Full-body, upper and lower, or push-and-pull sessions? How you divide your workouts across the week can influence everything from strength and body composition to recovery. Here’s how to find the right training split for your goals
Words: Lucy Miller | Images: Shutterstock
Creating an effective strength programme isn’t only about choosing the right exercises, weights and number of repetitions for your workouts. How you organise those workouts across the week matters, too.
This is known as your ‘training split’ – essentially, the way you organise your workouts across the week. ‘This determines which muscles or movement patterns you train on each day, how frequently you train them and how much recovery you have between sessions,’ explains Jason Pena, certified personal trainer and head of online personal training at Ultimate Performance.
You might, for example, train your whole body two or three times a week, alternate between upper- and lower-body sessions, or divide your workouts into push, pull and leg days. Some lifters go even further, dedicating individual sessions to specific muscle groups. Whichever route you take, the aim of the game is mostly the same: to challenge your muscles enough to encourage them to adapt, while giving them sufficient time to recover before you train them again
Is there a perfect split? Not quite. ‘The right one depends on how often you can realistically train, your experience, your goals and what else is happening in your life,’ says Jason. Everyone is different, and the best approach ultimately comes down to your goals, experience and, importantly, how many sessions you can fit into your week.
What does a training split look like?
Full-body split
‘As the name suggests, you train most of the major muscle groups during each workout,’ says Jason.
- Best for: Beginners and anyone strength training two or three times a week.
- A typical week might look like:
Monday: Full-body
Wednesday: Full-body
Friday: Full-body
- Why do it: One of the biggest benefits is frequency. Even if you only have two strength-training slots available, you can still work all the major muscle groups twice across the week. Plus, by focusing largely on compound exercises (moves that recruit several muscles at once) you can cover a lot of ground without spending hours in the gym. This makes full-body training a particularly good starting point for beginners, ‘as well as women who also run, do Pilates, attend classes or play a sport, because you can get a lot from relatively few strength sessions’, adds Jason.
Upper/lower split
Ready for a little more volume? An upper/lower split separates your training into, you guessed it, upper- and lower-body workouts.
- Best for: Intermediate lifters and those able to strength train around four times a week.
- A typical week might look like:
Monday: Upper body
Tuesday: Lower body
Thursday: Upper body
Friday: Lower body
- Why do it: Upper-body sessions generally combine pushing and pulling movements, such as chest presses, shoulder presses, rows and pull-downs, with additional arm work such as biceps curls, if required. Lower-body days can incorporate squats, deadlifts, lunges, hip thrusts and other glute and leg exercises. ‘This allows you to perform more work for each muscle group than you might fit into a full-body session, while still training everything regularly,’ says Jason.
Push/pull/legs (PPL)
Spend enough time around the weights area and you’ll eventually hear someone mention ‘PPL’, which is short for push/pull/legs. Rather than dividing the body into upper and lower halves, PPL groups muscles according to the movements they perform. Push day typically trains the chest, shoulders and triceps. Pull day focuses on the back and biceps, while leg day takes care of the quads, hamstrings, glutes and calves.
- Best for: Experienced lifters who train frequently, recover well and who want more training volume for individual muscle groups.
- A typical week might look like:
Monday: Push
Tuesday: Pull
Wednesday: Legs
Thursday: Rest
Friday: Push
Saturday: Pull
Sunday: Legs
- Why do it: ‘You get to dedicate more time and volume to each area, which generally becomes more useful when you can train frequently,’ says Jason. This is because you are concentrating on fewer muscle groups at a time. But the obvious catch is commitment. A traditional PPL routine can mean training six times a week, which won’t suit everyone.
Body-part split
This is a more traditional approach to training splits, where individual sessions focus heavily on one or two body parts.
- Best for: Experienced lifters with specific muscle-building or physique goals.
- A typical week might look like:
Monday: Legs
Tuesday: Back
Wednesday: Chest
Thursday: Shoulders
Friday: Arms
- Why do it: This way of training is purely down to focus. So, instead of squeezing your leg work into a session alongside several other muscle groups, you can dedicate more exercises and sets to it. ‘This can be useful for experienced lifters looking to bring up a particular area or accumulate more targeted training volume,’ says Jason, ‘But again, you need to be realistic about how often you’ll actually make it to the gym. If you miss your Monday workout, for example, you’ll end up waiting an entire week before training your legs again.’
Why does your training split matter?
Strength training is only one half of the equation. Your body also needs an opportunity to recover from it. Training provides the stimulus that encourages your muscles to adapt, while recovery allows them
to do so.
‘Ultimately, a good training split gives your body enough stimulus to improve, time to recover and a structure you can follow,’ says Jason.
Train too little and you may not provide enough stimulus to make the progress you’re looking for. Do too much without sufficient recovery and the quality of your workouts can start to suffer.
Is your training split working?
Your gym performance is one of the simplest places to look. ‘Over time, ask yourself if you are gradually getting stronger or improving your performance,’ says Jason.
Recovery is another key sign. Are you able to complete most of your planned sessions and recover well enough to train with intent? Some muscle soreness is perfectly normal, but persistent fatigue, regularly feeling flat in your sessions, stalled strength or repeatedly missing workouts because your programme demands too much time can all be signs that your training split isn’t working for you. ‘Your training should be adding to your life rather than constantly exhausting you,’ adds Jason
And there’s no need to change your split every few weeks in an attempt to ‘shock’ your muscles, either, he advises. If you are getting stronger, recovering well and still enjoying your training, then your programme is doing its job.
Which training split is right for you?
- Still undecided? Start with the number of days you can realistically commit to strength training.
- Two days a week? Start with full-body training. You’ll be able to work the major muscle groups in both sessions without needing extra days
in the gym.
- Three days a week? Full-body remains a great option, particularly for beginners or anyone fitting resistance training around running, fitness classes or another sport.
- Four days a week? An upper/lower split is worth considering. Alternating between the two allows you to train each area twice across the week, while still leaving room for recovery.
- Five or six days a week? Experienced lifters may want to experiment with push/pull/legs or another higher-frequency split, particularly if building lean muscle is the priority.
- Want to focus on specific muscles? For most people, it makes more sense to continue training the whole body and simply give a little more attention or volume to the area you want to improve. If glute development is a priority, for example, you might include additional glute-focused exercises within your full-body or lower-body sessions. That way, you can work towards a specific physique goal without neglecting everything else.
