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Programming
Splits do not build muscle. Volume, frequency and progression build muscle — a split is just a container for arranging them around your week.
Pick the split from the number of days you will genuinely train. Three days: full body. Four days: upper/lower. Five to six days: push/pull/legs. All of them work if they deliver 10–20 sets per muscle per week at a frequency of two or more.
| Days per week | Split | Frequency per muscle |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | Full body | 2× |
| 3 | Full body | 3× |
| 4 | Upper / lower, repeated | 2× |
| 5 | Upper / lower / push / pull / legs | ~2× |
| 6 | Push / pull / legs, repeated | 2× |
| 5–6 | Bro split (one muscle per day) | 1× — not recommended |
Notice that the six-day bro split, the most popular arrangement in commercial gyms, is the only one that gets each muscle just once a week. That is the arrangement the evidence is least kind to.
Best for: 2–3 days a week, beginners, anyone with an unreliable schedule.
Every session hits everything, so missing one costs you a third of the week rather than all of your leg training. The catch is per-session volume: with only 3–4 sets per muscle per session, you need all three sessions to reach a useful weekly total. Sessions also run long if you are not disciplined about exercise count.
Best for: 4 days a week. This is the default recommendation for most people and it is difficult to argue with.
Four sessions, each muscle twice, 6–8 sets per muscle per session, sessions of 60–75 minutes. It maps cleanly onto Monday/Tuesday/Thursday/Friday, survives a missed day, and leaves a genuine two-day gap between loading the same tissue.
Best for: 5–6 days a week, people who enjoy being in the gym.
Run twice through, PPL gives each muscle two sessions with plenty of room for accessory work. Run once through, it is a three-day split hitting each muscle once, which undoes its main advantage. The honest constraint is adherence — six sessions a week is a lot of life to rearrange, and five inconsistent PPL weeks are worse than four consistent upper/lower ones.
Chest Monday, back Tuesday, and so on. It is not useless — it produces growth, and the per-session pump is satisfying — but each muscle gets one session, which the frequency research does not support, and 16–20 sets of chest in one sitting means the last eight are performed tired.
If you love it, the fix is simple: make it a five-day split with an extra upper-body day, so the big groups get hit closer to twice.
Everything else — the order of days, the name of the split, whether arms get their own slot — is preference.
The one that fits the number of days you will actually train while hitting each muscle at least twice a week. Full body for two to three days, upper/lower for four, and push/pull/legs run twice for five to six.
Not inherently. Run six days, PPL and upper/lower both give each muscle two sessions and produce similar results. Upper/lower is usually the better choice at four days a week, and PPL run only once through hits each muscle just once, which is a drawback.
It builds muscle but is generally less effective than splits that train each muscle twice a week, since it concentrates all of a muscle group into one session where the later sets are performed fatigued. Adding an extra upper-body day largely fixes it.
Three to five days is sufficient for almost everyone. What matters more than the number of days is reaching 10 to 20 hard sets per muscle per week and training each muscle at least twice.
A split is a plan; what you actually did is data. NutriMacro totals sets per muscle per week from your logged sessions, which is the only way to find out whether the split on paper is the split you are running.
NutriMacro is a nutrition and training tracker for iPhone and Android. It logs food by barcode, photo or search, counts food in slices and units rather than grams, and keeps strength training, GPS activities, sleep and recovery in the same daily view. It runs in the language of your phone across 108 countries.
General training guidance for healthy adults. If you have an injury, a health condition or are new to lifting, get coaching on technique before chasing load.
Read next: PPL vs upper/lower Sets per muscle per week Training frequency
