Push pull legs: a complete routine and how to run it

The short answer

A push pull legs routine, often shortened to PPL, rotates through three sessions:

• Push: chest, shoulders and triceps, the muscles that press weight away from you.
• Pull: back, biceps and the rear of the shoulders, the muscles that pull weight toward you.
• Legs: quads, hamstrings, glutes and calves.

Run the three in order and you have the whole split. How often you go through them decides most of what the routine does for you:

The six-day version is the classic one, and it is the main routine in this guide. Each muscle gets trained twice a week, sessions stay to four or five exercises, and the weekly volume lands in the range most people need to build muscle. The three-day version, further down, is the place to start if you are new to lifting or can only train three days.

Two rules make any version work. First, start each session with the compound lifts, when you are freshest, and finish with the smaller exercises. Second, progress something every week: a rep, a small jump in weight, or a cleaner set at the same weight. The routine below gives every exercise a rep range so you always know which of those to chase.

If you only take one thing from this guide, make it this: the split matters less than doing it consistently and logging every set, because the log is what tells you when to add weight.

How a push pull legs split works

The idea behind push pull legs is that muscles which work together get trained together. Every pressing exercise, from a bench press to an overhead press to a dip, uses the chest, the front of the shoulders and the triceps at the same time. Every pull, from a row to a pull-up, uses the back, the biceps and the rear of the shoulders. Grouping them means that when your triceps are tired from pressing, you are not asking them to do anything else that week until push day comes back.

That grouping has three practical benefits.

Less overlap between sessions. In a split by body part, a back day on Tuesday and an arm day on Wednesday both hammer the biceps. With push pull legs, the biceps work once per pull day and then rest until the next one, so each muscle gets two to three days off between sessions on a six-day plan.

Short, focused sessions. Because each day covers only a third of the body, you can give its muscles real attention in four or five exercises and about an hour, instead of rushing a little of everything.

A schedule that scales. The same three sessions work at three days a week, or six, or on a rolling cycle that fits around shifts and travel. You never have to redesign the program when your week changes, only how often you run it.

There are trade-offs. Six days a week is a lot of gym time, and missing a day leaves a muscle untrained for a full week unless you shuffle the order. Legs get one session in three, so on a six-day plan they get two of your six days; lifters who want more lower-body work sometimes add a second leg-focused exercise to pull day. And because each session trains its muscles hard, the weekly volume can creep higher than you can recover from if you keep adding exercises. Both of those are covered in the sections on weekly volume and common mistakes below.

The order within the cycle matters less than people think. Push, pull, legs is the most common, but pull, push, legs or legs, push, pull work just as well. What matters is that the two push days, the two pull days and the two leg days are spread out, so each muscle gets its rest.

The six-day routine: push and pull days

This is a complete six-day plan for an intermediate lifter. Each muscle group gets two sessions a week, labelled A and B. The A days lean on heavier compound lifts in lower rep ranges; the B days use different exercises and slightly higher reps, so the week covers more angles without doubling up. Every set listed is a working set, taken close to failure; warm-ups come before them and are not counted.

A few notes on the choices. The bench press and overhead press sit on Push A, at the start, because they are the heaviest presses and the ones you will most want to progress. Side delts get lateral raises on both push days, because pressing barely trains them and they need direct work to grow. Rear delts get face pulls and rear delt flies on the pull days for the same reason. Biceps get curls on both pull days on top of the indirect work from every row and pull-down.

If an exercise doesn’t suit your gym or your joints, swap it for one that trains the same muscles in the same way: a machine press for a barbell press, a chest-supported row for a barbell row, a cable curl for a barbell curl. Keep the sets and the rep range, and the plan stays the same.

The six-day routine: leg days

The two leg days follow the same pattern as the upper-body days: Legs A is built around a heavy squat, Legs B around single-leg work and higher reps, and both train the hamstrings and calves directly.

The Romanian deadlift is the main hamstring and glute lift here rather than a conventional deadlift. Conventional deadlifts are a fine choice too, but they are hard to recover from twice a week alongside squats, and many lifters run them on Legs A in place of the Romanian deadlift, for 3 sets of 3 to 6, every other week. If you do, keep the leg curls.

Laying out the week. The most common schedule runs Monday to Saturday: Push A, Pull A, Legs A, Push B, Pull B, Legs B, with Sunday off. Any order works as long as the same session isn’t on back-to-back days, and the rest day can move. If your week has a fixed busy day, put the rest day there.

How long the sessions take. Each day is 13 to 17 working sets. With warm-ups and the rest times later in this guide, that is roughly 60 to 75 minutes. If that is too long, the first sets to drop are the last exercise of the day, not the rest between your main lifts.

When you miss a day. Don’t skip the missed session to stay on the calendar; just do it next and push the rest of the cycle back a day. Over a few weeks, keeping every session in its turn matters more than which day of the week it lands on.

A three-day version

Three days a week is the right starting point if you are new to lifting or can only train three times. Each session covers its muscles once a week, and the weekly volume comes to about 5 or 6 hard sets for each main muscle, roughly half the six-day plan, which is the range most beginners grow well on.

Spread the three days across the week with at least one rest day between them, for example Monday, Wednesday and Friday. That gives each session a full day of recovery and keeps the weekends free.

The trade-off is frequency. Research on training frequency found that hitting a muscle twice a week tends to build more muscle than once a week when the total work is the same, which is one reason the six-day version exists. A later analysis found the difference mostly disappears once total weekly volume is matched, so frequency is best seen as a way to fit more volume in, not a magic number. For a beginner, once a week per muscle is plenty, because almost any consistent training works in the first year.

When the three-day plan starts to feel easy, typically after six months to a year, you have two ways to grow it. Move to a rolling schedule, three days on and one off, which trains each muscle about every four days. Or switch to the six-day plan above. Either way, add volume gradually rather than all at once.

Weekly sets per muscle on this plan

Weekly sets per muscle are the best single measure of whether a plan has enough volume, and too little or too much is the most common reason a split stops working. Here is how the six-day plan adds up, counting direct sets of exercises aimed at each muscle.

Those totals sit inside the ranges in the guide to sets per muscle group for an intermediate lifter, with two things worth knowing. Triceps and biceps look low on direct sets alone, but every press trains the triceps and every row and pull-down trains the biceps, so counting those as half sets puts both arms at roughly 14 sets a week. Glutes get only three direct sets because squats, split squats and Romanian deadlifts already train them hard.

Adjusting for your goals. To bring up a lagging muscle, add two sets a week for it, one on each of its days, and leave the rest of the plan alone. If chest is the priority, a third chest exercise on Push B does it. To bring the plan down for a busy month or a cut, drop the last exercise of each day: you lose about a fifth of the volume and keep every main lift.

Checking that it is working. Run the plan for four to six weeks before changing it. If the weights and reps on most main lifts are climbing, the volume is right. If a muscle has stopped progressing and you recover well, it may need two more sets; if several lifts are going backwards, it is probably too much, and a deload is due.

How to progress on push pull legs

Every exercise in the routine has a rep range, and the range is the progression rule. This approach is called double progression: you add reps first, then weight.

Step 1: start at a weight you can lift for the bottom of the range on every set, with a rep or two left in reserve. For bench press at 5 to 8 reps, that means a weight you can do 4 sets of 5 with.

Step 2: add reps each session where you can. Most sessions, at least one set will gain a rep. Keep the weight the same until every set reaches the top of the range.

Step 3: when every set hits the top, add weight and drop back to the bottom of the range. Use the smallest jump you can: 2.5 kg or 5 lb for the big barbell lifts, 1 to 2 kg or 2.5 to 5 lb for dumbbells and machines. Lateral raises and curls often go weeks between jumps; that is normal.

Step 4: if you’re behind, check before you push harder. If a lift hasn’t moved in three sessions, look at the basics first: are you resting long enough, sleeping enough, and actually taking sets close to failure? If all of that is in place and several lifts have stalled at once, take a deload week, then restart at about 90% of your recent weights. The deload guide covers how to run the easy week.

What done looks like for a block of training: over six to eight weeks, most of your main lifts have gained weight, most accessory exercises have gained reps, and sets at your planned effort still feel like that effort. When that stops happening, change one thing: volume, exercise selection or the rep ranges, not all three.

One habit makes progression far easier on a six-day plan: write down every set, including the ones that went badly. With six sessions and nearly thirty exercises a week, nobody remembers last Tuesday’s incline press, and guessing is how lifters stall. The progressive overload page covers how Arclift turns those logs into the next session’s targets.

Rest, warm-ups and session length

Push pull legs sessions are short on exercises but heavy on hard sets, so rest and warm-ups decide whether the last exercise of the day is still a good one.

Rest between sets. Use 2 to 3 minutes on the first one or two compound lifts of each day, the bench press, overhead press, rows, pull-ups, squats and Romanian deadlifts, and up to 3 to 5 minutes on your heaviest sets. Smaller exercises such as lateral raises, curls, triceps work, leg curls and calf raises need about 90 seconds to 2 minutes. The guide to rest between sets explains where those numbers come from and how to fit them into a session that has to end on time.

Warm-ups. Warm up properly for the first exercise of each day and lightly after that. A ramp of the empty bar for 10, then about 40%, 60% and 80% of your working weight, for 5, 3 and 2 reps, covers the bench press or squat. Later exercises for the same muscles need one or two lighter sets at most, because you are already warm. The warm-up sets calculator lays out the ramp and the plates for any working weight.

Keeping sessions under control. If your sessions run past 75 minutes, look at the rest between exercises rather than between sets: setting up the next station while you rest, and pairing small exercises for different muscles, such as lateral raises with triceps pushdowns, saves the most time. Shortening the rest on your main lifts is the last thing to cut.

Effort. Take most working sets to within one to three reps of failure, around RPE 7 to 9, and push the last set of small exercises closer. Sets stopped far from failure don’t count for much, and on a six-day plan you can’t afford many of them. If you are new to the scale, the RPE to percentage chart explains it.

Common push pull legs mistakes

Most push pull legs plans that stop working fail for one of a handful of reasons.

Too many exercises per day. It is tempting to add a fourth chest exercise or a second curl. Each one adds sets that are done tired, and on a six-day plan they add up fast. Four or five exercises per session is enough; if you want more for a muscle, add a set to an exercise you already do.

Skipping or shortening leg days. Legs get a third of the sessions, and they are the hardest third. Lifters who quietly drop the Romanian deadlifts and calf raises when a leg day runs long end up with a plan that is really push, pull, and sometimes legs.

Forgetting side and rear delts. Pressing trains the front of the shoulders, and pulling trains the back, but neither does much for the side delts, and the rear delts get far less from rows than people assume. Lateral raises on both push days and face pulls or rear delt flies on both pull days are what give shoulders width.

Too much volume too soon. Moving from a three-day plan to the six-day one doubles your weekly volume overnight. If you make that jump, run the six-day plan at two-thirds of the sets for the first three or four weeks, then add the rest.

Never changing the rep range. Doing every exercise for 3 sets of 10 forever works for a while, then stops. The routine above mixes heavier ranges on the main lifts with higher ranges on the small ones for a reason.

Training through a stall for months. If a lift hasn’t moved in three or four sessions and your recovery is fine, the plan needs a change: a deload, a small drop in volume, or a different variation of the exercise. Grinding the same weight for another month rarely fixes it.

Not tracking. With six sessions a week, memory isn’t a training log. Without the numbers, you can’t tell whether a lift is stalling or whether you are just tired this week.

Is push pull legs right for you?

Push pull legs is a good split, but it isn’t better than the alternatives on its own. Research comparing different ways to organize training points to the total amount of hard work, and how consistently you do it, as what matters most.

A 2016 analysis of ten studies by Brad Schoenfeld and colleagues found that training a muscle twice a week built more muscle than training it once, when the total weekly work was the same. A larger 2019 analysis by the same group, covering 25 studies, found that once total weekly volume was matched, how many days you split it across made no meaningful difference; frequency mainly helps by making it easier to fit more volume in. And a 2024 review of 14 studies with 392 participants found that split routines and full-body routines produced similar gains in strength and muscle.

So the honest answer is that you should pick the split that fits your life:

• Push pull legs suits you if you can train five or six days a week, like focused sessions, and want each muscle trained twice a week.
• Upper/lower suits four days a week: two upper-body and two lower-body sessions train each muscle twice with two fewer days in the gym. The upper lower split guide has a complete four-day routine.
• Full body suits three days a week, or less, and is the simplest way to train every muscle two or three times a week. Many beginners do best here.
• A three-day push pull legs sits between: fine for beginners and busy periods, but each muscle only gets one session a week.

If you’re unsure, try the plan that matches the number of days you can realistically train every week, not the number you would like to. A four-day upper/lower routine you never miss beats a six-day push pull legs routine you skip twice a week.

Running push pull legs in Arclift

Arclift is the app I build, so read this section knowing I have a stake in it. It is also where the routine above stops being a table and becomes something you can follow set by set.

Six templates, built once, free. Save each day as a workout template, Push A through Legs B, with its exercises, sets and rest times. Templates are unlimited on the free plan, every exercise keeps its own rest time and set types, and if you change something during a session you can write it back to the template when you finish. Arclift doesn’t ship a ready-made push pull legs program or import one from a link, so building the six templates is a one-time job of a few minutes each. If you would rather start from a library of ready-made routines, Hevy and JEFIT both have one; the Hevy comparison covers where each app is stronger.

Logging that keeps up with a six-day week. Each set takes a tap or two on Arclift’s own keypad, with last time’s weight and reps beside the field, and the rest timer starts on its own when you finish a set.

The weekly volume check, done for you (Pro). The body map counts the last seven days of sets for every muscle group, so you can see whether this week’s push, pull and leg days added up to the plan in the table above, and it ranks the muscle groups you have been neglecting. The bodybuilding page shows how it fits a split like this one.

Double progression, set for you (Pro). Set each exercise’s rep range, 5 to 8 for the bench press, 12 to 15 for lateral raises, and the progression coach sets the weight and reps for every set of the next session, with a one-line reason. It catches stalls after three sessions and calls a deload. Logging and templates are free, and Pro is optional.

What the research can’t tell you yet

The research on splits and frequency is reassuring, but it leaves real gaps.

Few studies test push pull legs itself. Most trials compare full-body routines with body-part splits or upper/lower splits, not with push pull legs specifically. Its benefits are inferred from what those studies say about frequency and volume, which is reasonable but not the same as a direct test.

Most studies are short. Eight to twelve weeks is typical. Whether a six-day split and a three-day full-body plan really produce the same results over years, as fatigue, motivation and life pile up, is mostly unknown.

Most participants are young men. Women, older lifters and people training around jobs and families are under-represented, and the best split for them may differ.

People respond differently. Every result in these studies is an average. Within the same program, some participants gain a lot and some very little, and nobody can yet predict who will do best on a split and who on full-body training. That is one more reason to run any plan for a couple of months and judge it by your own log rather than by anyone’s promise.

Real weeks aren’t lab weeks. In a study, every session happens on schedule. In real life, the split you can keep through a busy month may matter more than any difference the research could measure, and that depends on you.

So the practical summary: push pull legs is a sound way to organize training, the six-day version gives each muscle two sessions and plenty of volume, and the three-day version is a solid start. Pick the version that fits the days you can really train, log every set, and let the numbers, not the split, tell you what to change.