Push Pull Legs 5-Day Split: Full Program, Sets and Reps

Push pull legs 5-day split workout plan at a glance

This is a complete push pull legs 5-day split you can start this week: a three-week calendar, six workout tables with exercises, sets, reps and rest, the weekly volume each muscle group ends up with, and a simple rule for adding weight. Every exercise links to its own page with form cues and a demo.

Who it's for. Lifters with at least six months of consistent training who can get to the gym five days a week and want to build muscle across the whole body. If you're newer than that, or can only train three or four days, the 3-day and 4-day versions further down will serve you better than squeezing five sessions in.

How it works. Push days train chest, shoulders and triceps. Pull days train back, biceps and rear delts. Leg days train quads, hamstrings, glutes and calves. With five training days and three movement patterns, the pattern rotates: week one runs Push, Pull, Legs, Push, Pull and week two runs Legs, Push, Pull, Legs, Push. Over three weeks every muscle group is trained five times, about 1.7 sessions per week, and the research below is why spreading volume across sessions like this is a good place to be.

Session length. 60 to 75 minutes. Each workout has six exercises. The first two are heavy compound lifts with full rest; the rest are higher-rep accessories with shorter rest.

Is push pull legs a good split for five days a week?

A fixed five-day week (Push, Pull, Legs, Push, Pull every week) trains chest and back twice but legs only once. That's the most common way people run a push pull legs 5-day split, and it's why so many of them end up with a lagging lower body. Rotating the pattern fixes it: over any three-week block, legs get the same five sessions as push and pull.

Frequency matters because of how volume behaves. Zaroni et al. (2019) took eighteen trained men, matched their weekly volume, and had one group train each muscle once per week while the other trained every muscle five days per week. Strength gains were the same, but the high-frequency group added significantly more muscle thickness in the elbow flexors and vastus lateralis after eight weeks. Spreading the same work across more sessions let each session be done fresher.

The rotation also keeps every workout at six exercises. Trying to hit legs twice inside a fixed five-day week usually means stacking eight or nine movements into one session, and the last three are done tired and half-hearted.

If you can't rotate because your schedule is fixed (say, you can never train on a Monday), run Push, Pull, Legs, Upper, Lower instead. The Upper and Lower templates are in the variations section below. That version trains legs twice a week on fixed days and is the structure many lifters mean when they say "PPL five days".

Same volume, higher frequency: significantly greater muscle thickness in biceps and quads after 8 weeks.

— Zaroni et al. (2019). High Resistance-Training Frequency Enhances Muscle Thickness in Resistance-Trained Men. J Strength Cond Res.

Push A: chest-focused

Push A opens with the barbell bench press bench press because it's the lift you'll track progress on. Warm up with two or three lighter sets before the working sets listed. The incline dumbbell press incline dumbbell bench press covers the upper chest, then the session shifts to shoulders and triceps with shorter rest.

Rest 2 to 3 minutes after the two compound lifts and 60 to 90 seconds on the accessories. On the lateral raises and pushdowns, the last set of each should be close to failure; the first sets should leave one or two reps in reserve.

Pull A: back thickness and rows

Pull A is built around horizontal pulling. The barbell row barbell row is the main lift; keep the torso angle fixed and the weight light enough that the bar touches the body without a hip hinge doing the work. Pull-ups pull up come second while you're still fresh. If you can't do eight clean reps, use the lat pulldown lat pulldown instead and switch back when you can.

Face pulls train the rear delts and the small muscles that keep your shoulders healthy under all the pressing in this program. Don't skip them because they feel light. Finish with biceps.

Legs A: squat-focused

Legs A is the heaviest session of the week. The barbell squat barbell squat gets four working sets with full rest; if your gym is busy, the leg press is an acceptable substitute for the week but not permanently. The Romanian deadlift romanian deadlift covers hamstrings and glutes through a long stretch, which is where most of the hamstring growth in a program like this comes from.

Leg extensions and leg curls are there to add quad and hamstring volume without more spinal loading. Calves get direct work on both leg days because they recover fast and most lifters under-train them.

Push B: shoulder-focused

Push B flips the emphasis. The standing overhead press overhead press is the main lift, and chest work moves to a machine and a fly so the shoulder joint isn't pressing heavy twice in the same week from the same angle. Dips dips are the second compound; lean forward for chest, stay upright for triceps. Use the assisted machine if you can't get eight reps with bodyweight.

The lateral raise shows up again on purpose. Side delts respond to frequency and tolerate it well, and two sessions a week of 12 to 15 reps is the minimum that visibly changes shoulder width.

Pull B: lat width, deadlift and arms

Pull B starts with the conventional deadlift deadlift at a modest three sets. Deadlifts are fatiguing out of proportion to the muscle they build, so they're kept to one session per rotation and lower reps. Lat pulldowns and one-arm dumbbell rows then cover vertical and unilateral pulling.

Rear delts get a second session through the reverse pec deck, and biceps get the incline curl, which loads the long head through a stretch that the standing curl in Pull A doesn't.

Legs B: hip-hinge and single-leg

Legs B keeps the squat pattern but moves it to the hack squat machine hack squat machine, which lets you push quads hard without the lower back being the limiting factor two sessions in a row. The hip thrust hip thrust is the main glute movement, and the Bulgarian split squat dumbbell bulgarian split squat adds single-leg work that fixes the left-right strength gap most people have.

Over a three-week block, the two leg templates average about 16 direct quad sets and 8 direct hamstring sets per week. Quads land inside the 10 to 20 weekly sets per muscle that the volume research supports; hamstrings get there once you count the indirect work from hip thrusts and lunges.

Weekly volume per muscle group

The table below counts direct working sets per muscle group across one three-week rotation (the A templates run three times, the B templates twice) and divides by three, so you can see what a typical week looks like. Indirect work (triceps during bench, biceps during rows) is listed separately and not added to the main count.

If a muscle is lagging, add one set per exercise for that muscle for a four-week block and then return to the baseline. Don't add sets to everything at once; recovery is the budget this program is spending, and five days a week spends most of it.

How to progress: add reps, then add weight

Every exercise has a rep range. Use the same weight until you hit the top of the range on every set, then add weight next session and start again at the bottom. For the barbell lifts that's 2.5 kg (5 lb) on upper body and 5 kg (10 lb) on lower body; for dumbbells it's the next pair up; for cables and machines it's one plate.

Keep a log. The whole program depends on knowing what you did last time, and the difference between people who grow on a push pull legs 5-day split and people who don't is mostly whether the numbers went up over twelve weeks. If you miss the bottom of the rep range on the first set, the weight jump was too big; go back one step for a session.

Every sixth or seventh week, take a deload: same exercises, same weights, half the sets. Five days a week accumulates fatigue that a rest weekend doesn't fully clear, and a planned light week is cheaper than an unplanned injury. If you want a more detailed rule set, see progressive overload training.

Push pull legs upper lower 5-day split, plus 3-, 4- and 6-day versions

Don't force five days if your week doesn't have them. The same six templates work at every frequency; what changes is how many you run per week and how long the rotation takes.

Three days. Run Push, Pull, Legs once each, alternating A and B templates week to week. Each muscle is trained once per week, so bump every exercise to four working sets. This is the version to start with if you're under six months in.

Four days. Keep cycling Push, Pull, Legs in order across four days a week, which trains each muscle about 1.3 times per week, or use a fixed Upper, Lower, Upper, Lower where Upper combines the first three exercises of Push A and Pull A. The Upper/Lower version is the one that hits every muscle twice per week.

Six days. Push A, Pull A, Legs A, Push B, Pull B, Legs B with one rest day. Every muscle is trained twice weekly on a fixed schedule. Drop one accessory from each session so recovery holds up, and take the deload every fifth week instead of every seventh.

Five days, fixed (PPL + Upper + Lower). If rotation doesn't fit your life, run Push A, Pull A, Legs A, then Upper and Lower from the table below. Legs get two sessions on fixed days and the upper body gets three.

What the research says about splits, frequency and pairing

Split vs. full-body: no difference when volume is matched. A 2024 systematic review and meta-analysis pooled 14 studies and 392 people and compared split routines directly against full-body training. Strength gains on the bench press and in the lower limbs were similar, and muscle growth was similar in the elbow extensors, elbow flexors, vastus lateralis and lean body mass (Ramos-Campo et al., 2024). The architecture of the week matters less than what happens inside each session.

Higher frequency can edge ahead on size. Zaroni et al. (2019) matched total weekly volume and found identical strength gains between once-per-week and five-times-per-week training, but significantly greater muscle thickness in the elbow flexors and vastus lateralis in the high-frequency group after eight weeks. That's the case for spreading this program's volume across the rotation rather than cramming it into fewer, longer sessions.

Splits can still win on quad size. Bartolomei et al. (2021) compared trained men on a 10-week total-body program against a split routine. Most measurements were identical, with one exception: vastus lateralis thickness grew significantly more in the split group. Dedicated leg days let you go heavier and more focused on the quads, which is why this program keeps legs as standalone sessions instead of folding them into upper-body days.

Pairing synergists or antagonists doesn't matter. Gonçalves et al. (2026) tested whether pairing muscles that work together (bench press then triceps) or muscles that oppose each other (bench press then rows) changed outcomes over eight weeks. It didn't; muscle and strength gains were identical. So push/pull is a scheduling convenience, not a physiological requirement, and the Upper/Lower alternative above is just as valid.

Volume is the lever. Franco et al. (2021) ran 10 sets per muscle per week for eight weeks at high and low frequency and found no significant difference in lean mass. Across every study here, when weekly sets are matched almost everything else washes out. The split is the container; the sets are the contents. For how many sets per muscle per week to aim for, see how many sets per muscle group per week, and for the full-body comparison see full body vs split.

Common mistakes on a 5-day PPL

Running legs once a week. The fixed Push, Pull, Legs, Push, Pull week is the default most people copy, and it's the reason their squat stalls. Rotate, or use the Upper/Lower alternative.

Treating every session as a max effort. Six exercises at five days a week only works if the accessories stop one or two reps short of failure. Save the all-out sets for the last set of the isolation movements.

Adding exercises instead of sets. When a muscle lags, the instinct is to add a seventh movement. Add a set to the movements already there instead; it's the same stimulus with less setup and less junk volume.

Skipping the deload. Fatigue from a five-day week doesn't show up as soreness; it shows up as the bar feeling heavy at weights you did easily three weeks ago. That's the signal, and the fix is a planned light week.

Changing the program every month. Twelve weeks is the minimum to judge a split. The rotation only becomes routine around week three, and the progression rule only pays off once you've had time to add weight several times.

Push pull legs 5-day split FAQ

Is a 5-day push pull legs split good for beginners? Not as a starting point. In the first six months, three full-body or three PPL sessions a week deliver the same progress with more recovery. Move to five days when three-day sessions start running past 90 minutes.

Can I do cardio on this split? Yes. Two or three 20 to 30 minute sessions of low-intensity cardio on rest days or after push and pull sessions won't interfere. Keep it off leg days.

What if I miss a day? Pick up where you left off. The rotation is a sequence, not a calendar, so a missed Wednesday just shifts everything forward one day.

How long until I see results? Strength on the main lifts should move within three to four weeks. Visible muscle change takes eight to twelve weeks of consistent progression, which is also the minimum before judging whether the split is working for you.

Should I train to failure? On the last set of isolation exercises, yes. On compound lifts, stop one or two reps short. Training to failure on squats and deadlifts five days a week is how people get hurt, not bigger.

Can I swap exercises? Swap like for like: a different press for a press, a different row for a row. Keep the main lift of each day fixed for at least twelve weeks so you can track progress on it.