How do I split up my workout?

If I can do weight lifting/cardio every day, how should I split up my workout for optimum fat loss and muscle gain/maintenance?  I have had shin splints in the past, so I'm not sure if HIIT running is out of the question.  Thanks in advance!

Anyone?

depends on your fitness level and how much you've been doing exercise

i know people tha can do cardio in the day, and weight train at night 6 days a week, and other 4 sessions a week.

weight gain/muscle gain needs extra calories remember

to get optimum just add 400 calories eitherside of the weights work (200 before, 200 immediately after)

are you going for hypertrophy training? or strength training?

because it makes a difference

(the former is breaking down muscle, and building it back up, the latter creates more efficient contraction of muscle fibres, i.e. more are triggered to contract)

though, i'd say every other to be safe from over training

Before summer I could do weight lifting in the morning and cardio at night, but now I'm thinking more along the lines of managing about an average of an hour a day.

Also, I guess I'm aiming more for a muscle maintenance right now, so I'm hoping to do strength training.

bump? ^^;

Eh, I would really like to get some feedback, if possible =]

Well, most of your fat loss is going to be from diet.  And so is the muscle gain. 

You need to be in a deficit to lose fat, and you need to be in a surplus to gain muscle.

As for your workouts, if you want to do an hour a day or so, then maybe 3 days weight lifting alternating with 3 days of running or whatever it is you do. And then one day completely off.  But really, you have to decide what it is you enjoy and look forward to, and just do it. 

If you haven't done any structured strength training before, Starting Strength is the right place to start - it's the book I wish I'd had when starting out, would have saved me years of farting around with inapproriately advanced workouts.

 I tend to use the exercise selection in Starting strength as starting point for just about every program - though the specific implementation varies a lot and depending on current goals you get a lot of exercise substitutions to the point where the only connection to the original is in the philosohpy.

 Don't needlessly complicate things.

'Course, an advanced athlete will need a program that is very different from a beginner. But the beginner will probably never get to actually be all that advanced if you pick an inappropriately complicated workout for you. You don't need two-factor or conjugate periodization with progression from month to month when you can use simple linear progression from workout to workout, and going too advanced will just hold you back.

 HIIT is also a bit oversold - I love it to death and it's a nice change of pace, but it's not neccesarily the right tool for eveyone. You need a good base to work from before HIIT becomes meaningful, and the intensity can interfere with recovery from strenght training so you probably can't progress in strength as fast if you do too much of it.

 My current baseline suggestion for the beginner/intermediate with 1 hour a day 5-6 day a week is to do a basic whole-body strength training program a la starting strength 3xweekly. On your off days you will do recovery workouts consisting of low-intensity cardio like a walk or an easy 60%MHR jog/bike/swim - just enough to get the blood flowing, and sufficient to keep building your cardio base, not enough to interfere with recovery. Once a week you can perform a more challenging version -fast sprint, timed run, HIIT, time trial, what have you if you've got ambitions to perform better in the cardio space, if not you just stick to the recovery workouts.

 If you've only got 3-4 hours a week and need to squeeze as much as possible into those few hours, you do something like a Cosgrove-style circuit or superset instead, as laid out in New rules of Lifting/for women and elsewhere; the conditioning effect of hard supersets done really fast works pretty well though the peak potential of a combination workout is lower than one where you've separated out the component physical qualities and train them in separate sessions.

 So it's a bit goal-dependent; as of now with 6 days a week to play with I'd suggest Starting Strength and then doing your normal medium-low intensity cardio on the off days from that program. The bike or elliptical works pretty good if you're still worried about shin splints, or just taking a walk.

Original Post by melkor:

 Don't needlessly complicate things.

This.

white_sakura - it seems from your threads that you have multiple goals and have this idea that there is some perfect workout routine that will accomplish all of your goals at once.

There isn't.

You just need to start doing something. That's why I suggested in a previous thread Starting Strength, and melkor is recommending it again here. Instead of over-analyzing, and trying to adapt a routine to fit whatever idea of the perfect routine you have... just starting doing something, even if at first it seems like it won't be enough to accomplish all of your goals right way. Especially given that you seem to want to lose fat and gain muscle all at once (which is quite difficult, if not impossible to do), you are going to take things step by step. It isn't going to happen over night.

There are plenty of workouts that will help you start you on your way, you just need to pick one, and when it stops being as effective, you move on to another. You can't do everything at once.

Alright, thank you so much for your advice, everyone!  And amethystgirl, thank you for your honesty.  I think I just needed someone to tell me that there is no magic workout or magic diet, because I know myself there is none, but I just keep searching for it.  Now that I've been pulled down to earth, I guess I'll get started on a full-body workout 3x a week right away.  Thanks again!

I'm glad to help - I was hoping it wouldn't come off as too harsh.

Let us know how you do.

Thanks!  I tried a full-body workout just yesterday, and I didn't get as tired as I usually do.  I'm just hoping it doesn't become my new benchmark for the level of tiredness I'd expect at every workout though haha