The Push Pull Legs Split: A Complete Guide

Quick answer: The push pull legs split divides training into three sessions by movement pattern: push (chest, shoulders, triceps), pull (back, biceps, rear delts), and legs (quads, hamstrings, glutes, calves). Run once through per week it is a 3-day program; run twice it becomes a 6-day program hitting each muscle twice weekly.

Every gym conversation eventually arrives at the same question: what split should I run? Push pull legs has stayed popular for decades mostly because it is hard to get wrong.

It sorts exercises by what your body is actually doing, so nothing gets trained twice by accident.

How does the push pull legs split work?

Three sessions, sorted by movement pattern rather than body part. Muscles that work together in the same movement get trained in the same session, so they recover together too.

• Push day. Anything where you press weight away: bench press, overhead press, incline press, dips, lateral raises, triceps work. Chest, front and side delts, triceps.
• Pull day. Anything where you pull weight toward you: rows, pulldowns, pull-ups, face pulls, curls. Lats, upper back, rear delts, biceps.
• Leg day. Squats, deadlifts, leg press, lunges, hamstring curls, calf raises. Everything below the waist.

The logic is that triceps assist every press and biceps assist every row. Training chest on Monday and triceps on Wednesday means the triceps got hit twice whether you planned it or not. Push pull legs stops that overlap by design.

A useful comparison: this is why the split is easier to recover from than a bro split, where arm days routinely land on top of pressing days.

What does a push pull legs week look like?

The three sessions are fixed; the schedule around them is not. The two common versions serve different lives.

The 6-day version (PPL x2):

The 3-day version: Push, Pull, Legs on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, with the weekend off. Each muscle gets trained once a week.

A middle path some people prefer is running the three sessions on a rolling cycle regardless of weekday: train two days, rest one, repeat. Each muscle then gets hit roughly every 4 to 5 days, landing between the two extremes.

Is push pull legs good for building muscle?

Yes, and the 6-day version has a real advantage over the 3-day one. The reason comes down to frequency.

A systematic review and meta-analysis in Sports Medicine by Schoenfeld, Ogborn and Krieger found that training a muscle group twice a week produced superior hypertrophy to training it once a week. When the researchers equated total weekly volume between conditions, the frequency difference largely disappeared, which points to the practical takeaway: frequency mostly matters because it makes the weekly volume easier to accumulate.

So 3-day PPL works, it is just harder to do enough volume on. Getting a full week of chest volume into a single push session means a long, fatiguing workout where the last few sets are noticeably worse than the first.

If you can only train three days a week, a full body routine usually beats 3-day PPL for exactly this reason: it gets every muscle twice a week inside three sessions. Our guide to how often to train each muscle goes deeper on the frequency question.

How does PPL compare to other splits?

Upper/lower is the closest rival and often the better default. It reaches the same twice-weekly frequency in four sessions instead of six, which survives a missed day far more gracefully. Our push pull legs vs upper lower comparison weighs both properly, and if you cannot choose, the PPL upper/lower hybrid borrows from each.

A sample push pull legs workout

Push day

• Bench press: 4x6-8
• Overhead press: 3x8-10
• Incline dumbbell press: 3x10-12
• Lateral raise: 3x12-15
• Triceps pushdown: 3x10-12

Pull day

• Barbell row: 4x6-8
• Lat pulldown or pull-ups: 3x8-10
• Chest-supported row: 3x10-12
• Face pull: 3x15
• Biceps curl: 3x10-12

Leg day

• Squat: 4x5-8
• Romanian deadlift: 3x8-10
• Leg press: 3x10-12
• Leg curl: 3x12-15
• Calf raise: 4x12-15

Start each session with the heaviest compound while you are fresh. The pattern above puts free-weight barbell work first and isolation last, which is the ordering most programs use for good reason.

If you are unsure whether your weekly set counts land in a sensible range, how many sets per week to build muscle gives the numbers, and you can paste your whole week into the workout plan optimizer to get a free private link to a muscle-by-muscle breakdown of what your plan actually hits.

How do you track progress on a PPL split?

The split multiplies the things you have to remember. Six sessions with five exercises each means thirty weights to recall, and if you run PPL twice a week, "last push day" was five days and two other workouts ago.

This is where most PPL runs quietly fall apart. Not from bad programming, but from repeating the same weight for six weeks because nobody remembers what it was. Progressive overload needs a record, not a memory.

Where you keep that record changes what it gives back:

If you already type your sessions into your phone, paste one into the free notes to workout translator and see the same text come back as structured sets and charts.

A simple starting plan

1. Pick the version that matches your actual week. Six days only works if you will genuinely attend six days. Four days of upper/lower beats four days of a six-day plan.
2. Fix your exercise list for eight weeks. Swapping movements constantly makes progress impossible to read.
3. Log every set with real numbers, in whatever you already use: Bench 80x8,8,6 takes five seconds.
4. Add weight when you hit the top of the rep range on every set, following the rules in when to increase weight lifting.
5. Review after eight weeks. If a lift has not moved, the problem is usually volume, effort, or attendance, and the answers are in why am I not making progress in the gym.

Where does Gym Note Plus fit in?

Logging PPL in your notes app is a reasonable system. Three session templates, copy the last one, overwrite the numbers. It is fast, it is yours, and it beats fighting a gym app's exercise database mid-set.

The friction shows up when you need to look backwards. Finding your last push day means scrolling past a pull day and a leg day, and doing that for every exercise is why people stop bothering.

Gym Note Plus keeps the typing and handles the looking back:

• Type Bench 80 4x8 and it logs four sets of eight at 80kg without a single dropdown.
• Last push day surfaces when you start the next one, so the weight question answers itself.
• Per-exercise charts build themselves from lines you were writing anyway.
• Session templates stay plain text, so your push, pull, and legs layouts carry over untouched.

Push pull legs is not better than other splits. It is easier to keep straight, which is a different advantage and usually a more valuable one.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the push pull legs split?

The push pull legs split organizes training into three workouts by movement pattern. Push covers chest, shoulders and triceps; pull covers back, rear delts and biceps; legs covers quads, hamstrings, glutes and calves. Running the cycle once per week produces a 3-day program, and running it twice produces a 6-day program.

Is push pull legs good for beginners?

Push pull legs works for beginners but is rarely the best first choice. A 3-day full body routine trains each muscle three times a week instead of once, which gives new lifters more practice at each movement. Push pull legs becomes a stronger option once you can commit to five or six sessions a week.

How many days a week should you do push pull legs?

Six days per week is the version most people mean by PPL, hitting each muscle twice weekly. Three days per week is the alternative, but it trains each muscle only once a week, which research suggests is less effective for hypertrophy than twice-weekly training at equal volume. Choose based on the days you will genuinely attend.

Can you do push pull legs 4 or 5 days a week?

Yes. Run the three sessions on a rolling cycle instead of fixed weekdays: push, pull, legs, rest, repeat. Over a 4 or 5 day week each muscle gets trained roughly every fourth or fifth day, landing between the 3-day and 6-day versions. The rolling approach means the split no longer lines up with the calendar.

Should push or legs come first in the week?

It makes little difference to results. Most lifters put push first out of habit. The more useful ordering rule is to place your weakest or highest-priority session on a day when you are freshest and least likely to skip, since attendance affects progress far more than session order does.

How long should a push pull legs workout take?

A push pull legs session typically takes 45 to 75 minutes on the 6-day version, covering five to six exercises. The 3-day version needs longer sessions, often 75 to 90 minutes, because a full week of volume for each muscle group has to fit into a single workout, which is one of that version's main drawbacks.

Final Takeaways

• PPL sorts training by movement pattern, which keeps triceps and biceps from being trained twice by accident.
• The 6-day version is the stronger one. Research supports training each muscle twice a week, and six sessions is how PPL gets there.
• 3-day PPL trains each muscle once weekly. If three days is your limit, full body usually serves you better.
• Upper/lower reaches the same frequency in four days. Pick PPL because you like the structure, not because it is inherently superior.
• The split creates a memory problem. Six sessions of numbers need a record, whether that is paper, a notes app, or Gym Note Plus.