Push-Pull-Legs Training Split
Push, pull, legs a very simple, yet effective training split for anyone.
Very flexible when life is busy.
Push-Pull-Legs limits overlap of your sessions. When you're training your pushing muscles during one session, and then the pulling muscles the next, you're giving your pushing muscles a chance to recover while you're still training. As there isn't much overlap between training sessions, it makes it a good training split if life is unpredictable. I've used this when life was a bit crazy, and I didn't know in advance what days I would be able to train on. While this isn't optimal, I would sometimes have three to five days in a row I could train and then have a few days in a row that I couldn't train. This isn't a problem when doing push-pull-leg split as I could do several of these sessions back to back without causing recovery issues. This would be harder when I was doing an upper-lower split, and I would have to lower the volume or intensity per session if I did trained that frequently. It's also very easy to keep the sessions very short if you're in a rush as the upper body work is broken into two sessions.
It spreads out upper body work over two workouts.
There are more muscles in the upper body than the lower body, and it tends to need more exercises to maximise your muscle mass. When doing upper and lower training split, the upper body sessions tended to be longer, or I had to miss out t raining certain muscles directly.
You can emphasis certain muscles.
My arms and chest has always lagged behind other muscle groups. Moving to a push-pull-legs split made it much easier to add more work for these muscles. While it's not impossible to do this while training upper and lower, or full body programs, it is easier when training is split up a bit more.
List of some exercises you can do on each day
Push Exercises
Pull Exercises
Example Routine
Push
Bench press - 4 x 4-6 (double progression)
Dumbbell overhead press - (350 method)
Cable crossovers - 4 x 15 (double progression)
Triceps extensions - 3 x Rest pause
Pull
Weighted chin ups - 4 x 6-8 (double progression)
Chest supported rows - 4 x 8-10 (double progression)
Shrugs - 350 method
Curls - 3 x rest pause
Legs
Squats - 4 x 6-8 (double progression)
Romanian deadlift - 4 x 8-10 (double progression)
Leg curls- 4 x 15
Push-Pull-Legs can be done 3, 4 or 5 days a week. Normally I would do 4 or 5 days a week. Their are some push-pull-legs programs that are 6 days a week, but I don't recommend doing it six days.
- Push - Upper body pushing muscles: chest, shoulders, and triceps.
- Pull - Upper body pulling muscles: back and biceps. I don't, but people include deadlifts on the pull day. If you do, it's best to split up the pull and legs day.
- Legs- Lower body work.
Very flexible when life is busy.
Push-Pull-Legs limits overlap of your sessions. When you're training your pushing muscles during one session, and then the pulling muscles the next, you're giving your pushing muscles a chance to recover while you're still training. As there isn't much overlap between training sessions, it makes it a good training split if life is unpredictable. I've used this when life was a bit crazy, and I didn't know in advance what days I would be able to train on. While this isn't optimal, I would sometimes have three to five days in a row I could train and then have a few days in a row that I couldn't train. This isn't a problem when doing push-pull-leg split as I could do several of these sessions back to back without causing recovery issues. This would be harder when I was doing an upper-lower split, and I would have to lower the volume or intensity per session if I did trained that frequently. It's also very easy to keep the sessions very short if you're in a rush as the upper body work is broken into two sessions.
It spreads out upper body work over two workouts.
There are more muscles in the upper body than the lower body, and it tends to need more exercises to maximise your muscle mass. When doing upper and lower training split, the upper body sessions tended to be longer, or I had to miss out t raining certain muscles directly.
You can emphasis certain muscles.
My arms and chest has always lagged behind other muscle groups. Moving to a push-pull-legs split made it much easier to add more work for these muscles. While it's not impossible to do this while training upper and lower, or full body programs, it is easier when training is split up a bit more.
List of some exercises you can do on each day
Push Exercises
- Bench press
- Incline bench press
- Dips
- Lateral raises
- Floor Press
- Overhead press (dumbbell and barbell)
- Dumbbell bench press
- Incline bench press
- Arnold press
- Triceps push down
- Dumbbell flys, crossovers etc
Pull Exercises
- Deadlift
- Pull Ups and Chin Ups
- Seal Rows
- Chest supported rows
- Chest supported T-Bar row
- Shrug
- Rear delt rows
- One arm dumbbell row
- Face pulls
- Barbell curls
- Dumbbell curls
- Hammer curls
- Cross body hammer curls
- Back squats
- Trap bar deadlift
- Glute ham raise
- Safety bar squats
- Stiff legged deadlifts
- Romanian deadlift
- Hip thrust
- Leg press
- Bulgarian split squats
- Good mornings
- Front squat
- Paused squats
- Calf raises
Example Routine
Push
Bench press - 4 x 4-6 (double progression)
Dumbbell overhead press - (350 method)
Cable crossovers - 4 x 15 (double progression)
Triceps extensions - 3 x Rest pause
Pull
Weighted chin ups - 4 x 6-8 (double progression)
Chest supported rows - 4 x 8-10 (double progression)
Shrugs - 350 method
Curls - 3 x rest pause
Legs
Squats - 4 x 6-8 (double progression)
Romanian deadlift - 4 x 8-10 (double progression)
Leg curls- 4 x 15
Push-Pull-Legs can be done 3, 4 or 5 days a week. Normally I would do 4 or 5 days a week. Their are some push-pull-legs programs that are 6 days a week, but I don't recommend doing it six days.
Push-Pull-Legs Training Split