The bro split gives each body part its own day: chest Monday, back Tuesday, shoulders Wednesday, legs Thursday, arms Friday. It is how most bodybuilding magazines programmed training for decades, and it is still the most common routine in commercial gyms.
Its reputation has taken a beating, mostly because each muscle is trained only once a week. That criticism is half right. Once a week is less efficient than twice, but a bro split with enough hard sets still builds muscle. People have built impressive physiques on it for fifty years.
Who it’s for
Intermediate and advanced lifters who enjoy long, focused sessions on one muscle, have five days to train and care more about how they look than about strength totals. Its real strength is attention: with a whole session for shoulders, you can hit front, side and rear delts properly.
It suits beginners poorly. Practising a squat once a week is too little, and a beginner can rarely produce enough quality sets on one muscle in one session to make the weekly frequency pay off. Start with full body or upper/lower.
The week
| Day | Session | Also trains |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | Chest | Front delts, triceps |
| Tuesday | Back | Rear delts, biceps |
| Wednesday | Shoulders | Upper traps |
| Thursday | Legs | Glutes, calves, core |
| Friday | Arms | Biceps, triceps, forearms |
| Saturday | Rest | — |
| Sunday | Rest | — |
A sample day
| Exercise | Sets × reps | Rest |
|---|---|---|
| Barbell bench press | 4 × 6–8 | 3 min |
| Incline dumbbell press | 3 × 8–10 | 2 min |
| Machine chest press | 3 × 10–12 | 90 s |
| Cable fly (low to high) | 3 × 12–15 | 60 s |
| Weighted dips | 2 × 8–12 | 2 min |
| Pec deck | 2 × 15 + drop set | 60 s |
Sixteen sets on one muscle sounds like a lot, and it is meant to be. Those sets carry the whole week for chest, so they need to be hard: the last two or three reps should be a real fight.
Order the week so overlapping days don’t collide. Shoulders come two days after chest so your front delts have recovered, and arms come last so tired biceps don’t ruin your back day.
How to progress
Bodybuilding-style progression is mostly double progression: pick a rep range for each exercise, push every set close to failure, and add weight once you reach the top of the range across all sets. On a once-a-week split that means progress comes weekly at best, so write everything down. Missing a 2.5 lb increase across six exercises adds up.
Once a muscle stops progressing for a month, add a set or two to its day, or move one exercise to another day. A few back sets on arm day, for example, gives back a second weekly hit and turns the routine into a hybrid.
Use intensity techniques such as drop sets, rest-pause and partials on the last set of the last exercise only. On every set, they wear down quality without adding much.
Mistakes that stall it
Junk volume
Twenty-five sets where the last fifteen are half-hearted are worse than twelve hard ones. Quality per set matters more on this split than on any other.
Neglecting legs
Legs get one day for the largest muscles you have. Make it the best session of the week, not the one you skip on a Thursday.
Arms on top of arms
Back day trains biceps and chest day trains triceps. If your elbows ache on Friday, cut arm-day volume.
Missing a day and losing a muscle
Skip Tuesday and back goes untrained for two weeks. Move the session rather than drop it.
No heavy work at all
Pump work builds muscle, but keep one heavier compound each day in the 5–8 rep range so strength keeps rising too.
Running it in Splyt
Build one template per body part in Splyt. Drop sets and supersets are part of a template, so the pec deck finisher logs the way you actually do it. Each template brings back last week’s weights, which matters when a muscle only shows up once every seven days.
Splyt’s per-muscle volume shows how many hard sets each muscle really got this week, including the indirect work, which is where a bro split usually turns out to be lopsided.
Questions
Does the bro split actually work?
Yes, if the volume is high and the sets are hard. Studies comparing once-weekly and twice-weekly training at equal volume tend to show slightly better growth with twice weekly, but the gap is small. Consistency matters more than the split.
Is the bro split better than push pull legs?
For most people, PPL is a little more efficient because each muscle is trained twice. The bro split gives you more time per muscle. Pick the one you will turn up to.
How many exercises per muscle on a bro split?
Four to six exercises and 12 to 20 hard sets for big muscles like chest, back and legs. Smaller muscles, like arms on arm day, need about 8 to 12 sets each.
Can I do a bro split four days a week?
Yes: chest and triceps, back and biceps, legs, and shoulders with a little arm work. That is a body-part split with arms paired to the day that already tires them.
Is the bro split good for strength?
Not ideal. Strength is a skill, and practising a lift once a week is slow. If strength matters, keep a heavy compound at the start of each day or choose upper/lower.
Other splits
- 5 day workout split — 5 days
- Arnold split — 6 days
- Push pull legs split — 3 or 6 days
- PPL upper lower split (PPLUL) — 5 days
- Every workout split, compared
Exercises by muscle
How to do every lift above, and the alternatives when a machine is taken: Chest · Shoulders · Triceps · Lats · Upper back · Biceps · Quads · Hamstrings · Glutes · Calves · Abs · The full exercise library
Ready-made workouts for each day
Sessions with sets, reps and rest you can drop into this split: Push day · Pull day · Leg day · Upper body · Lower body · Full body · At home · All workouts
Free tools for this split
- Training volume calculator — Hard sets per muscle against the ranges that build it.
- Workout split generator — Days, time and goal in; a week of training out.
- One-rep max calculator — Your best set in, a max and every percentage out.
- RPE calculator — Effort to load, and a set back to a max.
Splyt is a workout tracker for iPhone and Apple Watch with templates that remember what you lifted. Get Splyt free on the App Store · How templates work