Push pull legs sorts the week by movement instead of by muscle. Push day is everything that presses weight away from you: chest, shoulders and triceps. Pull day is everything that rows or pulls it in: back, rear delts and biceps. Leg day is legs. Each muscle gets one hard day, then rests while the other two are trained.
Run it six days a week and every muscle is trained twice, which is the frequency most of the hypertrophy research lands on. Run it three days a week and it becomes a once-a-week split that is easier to recover from and easier to fit around a job.
Who it’s for
PPL suits lifters with a year or so of training behind them who can get to the gym five or six days a week. The six-day version is a real commitment: an hour a session is six hours a week, and every missed day pushes the rotation back.
Complete beginners usually do better on a full-body split three days a week. They practise the main lifts more often, and a missed session costs less. If you can only reliably make four days, upper/lower will serve you better than a PPL with holes in it.
The week
| Day | Session | Main lift |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | Push A | Bench press |
| Tuesday | Pull A | Barbell row or deadlift |
| Wednesday | Legs A | Back squat |
| Thursday | Push B | Overhead press |
| Friday | Pull B | Pull-up |
| Saturday | Legs B | Romanian deadlift |
| Sunday | Rest | — |
A sample day
| Exercise | Sets × reps | Rest |
|---|---|---|
| Barbell bench press | 4 × 5–6 | 3 min |
| Seated dumbbell shoulder press | 3 × 8–10 | 2 min |
| Incline dumbbell press | 3 × 8–12 | 2 min |
| Cable lateral raise | 3 × 12–15 | 60 s |
| Triceps rope pushdown | 3 × 10–12 | 60 s |
| Overhead cable triceps extension | 2 × 12–15 | 60 s |
Heavy compound first while you are fresh, isolation work last. Pull A has the same shape: barbell row, then pull-ups or lat pulldowns, a chest-supported row, face pulls and two curls. Legs A is back squat, Romanian deadlift, leg press, lying leg curl and standing calf raises.
Push A is 18 hard sets. Over two push days a week that gives chest roughly 14 direct sets and triceps about 10, both inside the range where most people grow. Put your own week into the volume calculator to check yours.
How to progress
Use double progression on everything except the first lift of the day. Pick a rep range, say 8–12. When you hit the top of the range on every set, add the smallest jump the equipment allows, 5 lb on a barbell or the next dumbbell up, and work back up from the bottom of the range.
For the first lift, keep the reps low and add weight every week for as long as it moves: 5 lb on bench and overhead press, 5–10 lb on squat and deadlift. When it stalls for three weeks running, take 10% off and build back up, or move to a rep range one step higher.
Leave a rep or two in the tank on compounds (around RPE 8) and take isolation work closer to failure. Six days a week adds up. Grinding every bench set to failure three days after the last one is how a shoulder starts to complain.
Mistakes that stall it
Treating the rest day as optional
Sunday is part of the plan. If you feel flat by week four, add a second rest day after legs rather than skipping sessions at random.
Too much pushing
Push day has the most exercises that feel good, so it grows. Keep pulling volume at least equal to pushing, with rows, face pulls and rear-delt work.
Leg day as an afterthought
Legs is the hardest of the three and the one people cut short. Put it after pull or after a rest day, never the morning after a late night.
Same weights every week
A split is a schedule, not a program. Without a progression rule you will be pressing the same dumbbells in six months.
Copying a pro’s volume
A 25-set chest day is somebody’s peak, not their start. Begin near 10 sets per muscle per week and add sets when progress stalls.
Running it in Splyt
Build Push A, Pull A and Legs A, and the B days if you run them, as templates in Splyt. When you finish a session, the weights you actually lifted carry into the next run of that template, so you always see last week’s numbers beside each set and double progression takes care of itself.
Already have a PPL in a spreadsheet, a screenshot or a TikTok? Import it and Splyt turns it into editable templates. Or tell the AI coach which days you train and it will build and schedule the week for you.
Questions
Is push pull legs good for beginners?
It works, but full body three days a week usually works better for the first six to twelve months. You practise the main lifts more often and a missed day costs less. Move to PPL once weekly weight jumps slow down and you want more volume.
Should I run PPL three or six days a week?
Six if you can recover from it and reliably get to the gym, because it trains each muscle twice. Three days trains each muscle once a week. That still builds muscle if every session is hard, but progress is usually slower than twice-weekly training at the same total volume.
Where do abs go on push pull legs?
Anywhere. Two or three sets at the end of any two sessions, such as hanging leg raises, cable crunches or the ab wheel, is plenty. Heavy squats and deadlifts already work the trunk hard.
How long should a PPL workout take?
About 60 to 75 minutes for five or six exercises with proper rest. If sessions run past 90 minutes, cut the last isolation exercise before you cut rest on the compound lifts.
Can I do push pull legs with only dumbbells?
Yes. Swap bench for dumbbell press, barbell rows for one-arm rows, squats for goblet or split squats and deadlifts for dumbbell Romanian deadlifts. Pull-ups need a bar; without one, do two row variations on pull day.
Other splits
- PPL upper lower split (PPLUL) — 5 days
- Upper lower split — 4 days
- Arnold split — 6 days
- 6 day workout split — 6 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
- Workout split generator — Days, time and goal in; a week of training out.
- Training volume calculator — Hard sets per muscle against the ranges that build it.
- One-rep max calculator — Your best set in, a max and every percentage out.
- Warm-up set calculator — A ramp from the empty bar to your work set.
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