“Push pull legs” routines have been popular for decades now.

In fact, just about every time-proven strength and muscle-building program fits this basic mold, and that’s not likely to change.

I myself have been following variations of “PPL” routines for years now, and here’s where it has gotten me:

My bestselling workout programs for men and women are also, essentially, push pull legs routines with additional “accessory” (isolation) work to help bring up “stubborn” body parts.

The primary reasons push pull legs routines have stood the test of time are they train all major muscle groups, allow plenty of time for recovery, and can be tailored to fit different training goals, schedules, and histories.

They’re easy to understand, too.

At bottom, a push pull legs routine separates your major muscle groups into three different workouts:

  1. Chest, shoulders, and triceps
  2. Back and biceps (with a bit of hamstrings as well if you’re deadlifting)
  3. Legs

And it has you train anywhere from 3 to 6 times per week, depending on how much abuse you’re willing to take, what you’re looking to achieve with your physique, and how much time you can spend in the gym each week.

So, if you’re looking to gain muscle and strength as quickly as possible, and if you’re not afraid of a bit of heavy compound weightlifting, then push pull legs might be your golden ticket.

And by the end of this article, you’re going to know exactly how PPL works, who it is and isn’t best for, and how to create a customized routine that’ll work for you.

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Let’s get to it.

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What Is the Push Pull Legs Routine?

The push pull legs routine, or “PPL split,” is a weightlifting program that has you do three kinds of workouts:

  1. Push workout
  2. Pull workout
  3. Legs workout

Your push workouts focus on the muscles involved in your upper body pushing motions, with the major ones being your pecs, triceps, and shoulders.

Thus, it’s similar to most “chest and triceps” workouts that you find in other bodybuilding splits.

In a well-designed PPL program, your push workouts will generally revolve around barbell and dumbbell bench pressing, overhead (military) pressing, dipping, and doing isolation exercises for your triceps.

Your pull workouts focus on the muscles involved in your upper body pulling motions, with the major ones being your back muscles and biceps.

Thus, it’s really just a “back and biceps” workout.

These workouts generally revolve around deadlifting, barbell and dumbbell rowing, pulldowns, pullups and chinups, and doing isolation exercises for your biceps.
And last, your leg workouts focus on training your quads, hamstrings, glutes, and calves.

These workouts generally revolve around squatting, lunging, and doing various isolation exercises for each major muscle group noted above.

So, when you get down to it, the push pull legs split isn’t all that different from many “body part” routines.

The reason I bring this up is body part splits are generally frowned upon these days, but they can be just as effective as anything else when programmed properly.

One of the reason organizing your training this way is advantageous is muscles generally work in pairs.

For example, when you pull a barbell off the ground, your back muscles and biceps are responsible for generating the force while your chest and triceps are just along for the ride. On the flip side, when you push a heavy barbell off your chest, it’s now your chest and triceps that are the prime movers while your “pull” muscles take the back seat.

That’s why you can blitz your biceps one day and have no issues training your triceps the next.

Likewise, you can pull without issue when your chest, shoulders, or triceps are sore, and you can push or train your legs when your back and biceps are still recovering.

That said, there is a bit of overlap between the muscles involved in each workout, which is why you should always take at least one day off the weights per week.

For example, your lats are involved in bench pressing, and both deadlifting and squatting heavily involve the hamstrings.

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What Are the Benefits of Push Pull Legs?

There are several reasons why PPL routines are a staple among bodybuilders and powerlifters.

First, like most good weightlifting programs, they have you spend the majority of your time doing compound exercises.

Compound exercises are movements that involve multiple large muscle groups and require (and develop) the most whole-body strength.

For example, the squat involves moving the knees, ankles, and hip joint, and requires every muscle in your body to work together, with the quadriceps, hamstrings, and glutes bearing the brunt of the load.

On the other hand, an exercise like the Russian Leg Curl involves moving the knees and focuses on strengthening the hamstrings and glutes, which is why it isn’t considered a compound exercise.

Now, the reason compound exercises are so important is they’re far better than isolation exercises for gaining strength and size.

They’re not only more efficient in terms of muscle groups trained per exercise, but they also allow for heavier loads to be safely lifted, which makes it easier to continue to progressively overload your muscles.

The only major downside to doing a lot of heavy, compound weightlifting is it’s extremely demanding on your body, both in terms of energy required for workouts and post-workout recovery.

That’s why PPL has you split your upper body into two separate workouts and limits the amount of lower body training that you’re doing every week.

This way, your muscles have plenty of time to recover between workouts and your nervous system isn’t being continually pushed to the red line, which allows you to perform better over the long term.

Another major benefit of push pull legs is it can be easily customized to fit your needs and circumstances.

With just three basic workouts to choose from, it’s easy to grasp and think with on the fly and add, subtract, or shift around workouts each week as needed.

For example, the most basic PPL setup looks like this:

Monday

Push

Wednesday

Pull

Friday

Legs

And if you want to train just twice per week, you could do something like this:

Monday

Push & Pull (upper body, basically)

Thursday

Legs

Or, if you want to push yourself to your limits (har har), you could do something like this:

Monday

Push

Tuesday

Pull

Wednesday

Legs

Thursday

Push

Friday

Pull

Saturday

Legs

How to Make Push Pull Legs Work for You

push pull workout for you

So, you’re ready to hit the gym?


Great!

The first thing to decide is how many days per week that you want to train.

If you want to maximize muscle and strength gains and have the time, then I recommend 4 to 6 training days per week.

If, however, you’re short on time or don’t want to train that frequently for some other reason, then don’t despair–you can still do great with 2 to 3 workouts per week.

Once you’ve decided how many days you’re going to train each week, the next step is turning that into an actual specific routine.

There are many ways of programming PPL workouts, but I’m going to keep it simple and give you a few templates to choose from.

Let’s start with the workouts themselves, and then we’ll see how to combine them into routines.

The Push Pull Legs Workouts

You can create an infinite variety of push pull routine workouts, but here are a few of my favorites.

As you’ll see, they involve a lot of heavy, compound weightlifting, supplemented with moderately heavy accessory work.

(If you’re not sure how to do any of these exercises, click on them to be taken to videos that teach proper form.)

Push Day 1

Flat Barbell Bench Press

Warm up and 3 sets of 4 to 6 reps (about 80 to 85% of one-rep max, or 1RM)

Close-Grip Bench Press

2 sets of 4 to 6 reps

Standing Military Press

Warm up and 2 sets of 4 to 6 reps

Dumbbell Lateral Raise

2 sets of 8 to 10 reps (about 70 to 75% of 1RM)

Cable Crunch

3 sets of 8 to 10 reps until you hit 1 rep shy of failure

Push Day 2

Incline Barbell Bench Press

Warm up and 3 sets of 4 to 6 reps

Seated Military Press

Warmup and 2 sets of 4 to 6 reps

Dumbbell Lateral Raise

2 sets of 8 to 10 reps

Dumbbell Rear Lateral Raise

2 sets of 8 to 10 reps

Pull Day 1

Barbell Deadlift

Warm up and 3 sets of 4 to 6 reps

Barbell Row

3 sets of 4 to 6 reps

Wide-Grip Pullup or Chin-Up

3 sets of 4 to 6 reps

One-Arm Dumbbell Row

3 sets of 4 to 6 reps

Pull Day 2

Barbell Row

Warmup and 4 sets of 4 to 6 reps

Chin-Up

3 sets of 4 to 6 reps

One-Arm Dumbbell Row

3 sets of 4 to 6 reps

Barbell Biceps Curl

3 sets of 8 to 10 reps

Legs Day

Barbell Back Squat

Warmup and 3 sets of 4 to 6 reps

Barbell Front Squat

3 sets of 4 to 6 reps

Bulgarian Split Squat

3 sets of 4 to 6 reps

Standing Calf Raise

3 sets of 8 to 10 reps

Alright, that’s it for the workouts.

Let’s now see how to turn them into weekly workout routines.

The 2-Day Push Pull Legs Routine

As I mentioned earlier, you can do well training just twice per week.

More would be better if you’re trying to gain muscle and strength as quickly as possible, but when circumstances won’t allow for more gym time, this is a solid 2-day routine that you can always fall back on to at least maintain what you’ve got.

Here it is:

Monday

Push 1 & Pull 1

Thursday

Legs

The 3-Day Push Pull Legs Routine

This 3-day routine is your basic PPL program, and it’s my personal favorite setup for training 3 days per week.

Again, more training is best for maximizing gains, but this 3-day split is a time-proven program for getting big and strong.

Here’s the routine:

Monday

Push 1

Wednesday

Pull 1

Friday

Legs

The 4-Day Push Pull Legs Routines

The major benefit of adding a fourth day is it allows you to work more on whichever major muscles groups are most lagging in your physique or that you just want to focus most on.

Thus, I’m going to provide two 4-day routines: one for people that want to focus more on their upper bodies, and one for focusing more on the lower body.

Here they are:

Upper Body Focus

Monday

Push 1

Tuesday

Pull 1

Thursday

Legs

Friday

Push 2 or Pull 2

Lower Body Focus

Monday

Push 1

Tuesday

Legs

Thursday

Pull 1

Friday

Legs

The 5-Day Push Pull Legs Routines

5 day push pull routine

This is my preferred PPL split because it allows you to push the limits in terms of volume and intensity while also allowing a couple days for recovery.

Again, I’m going to provide two routines here, one for emphasizing the upper body, and one for the lower body.

Here you go:

Upper Body Focus

Monday

Push 1

Tuesday

Pull 1

Wednesday

Legs

Thursday

Push 2

Friday

Pull 2

Lower Body Focus

Monday

Legs

Tuesday

Push 1

Wednesday

Pull 1

Thursday

Legs

Friday

Push 2

The 6-Day Push Pull Legs Routine

If you’re bulking or just feeling masochistic, then this might be for you.

Seriously though, a 6-day PPL split is about the most a natural weightlifter can get away with until he/she starts to feel the effects of overtraining.

I don’t recommend it if you’re in a caloric deficit or if you don’t generally feel rested and fresh. Instead, it’s best suited to when you’re in a caloric surplus and feeling completely up to the challenge physically.

Here’s the routine:

Monday

Push 1

Tuesday

Pull 1

Wednesday

Legs

Thursday

Push 2

Friday

Pull 2

Saturday

Legs

Another Option: Push Legs Pull

A common variation of push pull legs is push legs pull (PLP).

This setup gives your upper body more time to recover in between workouts but your lower body less time, which means that it’s best suited to people that are more concerned with upper body development than lower body.

Here are several ways to set it up:

The 3 Day Push Legs Pull Routine

This gives your upper body a little more recovery time than the normal 3-day push pull legs routine.

Monday

Push 1

Wednesday

Legs

Friday

Pull 1

The 4 Day Push Legs Pull Routine

Even though push legs pull tends to favor upper body recovery, you can still use a few different variations to change its emphasis.

Here are a couple examples:

Upper Body Focus

Monday

Push 1

Tuesday

Legs

Thursday

Pull 1

Friday

Push 2

Lower Body Focus

Monday

Push 1 (alternate with Push 2 every other week)

Tuesday

Legs

Thursday

Pull 1 (alternate with Pull 2 every other week)

Friday

Legs

The 5 Day Push Legs Pull Routine

If you want to push whole-body volume and intensity a little more than with the 4-day routine, this is for you.

Upper Body Focus

Monday

Push 1

Tuesday

Legs

Wednesday

Pull 1

Thursday

Push 2

Friday

Pull 2

Lower Body Focus

Monday

Push 1

Tuesday

Legs

Wednesday

Pull 1

Thursday

Push 2

Friday

Legs

The 6-Day Push Legs Pull Routine

If you want to work most on upper body development during your next bulk and are willing to put in the work, this is a fantastic routine.

The same rules apply here as earlier: I don’t recommend this if you’re in a caloric deficit or if you don’t generally feel rested and fresh. It’s best for when you’re fully rested, fed, and ready to train.

Here’s the routine:

Monday

Push 1

Tuesday

Legs

Wednesday

Pull 1

Thursday

Push 2

Friday

Legs

Saturday

Pull 2

How to Progress in Your Push Pull Legs Workouts

push pull legs progress

As a natural weightlifter, here’s something you can take to the bank:

If you want to keep getting bigger, you have to keep getting stronger.

This is more important than getting a pump, increasing time under tension, and incorporating special training techniques like rest pause sets, periodization, and the like.

The reason for this is the number-one rule of muscle building is progressive overload, which is the process of gradually increasing the amount of tension on your muscle fibers over time.

You can accomplish this to some degree by continually increasing volume (reps), but ultimately, you also have to add weight to the bar.

That’s why the biggest guys and gals in the gym are generally the strongest.

So, with that in mind, here are several guidelines that will help you get the most out of your push pull legs workouts.

1. Once you hit the top of your rep range for one set, move up in weight.

For instance, if you push out 6 reps on your first set of the military press, you add 5 pounds to each side of the bar for your next set and work with that weight until you can press it for 6 reps, and so forth.

As you become more advanced, you may have to move up in smaller increments. Instead of adding 10 pounds to the bar when you’re ready to move up, for example, you may only add 5. Either way, the point is you’re progressing to heavier and heavier weights over time.

2. Rest 3 minutes in between each 4-to-6-rep set and 2 minutes in between all other sets.

It’s important that you get adequate rest between sets so your muscles can fully recoup their strength, allowing you to give maximum effort in each set.

Research shows that doing this will produce greater increases in muscle size and strength over time.

3. Deload every 4 to 6 weeks.

Every 4 to 6 weeks, reduce the intensity and/or volume of your workouts to so your body can fully recover from all the work you’ve been doing.

If you want to learn more about how to deload properly, check out this article.

4. Train to failure sparingly.

You shouldn’t go to absolute muscular failure in every set that you do.

That is, you shouldn’t push yourself every set to the point where you absolutely can’t do another rep. Instead, you want to end most sets at the point where you’re one or two reps shy of muscle failure.

This is the point where the weight is moving much slower than when you started the set and you’re struggling to complete another rep. In terms of “perceived effort,” I’d say it’s about an 8 or 9 out of 10, with 10 being all-out, do-or-die effort.

Now, when should you go to failure?

Well, I recommend you save it mainly for accessory exercises, like barbell curls, triceps extensions, calf raises, and ab exercises, and generally no more than 2 to 3 sets to failure per workout.

If you want to learn more about training to muscle failure, check out this article.

What About Supplements

I saved this for last because, quite frankly, it’s less important than proper diet and training.

You see, supplements don’t build great physiques–dedication to proper training and nutrition does.

Unfortunately, the workout supplement industry is plagued by pseudoscience, ridiculous hype, misleading advertising and endorsements, products full of junk ingredients, underdosing key ingredients, and many other shenanigans.

Most supplement companies produce cheap, junk products and try to dazzle you with ridiculous marketing claims, high-profile (and very expensive) endorsements, pseudo-scientific babble, fancy-sounding proprietary blends, and flashy packaging.

So, while workout supplements don’t play a vital role in building muscle and losing fat, and many are a complete waste of money…the right ones can help.

The truth of the matter is there are safe, natural substances that have been scientifically proven to deliver benefits such as increased strength, muscle endurance and growth, fat loss, and more.

As a part of my work, it’s been my job to know what these substances are, and find products with them that I can use myself and recommend to others.

Finding high-quality, effective, and fairly priced products has always been a struggle, though.

That’s why I took matters into my own hands and decided to create my own supplements. And not just another line of “me too” supplements–the exact formulations I myself have always wanted and wished others would create.

I won’t go into a whole spiel here though. If you want to learn more about my supplement line, check this out.

For the purpose of this article, let’s just quickly review the supplements that are going to help you get the most out of your PPL (and other) workouts.

Creatine

Creatine is a substance found naturally in the body and in foods like red meat. It’s perhaps the most researched molecule in the world of sport supplements–the subject of hundreds of studies–and the consensus is very clear:

Supplementation with creatine helps…

You may have heard that creatine is bad for your kidneys, but these claims have been categorically and repeatedly disproven. In healthy subjects, creatine has been shown to have no harmful side effects, in both short- or long-term usage. People with kidney disease are not advised to supplement with creatine, however.

If you have healthy kidneys, I highly recommend that you supplement with creatine. It’s safe, cheap, and effective.

In terms of specific products, I use my own, of course, which is called RECHARGE.

creatine supplement

RECHARGE is 100% naturally sweetened and flavored and each serving contains:

  • 5 grams of creatine monohydrate
  • 2100 milligrams of L-carnitine L-tartrate
  • 10.8 milligrams of corosolic acid

This gives you the proven strength, size, and recovery benefits of creatine monohydrate plus the muscle repair and insulin sensitivity benefits of L-carnitine L-tartrate and corosolic acid.

Protein Powder

You don’t need protein supplements to gain muscle, but, considering how much protein you need to eat every day to maximize muscle growth, getting all your protein from whole food can be impractical.

That’s the main reason I created (and use) a whey protein supplement. (There’s also evidence that whey protein is particularly good for your post-workout nutrition.)

whey protein supplement

WHEY+ is 100% naturally sweetened and flavored whey isolate that is made from milk sourced from small dairy farms in Ireland, which are known for their exceptionally high-quality dairy.

I can confidently say that this is the creamiest, tastiest, healthiest all-natural whey protein powder you can find.

Pre-Workout Drink

There’s no question that a pre-workout supplement can get you fired up to get to work in the gym. There are downsides and potential risks, however.

Many pre-workout drinks are stuffed full of ineffective ingredients and/or minuscule dosages of otherwise good ingredients, making them little more than a few cheap stimulants with some “pixie dust” sprinkled in to make for a pretty label and convincing ad copy.

Many others don’t even have stimulants going for them and are just complete duds.

Others still are downright dangerous, like USPLabs’ popular pre-workout “Jack3d,”which contained a powerful (and now banned) stimulant known as DMAA.

Even worse was the popular pre-workout supplement “Craze,” which contained a chemical similar to methamphetamine.

The reality is it’s very hard to find a pre-workout supplement that’s light on stimulants but heavy on natural, safe, performance-enhancing ingredients like beta-alanine, betaine, and citrulline.

And that’s why I made my own pre-workout supplement.

pre workout supplement

It’s called PULSE and it contains 6 of the most effective performance-enhancing ingredients available:

And what you won’t find in PULSE is equally special:

  1. No artificial sweeteners or flavors..
  2. No artificial food dyes.
  3. No unnecessary fillers, carbohydrate powders, or junk ingredients.

The bottom line is if you want to know what a pre-workout is supposed to feel like…if you want to experience the type of energy rush and performance boost that only clinically effective dosages of scientifically validated ingredients can deliver…then you want to try PULSE.

The Bottom Line on the Push Pull Legs Routine

The push pull legs split is one of the simplest and most effective types of weightlifting routines that you can follow.

It trains every major muscle group in your body, it allows you to optimize volume, intensity, frequency, and recovery, and it’s easy to understand and program.

If you’ve never tried it before, you might find that you like it quite a bit more than whole-body or body-part splits.

So, give a routine in this article a go or create your own, and see how your body responds.

I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised!

What’s your take on the push pull legs routine? Have anything else you’d like to share? Let me know in the comments below!

+ Scientific References