Push Pull Legs Split Explained

The push/pull training method

Most beginners start out training their whole body in every session. After six to nine months, though, it's usually time to split muscle groups across separate training days. One of the most effective ways to do that is the push/pull method.

As the name suggests, you split your training so that one day covers the muscles worked by pushing movements — chest, shoulders, and triceps — and the next covers the muscles worked by pulling movements — back and biceps — with legs trained on their own separate day. Some people recommend pairing legs with back and biceps instead, but I'm not a big fan of that for two reasons. First, training back and legs in the same session risks overloading your lower back unnecessarily. Second, both back and legs are big enough muscle groups that if you train one of them properly, you won't have much left for the other.

A sample push/pull split:

Day 1 — chest, shoulders, triceps

• Chest
  1. Bench press — 3 sets of 6–10
  2. Incline bench press — 3 sets of 6–10
  3. Incline flyes — 2 sets of 6–10
• Shoulders
  1. Overhead press — 3 sets of 6–8
  2. Machine shoulder press — 3 sets of 6–10
  3. Bent-over lateral raises — 2 sets of 12
• Triceps
  1. Close-grip bench press — 3 sets of 6–10
  2. V-bar pushdowns — 3 sets of 12

Day 2 — back, biceps

• Back
  1. Pull-ups or lat pulldowns — 3 sets of 10
  2. Deadlifts — 3 sets of 6–8
  3. Bent-over barbell rows — 3 sets of 6–10
  4. Seated cable rows — 3 sets of 10–12
• Biceps
  1. EZ-bar curls — 3 sets of 6–10
  2. Preacher curls — 3 sets of 8–12

Day 3 — legs

• Squats — 4 sets of 8–15
• Hack squats — 3 sets of 8–12
• Leg extensions — 3 sets of 15
• Lying leg curls — 3 sets of 6–10
• Standing leg curls — 3 sets of 6–10
• Standing calf raises — 3 sets of 10–15
• Seated calf raises — 3 sets of 10–15

I trained push/pull myself for over two years, right around the "early-intermediate" stage, so I can say from experience that it's a solid way to level up an intermediate lifter's training — though more experienced lifters can benefit from switching to it too. The training itself will differ between these two groups, mainly in sets per muscle group and training days per week. Intermediate lifters do well on three sessions a week; more advanced lifters can push to four or five (three is still perfectly fine if that's what works for you). With an A/B/C split, you might train A on Monday, B on Wednesday, C on Friday. More advanced lifters often prefer a rolling split instead: A Monday, B Tuesday, C Thursday, A again Friday, then B the following Monday, C Tuesday, and so on.