The Push Pull Legs Split: A Complete PPL Guide (With Workouts)
The full push/pull/legs split explained: 3-day and 6-day versions, exact exercises, sets, reps and progression, plus who PPL actually suits and who should skip it.
Push/pull/legs is the most popular training split in the gym, and the one people get wrong most often. The idea is simple: group exercises by the movement pattern they share, so muscles that work together get trained together and rested together.
- Push: chest, shoulders, triceps. Everything where you press weight away from you.
- Pull: back, biceps, rear delts. Everything where you pull weight toward you.
- Legs: quads, hamstrings, glutes, calves.
The elegance is in what it avoids. Your triceps assist every pressing movement, so training chest on Monday and triceps on Tuesday means your triceps never get a real rest day. PPL solves that by putting all the pressing work in one session, then leaving those muscles alone until the rotation comes round again.
Who PPL actually suits
PPL works best if you can train 6 days a week, or if 3 days is your hard ceiling and you accept the trade-off.
It suits you if:
- You can commit to a fixed number of sessions and want the same session structure every time.
- You have been lifting for at least six months and can handle 15–20 sets in a session.
- You enjoy longer sessions with plenty of exercise variety.
Skip it if:
- You can only train 4 or 5 days. PPL doesn’t divide into those numbers cleanly. Read the upper/lower split or the 4-day split instead.
- You’re brand new. Frequency beats volume early on. A 3-day full-body split will build your squat and bench faster.
- Your schedule is unpredictable. The 6-day version punishes missed sessions: skip one and the whole rotation shifts.
The 6-day PPL split
This is PPL as it’s meant to be run. Each muscle group is trained twice a week, which research consistently shows beats once-weekly training for hypertrophy.
| Day | Session |
|---|---|
| Monday | Push A |
| Tuesday | Pull A |
| Wednesday | Legs A |
| Thursday | Push B |
| Friday | Pull B |
| Saturday | Legs B |
| Sunday | Rest |
The A and B sessions aren’t identical. A-days lead with a heavy barbell lift in the 4–6 rep range; B-days lead with a different movement in the 8–12 range. That gives you both strength and hypertrophy stimulus without hammering the same pattern at the same intensity twice a week.
Push A: heavy
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
|---|---|---|---|
| Barbell Bench Press | 4 | 5 | 3 min |
| Overhead Press | 3 | 6–8 | 2–3 min |
| Incline Dumbbell Press | 3 | 8–10 | 2 min |
| Lateral Raise | 3 | 12–15 | 60 s |
| Cable Flye | 3 | 12–15 | 60 s |
| Triceps Pushdown | 3 | 10–12 | 60 s |
Pull A: heavy
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
|---|---|---|---|
| Deadlift | 3 | 5 | 3–4 min |
| Pull Up | 4 | AMRAP | 2–3 min |
| Barbell Row | 3 | 8–10 | 2 min |
| Face Pull | 3 | 15 | 60 s |
| Barbell Curl | 3 | 8–10 | 90 s |
| Hammer Curl | 3 | 12 | 60 s |
Legs A: heavy
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
|---|---|---|---|
| Back Squat | 4 | 5 | 3 min |
| Romanian Deadlift | 3 | 8 | 2–3 min |
| Leg Press | 3 | 10–12 | 2 min |
| Leg Curl | 3 | 12 | 60 s |
| Calf Raise | 4 | 12–15 | 60 s |
Push B: volume
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
|---|---|---|---|
| Incline Barbell Press | 4 | 8–10 | 2–3 min |
| Dumbbell Shoulder Press | 3 | 10–12 | 2 min |
| Chest Dip | 3 | 10–12 | 2 min |
| Lateral Raise | 4 | 15–20 | 45 s |
| Overhead Triceps Extension | 3 | 12 | 60 s |
| Triceps Pushdown | 3 | 15 | 45 s |
Pull B: volume
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lat Pulldown | 4 | 10–12 | 2 min |
| Seated Cable Row | 4 | 10–12 | 2 min |
| Dumbbell Row | 3 | 12 | 90 s |
| Rear Delt Flye | 3 | 15–20 | 45 s |
| Incline Dumbbell Curl | 3 | 12 | 60 s |
| Cable Curl | 3 | 15 | 45 s |
Legs B: volume
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
|---|---|---|---|
| Front Squat | 3 | 8–10 | 2–3 min |
| Bulgarian Split Squat | 3 | 10 each | 2 min |
| Leg Extension | 3 | 15 | 60 s |
| Leg Curl | 4 | 12–15 | 60 s |
| Hip Thrust | 3 | 10–12 | 2 min |
| Calf Raise | 4 | 15–20 | 45 s |
The 3-day PPL split
One rotation a week. Each muscle group gets trained once, which is the honest weakness of this version, but three quality sessions you actually complete beat six you skip.
| Day | Session |
|---|---|
| Monday | Push |
| Wednesday | Pull |
| Friday | Legs |
Run the A-day templates above, but add one to two extra sets per exercise to compensate for the lower frequency. You’re aiming for roughly 12–16 hard sets per muscle group per week, and with only one session to fit them in, each session gets denser.
If you have a fourth day available, don’t force a fourth PPL session: add a full-body day focused on whichever lift you most want to improve.
Progression: the part most people skip
A split is a schedule, not a programme. What actually drives growth is adding stress over time. Use double progression:
- Pick your rep range: say 8–10.
- Start at a weight where 8 reps is hard but clean.
- Each session, try to add reps: 8, 8, 8 → 9, 8, 8 → 9, 9, 8 → and so on.
- When you hit the top of the range on every set (10, 10, 10), add weight (2.5 kg for upper body, 5 kg for lower) and drop back to 8.
- Repeat.
This is deliberately slow. That’s the point. Adding 2.5 kg to your bench every three weeks is 40 kg a year, and almost nobody actually achieves that because they chase weight before they own the reps.
Log the numbers or this doesn’t work. Progressive overload requires knowing exactly what you did last time, not roughly, exactly. If your last bench session lives in your memory rather than a log, you are guessing.
Deloads
Every 6–8 weeks, take a lighter week: same exercises, same sets, roughly 60% of your usual weight. You should leave every set feeling like you could have done five more reps.
Deloads feel like a waste of a week and they are not. Fatigue accumulates faster than you notice, and the week you spend backing off is the week your joints and central nervous system catch up with the work you’ve already done. Most people who “plateau” on PPL are simply too fatigued to express the strength they’ve built.
Common PPL mistakes
Too many exercises. Six exercises is a session. Ten is a hobby. Once you pass about 20 hard sets, the extra work adds fatigue faster than it adds stimulus.
Every set to failure. Training to absolute failure on compound lifts wrecks your recovery for the rest of the week. Leave 1–2 reps in reserve on your main lifts, and save true failure for isolation work where the fatigue cost is low.
Neglecting the pull day. Push day is fun and visible. Pull day builds the back that holds your posture together and stabilises your bench. If you’re skipping sessions, never let it be pull.
No rear delt or upper back work. Pressing volume without pulling volume rotates your shoulders forward over time. Face pulls and rear delt flyes are not optional accessories: they’re insurance.
Running it forever. PPL is a good split, not a permanent one. After 12–16 weeks, change something: the exercises, the rep ranges, or the split itself.
Making PPL work in practice
The split is the easy part. What decides whether you grow is whether you turn up, whether you beat last week’s numbers, and whether you recover enough to keep doing that.
That’s the case for tracking properly. ForgeFit shows you last session’s weight and reps inline on every exercise, so you always know exactly what to beat, and Ember, the AI coach, reads your log and your recovery to tell you whether today is a day to push the heavy single or back off to protect the week.
Frequently asked questions
Is push pull legs better than upper lower?
Neither is better in the abstract: they suit different schedules. Upper/lower fits 4 days a week and gives each muscle roughly 48 hours between sessions. PPL fits 3 or 6 days. If you can only train 4 days, upper/lower is the cleaner fit; forcing PPL into 4 days means your sessions rotate through the week and never land on the same days twice.
How many times a week should I run PPL?
Either 3 days (one rotation, each muscle trained once a week) or 6 days (two rotations, each muscle trained twice a week). Six days is the better hypertrophy stimulus because training a muscle twice weekly beats once, but only if you actually recover. If six sessions leaves you run down, three days of PPL plus real recovery will outperform six days of junk volume.
Can beginners do push pull legs?
Yes, but a full-body or upper/lower split is usually a better start. Beginners progress fastest with high frequency on the main lifts, and 3-day PPL only hits each movement pattern once a week. If you are set on PPL as a beginner, run the 6-day version or add a fourth full-body day.
What order should push pull legs go in?
Push, then pull, then legs is the standard order, and it works because pulling the day after pushing lets your triceps recover while your back does the work. Some lifters prefer legs first when legs are the priority: you train what matters most when you are freshest.
How long should a PPL workout take?
Sixty to ninety minutes including warm-up. If you are consistently going past ninety minutes you have too many exercises, not too much dedication. Cut the accessory work before you cut the compounds.