Push pull legs (PPL) routine: 3, 5 and 6 days

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PPL groups by movement pattern: one push day (chest, shoulders, triceps), one pull day (back, biceps) and one leg day. The advantage is that muscles already working together in a movement get trained together, so you do not hammer the triceps one day and ask them to work again the next. The engine assigns it on three days once you are intermediate or advanced, and on five days it doubles it to bring push and pull frequency up to twice a week.

Pick your goal and the days you can train. Each routine is generated with periodization, effort control (RIR) and automatic progression.

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Hypertrophy

• Hypertrophy · 2 days
• Hypertrophy · 3 days
• Hypertrophy · 4 days
• Hypertrophy · 5 days
• Hypertrophy · 6 days

Strength

• Strength · 2 days
• Strength · 3 days
• Strength · 4 days
• Strength · 5 days
• Strength · 6 days

Fat loss

• Fat loss · 2 days
• Fat loss · 3 days
• Fat loss · 4 days
• Fat loss · 5 days
• Fat loss · 6 days

Body recomposition

• Body recomposition · 2 days
• Body recomposition · 3 days
• Body recomposition · 4 days
• Body recomposition · 5 days
• Body recomposition · 6 days

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The 3-day push pull legs routine

With three days at intermediate level, the generator assigns one push day (chest, shoulders and triceps), one pull day (back and biceps) and one leg day. Each muscle is trained once a week with more sets per session. This is the week it builds today for hypertrophy:

Day 1 · Push

Day 2 · Pull

Day 3 · Legs

The 5-day push pull legs routine

With five days the engine repeats push and pull: Push A, Pull A, Legs, Push B and Pull B with core. That way the upper body is trained twice a week, which is where the 3-day PPL falls short. Legs are trained once, so if they are your priority, the 4-day upper lower option trains them twice as often.

Day 1 · Push A

Day 2 · Pull A

Day 3 · Legs

Day 4 · Push B

Day 5 · Pull B + Core

3, 5 or 6-day push pull legs: which to choose

Push pull legs for hypertrophy or strength

The split is the same; what changes are the parameters of each set. For hypertrophy the generator works with 6 to 12 reps and 1-3 minutes of rest; for strength, 1 to 5 reps with 3-5 minutes, because loads close to your max need more recovery between sets. That is why a strength push pull legs routine has fewer exercises per session: the time goes into rest.

Push pull legs once or twice a week: what a trial in trained men showed

A three-day push pull legs routine trains each muscle group only once a week; the six-day version, twice. The difference looks like scheduling, but it touches a question that has been measured: whether, with volume equated, it matters to train a muscle once or several times.

Schoenfeld, Ratamess, Peterson, Contreras and Tiryaki-Sonmez published a trial in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research in 2015 with twenty trained young men, matched by baseline strength. One group followed a split routine working two or three groups per session, each once a week; the other a total-body routine three times a week, with one exercise per group.

The more frequent routine produced a significantly greater increase in forearm flexor muscle thickness, and for bench press and squat maximal strength there were no differences. The authors read this as a sign that training each group more often may favour hypertrophy.

Applied to push pull legs: if you can train six days, running the cycle twice a week is the option consistent with this data; if you only have three, a full-body routine gives you more frequency in the same time. The limit, plainly: twenty people, and the difference in thickness showed up in one specific muscle group, not in all of them.

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Push Pull Legs: the most efficient hypertrophy split

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