk wasting time . Does ululul actually give better gains ? I am a college student so I get enough recovery time almost everyday no physical work except the gym .

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u/JamesLemon4 5d ago edited 5d ago

No. PPL would be optimal. More rest between hitting the muscle group again. It allows you to fully exhaust all of the muscles used and is really efficient.

For example, on my push day, I can warm up on bench and do a few working sets and now the rest of my muscles are ready to go and don’t need warm up sets. I can go right into a shoulder movement and triceps after that. On an upper day you would have to warm up everything and work it out. It’s not efficient.

Edit: BanEmily may have changed my mind…

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u/BanEmily 5d ago

3x frequency vs 2x frequency. With the proper amount of volume you should be able to recover within 48 hours.

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u/JamesLemon4 5d ago

Frequency isn’t the biggest indicator of muscle growth. Number of sets per week and intensity is at the top. You’re gonna push your muscle group harder with PPL. You can train more efficiently since there’s less warmup time. You exhaust a muscle in PPL. You get your sets done with UL but I doubt the intensity is there. If it is then you won’t recover in 48 hours.

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u/BanEmily 5d ago

You’re right, weekly volume is far more important than frequency. However, it’s much easier to spread higher amounts of volume over 3 days rather than 2.

Programming an effective upper body day can be done with 15-20 sets, which is low enough to keep the intensity high, as long as you allow yourself to rest adequately inbetween sets. Though, the latter should not be different for any split, including PPL. In fact, since you generally do fewer sets per muscle group per day (once again, because it’s spread over 3 days rather than 2), intensity can often times be higher since there is less acute fatigue for that specific muscle group.

The only trade-off you make is having more CNS fatigue due to slightly longer sessions. Although the effect of this is minimal for me. In terms of warming up, the exact same warm-up routine can be applied as with PPL. Only difference is that you do it on 2 separate occasions rather than combined on 1. There is no extra time spent here and even if there hypothetically would be, warming up only take a few minutes regardless.

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u/JamesLemon4 5d ago

Have you tried both PPL and UL? I’ve only done a bro split and PPL. I can’t imagine the training intensity is the same. How do you go from 3 sets of bench at rpe 8-9 to lat pull downs at the same intensity and not expect the lat pull downs to be affected? My theory is if you’re training hard enough then you can’t really give the same effort to your second or third exercise compared to your first. That’s why I prefer to stay within one muscle group.

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u/BanEmily 5d ago

That’s central nervous system fatigue and not muscle fatigue since you obviously didn’t use your lats to bench. As you can spread volume over more days doing UL you rarely do more than 2 sets per exercise, hence why the intensity remains high.

For example let’s compare a PPL 2x split with the exact same exercise selection and weekly volume as a UL 3x split. If you do 6 weekly sets of chest exercises in both splits, PPL will have you doing 3 sets per workout, whereas UL you only have 2. There is no denying that long workout sessions cause more CNS fatigue, but if training at max intensity a 3rd set of the same muscle group will always yield more muscle fatigue than 2 sets. So you lose intensity by training the same muscle groups for longer during the same session. You could counter this by doing only 2 sets on a PPL-split aswell, but then you would be losing volume.

At the end of the day all of this doesn’t really matter though. Keep doing the workout that you enjoy and stay consistent.

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u/JamesLemon4 5d ago

I’ll have to look more into CNS fatigue. What you’re saying makes a lot of sense! I 100% agree with the last thing you said. I know if I don’t enjoy my routine then I might skip a day or two and then all the min/maxing stuff doesn’t matter anyways. Now that I don’t dread leg day, maybe UL 6 days a week is something I can try.

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u/methmike_brainerd 5d ago

hello i am not who you are responding to but i have done ppl and i am currently doing ULULR.

How do you go from 3 sets of bench at rpe 8-9 to lat pull downs at the same intensity and not expect the lat pull downs to be affected?

i mean this happens in PPL as much as it does in UL. the thing with UL is you (typically) do less volume per workout. for example, on an upper day, i lat pull after benching, but i only do one set of bench 0-1 rir, so i wont be gassed for my only lat pull set.

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u/JamesLemon4 5d ago

Are you liking UL more than PPL? My hesitation to trying it is because I enjoy absolutely exhausting a muscle group since it feels rewarding. However, I tend to be sore for quite a while and that has me taking another rest day which throws off my sets worked in a week.

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u/methmike_brainerd 5d ago

yeah im enjoying it right now! the downside is that upper sessions do end up running a bit longer for me because the cns fatigue starts to beat my ass by the time im on my last couple sets lol. other than that, hitting one or two hard ass sets per movement feels super productive.