What would be the best way to achieve a lean muscualr look?

Hi Castell,

Thank you for your kind words. I've been training now for over 16years, however, my goals have varied and changed throughout this period although my consistency and dedication towards the industry has not.

With being a footballer mate, you can't afford to bulk up to much so I'd look into a 4 day a week split. Working upper body one day and lower body the next, day off and repeat, sticking to a power / strength phase program. You need to be activating as many fast twitch muscles fibres as possible, at the end of the day your an athlete and therefore you need to train like one. Bodybuilders splits or hypertrophy training will yes benefit your physique but not your game. In all honesty mate if you don't benefit from such a training protocol then your not training hard enough, look at sprinters etc for example.

Cardio is difficult, what are you currently doing with the football training sessions at the moment?

Thanks for the reply Olly :)

Just to clarify, I'm not a professional footballer . However, I play regularly with my mates and I'm always looking to find ways to become faster but at the same time pack on some quality lean muscle. I know this requires a lot time and I'm dedicated to this cause.
When you mentioned Sprinters, this is actually what my ultimate goal is; to have a sprinter's body, very lean, yet very strong and fast.

Another thing to mention is, I work from 9-5 and then I'm off to the gym. Therefore, would it be a good idea to do a 3 Day Split (Push/Pull) and do some cardio/HIIT on the other 2 days? Would this help in leaning up and building muscle.

Many Thanks!!

The theory of leaning up and building muscle is all well and good but in practical terms can be extremely hard if you haven't got your diet and supplementation nailed perfectly. you could go with a push and pull split but I would still recommend incorporating power based exercise in there. Any compound movements you do I.e. Bench, squats, deadlifts, military press, tricep dips etc should be done with explosive force, any isolation movements I.e cable flys, rows etc can be done with a 2-1-2-1 timing ration for hypertrophy. Least this way you benefit from incorporating all 3 muscle fibres into your routine. Don't neglet or ignore training the legs and add dynamic lunges into your routine. Cardio wise, if your gym is accessible to it, do SAQ training, this will be much more specific to your football needs and will be sufficient as a substitute to machine based training where you generally work in one movement plane. Anyway I hope this helps and this is my 2 cents and I'm sure others will have different thoughts with regards to an answer. Thanks bro.

Legend! :)
Thanks man. Hope some day you could personally train me!!