My 2 Favorite Training Splits and Which one YOU should Do

 People go round and round about training splits all the time. Everyone has an opinion. The bottom line, though, is you should do the split that fits your schedule, motivates you, and that you enjoy. And for heavens' sake – you're not marrying any training split, so if you want to change up your training split every several months, go for it!

With that in mind, today I'll share my general feelings on my 2 favorite splits for myself and my clients, along with when I would use one over the other.

Let's dive right in, because nobody's got time to waste.

My 2 personal favorite splits are:

PPL (Push, Pull, Legs...or as I usually schedule it: Pull, Push, Legs)

Full Body

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PPL 

Personally, I spend most of my time (not all) using some form of PPL split. I enjoy the time efficiency, the exercise selection, the ability to do more volume for a given area of the body each session (and the pump that comes along with focusing on just 2-3 synergistic muscle groups in a session), the fatigue management, the simplicity and variety options I can play with during the sessions, and the frequency. I'll touch on the frequency factor a little later. But, in general, I just enjoy focusing on either pulling muscles, pushing muscles, or leg muscles in a given session. It's easy to get motivated and, since I'm only training one general area of the body, I'm able to go from one exercise to the next without needing additional intra-session warm ups – which saves time – and I also find that my body doesn't get as worn down during these sessions as it does when I'm doing full body or even upper/lower splits. The main reason for this latter result is that when using PPL, I'm not doing as many big, systematically fatiguing, compound exercises per session.

I like to train fairly frequently. For me, that means I'm always lifting weights/resistance training at least 3 days per week. PPL works well for anyone looking to train anywhere from 3-6 days per week. 

If you do just 3 sessions per week, you're still hitting each muscle group with sufficient volume and frequency each week. No matter what anyone tells you – hitting a muscle group (or each muscle group) one day per week is enough, and totally effective for building muscle and strength. With a split like PPL, we're doing more volume per session rather than spreading that volume throughout the week via multiple sessions. Both ways work totally fine.

Side bar: Let's be honest, sufficient volume and optimal volume are often confused as the same thing, but sufficient volume per muscle group is generally 2 working sets per week. That's right. You can make progress with 2 working sets per muscle per week if you're training fairly close to failure and if you're progressively overloading over time. Optimal volume will vary from one person to the next, but for most of us "optimal" volume probably falls somewhere in the 6-16 sets per week range. I'm aware the evidence based crew likes to throw around 10-20 sets, or even get more ridiculously specific and say 12 sets per week (this makes no sense from the simple fact that we are not all clones of each other, so why would we somehow all respond the same to some specific number of sets – not to mention the outside differences between work, life schedules and stress, differences in intensity and skill, etc). But in my experience, most normal folks respond optimally – and can manage – 6-16 sets per week for optimal (aka, fastest) gains. But, we all can make good gains – even if it may be slightly slower progress – from 2-4 weekly sets. Most of my clients get somewhere around 4-8 direct sets (there's always indirect stimulus from other exercises, for example, the shoulders get worked during most back exercises, too) per muscle group per week. We focus on gaining strength on those sets and – voilá – they get more jacked. So, don't get bogged down too much with volume. Odds are, whether hitting a muscle once per week, twice per week, or anywhere in between, you're doing enough to trigger growth. (Side bar over).

The beauty of PPL – that people seem to fail to recognize – is the schedule's flexibility. 

The only rule of PPL is that you hit each session at least once per week. Otherwise, it wouldn't be a PPL Split. "Split" insinuates a weekly schedule.

Some people think PPL requires 6 days per week. False. It requires 3 days per week....or more (if desired).

With that said, 6 days per week is totally a viable option with PPL. But so is 4 days per week, 5 days per week, or some rotating weekly frequency, like you'd notice from one of the following examples:

Every other day

2 days on, 1 day off

3 days on, 1 day off

5 days on, 2 days off

3 days on, 2 days off

Etc.

The key isn't a specific number of training sessions. The key is hitting at least 3 sessions per week (1 for pull, 1 for push, 1 for legs) and maintaining that cyclical order of the schedule no matter how many days per week you train.

Like I said earlier, I generally like the order of pull, push, legs. So, no matter how frequently I train per week, my push session always comes after pull session, my leg session always comes after my push session, and my pull session always comes after my leg session. The days off between – or lack of days off – isn't all that important.

Generally speaking, if you're training more frequently, you can spread out the volume so you do less work per session. So if we we're doing 6 days per week – hitting each muscle group/session twice per week – we could do 2-3 sets per exercise. While if we trained PPL just 3 days per week – hitting each muscle group/session once per week – we may want to do 4-5 sets per exercise to match the total weekly volume from the higher frequency option. Again, whether you do 2-5 sets per exercise or 1-2 days per week per session isn't all that important as long as you're doing each muscle group each week. But, for comparison's sake, this is how you might train less or more frequently while achieving the same weekly volume, regardless.

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Who's PPL Ideal For?

In my opinion, PPL is an ideal split for dedicated gym rats who know that they'll always be lifting at least 3 days per week. This demographic likes exercise, they're highly motivated to resistance train, they'll enjoy the greater flexibility for exercise variation, and they're committed to a training schedule that falls anywhere from 3-6 days per week. These people would do very well with PPL.

I'd also add that people who need training to be quick and time efficient (like 15-30 minutes) – and who are also committed and consistent in the gym 3 or more days per week would greatly benefit from a PPL split.

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Sample PPL Templates 

Here's 2 easy PPL templates I like. They're sensible, flexible, and enjoyable. One of the things I – personally – enjoy about the PPL split is it allows me to do fewer exercises per session. I'm not sure why, but I love being able to head into a lifting session knowing I've only got 3 or 4 exercises. I'm able to mentally focus on each exercise better when I have fewer exercises to focus on. You may do more exercises with PPL, but I think a major perk of using a PPL split is I can have more focus on each muscle group while also doing fewer (even half as many) exercises per session.

The templates below are general templates – not programs – so I'm just going to share the exercise movement patterns without suggesting specific exercise examples. I've got plenty of articles and programs for free – not to mention workout of the day training logs – around here if you want to see specific exercises that I like to use. I'm also not going to include specific rep ranges, because that will depend on the specific exercise selections you choose, as well as personal preference. Again, you can see my general recommendations elsewhere. 

Lastly, I also sell online programs with an app and workout tracker, which I'll share at the end of the article, if you're interested in something like that.

I always recommend a quick warm up of 1-2 sets doing some ab exercise, hip/glute warm up exercise, and often a shoulder/rotator cuff warm up exercise before each session.

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PPL 4X

This template uses 4 exercises per session. 

Pull

Ex 1: vertical pull x 2-5 sets 

Ex 2: horizontal pull x 2-5 sets

Ex 3: bicep curl variation x 2-5 sets

Ex 4: forearms, traps, or rear delt exercise x 2-5 sets

Push

Ex 1: vertical push x 2-5 sets

Ex 2: horizontal push x 2-5 sets

Ex 3: tricep isolation variation x 2-5 sets

Ex 4: shoulder isolation variation x 2-5 sets

Legs

Ex 1: squat variation x 2-5 sets

Ex 2: hinge variation x 2-5 sets

Ex 3: secondary squat, hinge, or isolation variation x 2-5 sets

Ex 4: calf isolation x 2-5 sets

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PPL 3X

This template uses 3 exercises per session.

Pull

Ex 1: vertical pull x 2-5 sets 

Ex 2: horizontal pull x 2-5 sets

Ex 3: bicep curl variation x 2-5 sets

Push

Ex 1: horizontal push x 2-5 sets

Ex 2: vertical push or shoulder isolation x 2-5 sets

Ex 3: tricep isolation variation x 2-5 sets

Legs

Ex 1: squat variation x 2-5 sets

Ex 2: hinge variation x 2-5 sets

Ex 3: calf isolation x 2-5 sets

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Full Body 

Okay, moving on to my other favorite split: the Full Body split.

On paper, it is very difficult to argue against using a Full Body split. It's so sensible. Hit a little bit of everything each session and move on with life.

In practice, especially for more advanced lifters, it can be a little challenging.

Here's what I love about full body:

It's efficient, although not necessarily time efficient. But you can hit everything in just 1 session per week.

It thrives off frequency, not volume. Trainees get to hit each muscle group frequently, which improves the skill of doing those movement patterns along with improving the skill of contracting the muscles.

You don't need to go to the gym as often.

You don't get very sore in any one area because each session the volume gets spread throughout all the muscle groups.

You burn a lot of calories during the sessions and trigger a big anabolic stimulus thanks to the sessions being made up of mostly big, heavy, productive compound exercises.

Another cool perk of full body routines is that you get a lot of practice with specific exercises and movement patterns, so you can gain strength pretty quickly (strength is a skill, after all) and with strength gains, often comes muscle gains (sooner or later). This can be very motivating – seeing your performance improve bit by bit but regularly.

Some of the complaints about full body are:

 It's fatiguing because you're often hitting multiple big compound exercises back to back.

It's hard to do a lot of volume per muscle group, but you do get to spread that volume across the week if you do 2 or 3 weekly sessions.

Because you're doing work for each area of the body, you're limited with how much exercise variety and selection you can do compared to a split.

Again, if you're a more advanced lifter, these issues will impact you more than if you're a beginner or intermediate lifter because you're stronger and able to produce more fatigue from doing less work as you become advanced, thanks to improved skill of contracting the muscles and an improved mind muscle connection.

With that said, almost all of my in person (and many of my online) personal training clients use a Full Body split.

Why?

Well, not to beat a dead horse, but it's logical and convenient for most people.

Most people aren't gym rats. They don't love lifting weights. Therefore, they don't care about having the option to play around with more exercise variety, they don't care to isolate the side delt or the calves, they just want the biggest return on their time investment 1-3 days per week.

For most people, that biggest return on their time investment is 2-3 sessions per week focused on squat variations, hinge variations, vertical and horizontal push variations, and vertical and horizontal pull variations.

Most people also are not as dedicated and consistent in the gym as those of us who are gym rats. Even if they'd like to get 3 lifts per week, most people will have many weeks where they settle for 2 or even 1 lifting session per week. This is okay – 1-2 sessions per week are still enough to make progress, so long as you're hitting each muscle and/or the general main movement patterns (push, pull, squat/lunge, and hinge) once per week.

Most of my clients, over the past 10+ years, train 2-3 days per week. Some weeks, they only get 1 session. Again, there's nothing wrong with this. But, it does highlight the superiority of Full Body training for most people.

And even for me – a full fledged rat of the gym – full body training is very appealing. I usually don't stick with full body splits for long, though, because I like the ability to train 3 or more days per week while hitting those smaller, less important (for general health and fitness purposes) exercises. Usually I'm pretty smoked from just 2 full body sessions per week, which proves it's efficiency, but I simply prefer training more frequently than 2 days per week. And I also like brief training sessions for myself. I've said this before but it works best for my mind and my body to train a little more frequently (3-5 days per week) but with quicker, shorter sessions (around 30 minutes, but with sets taken close to failure).

Creating full body routines is really simple.

I recommend warming up before each session the same way as I recommended for PPL sessions (this warm up should only take about 5 minutes and it covers down on the abs, hips, and rotator cuff). But with full body routines, I like to add in a set or 2 of some calf raise variation, just because we're not going to train it directly in our sessions usually (though, you could add it to the end of each or some sessions as a 7th exercise).

I like using 2 full body routines and rotating through those sessions for 2-3 total sessions per week.

I label the sessions as "Session A" and "Session B." 

So a 2 day per week schedule may be "Session A" on Monday and "Session B" on Thursday.

A 3 day per week schedule may look like "Session A" on Monday, "Session B" on Wednesday, "Session A" on Friday, "Session B" the following Monday, "Session A" the following Wednesday, and "Session B" the following Friday.

It's so clean and simple. And again, you get to hit each muscle 2-3 times per week, spreading the volume out across the week while limiting becoming too terribly sore in any one place. Even if you train just once per week, you're still hitting everything once per week and triggering a positive (albeit, slower than ideal) strength and hypertrophy response.

Boring? Sure. But boring can be effective and for the average person, this boring approach to training keeps them consistent and gaining (how's that for poetry?).

Sample Full Body Template 

Session A

Ex 1: vertical pull x 2-3 sets

Ex 2: squat pattern x 2-3 sets

Ex 3: vertical push x 2-3 sets

Ex 4: unilateral hinge x 2-3 sets

Ex 5: bicep isolation x 2-3 sets

Ex 6: tricep isolation x 2-3 sets

Session B

Ex 1: horizontal pull x 2-3 sets

Ex 2: unilateral squat/lunge pattern x 2-3 sets

Ex 3: horizontal push x 2-3 sets

Ex 4: hinge x 2-3 sets

Ex 5: bicep isolation x 2-3 sets

Ex 6: tricep isolation x 2-3 sets

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Another cool thing about full body, is you can superset – or alternate between 2 exercises – of antagonist exercises. So push can be supersetted with pulls, squats can be supersetted with hinges, biceps can be supersetted with triceps, pulls can be supersetted with squats, and pushes can be supersetted with hinges.

While there are more exercises per session in my full body routines compared to PPL routines, you should only do 2-3 sets per exercise during Full Body workouts while in PPL workouts you can do more sets (up to 5 in my opinion) per exercise, if you wish. But you also get more sets per muscle group in PPL because you're often hitting more exercises per muscle per session/week compared to full body (not always the case, but it can be the case depending how you prefer to set up your program). 

For what it's worth, I generally like doing 2 sets per exercise during Full Body sessions and doing 3-4 sets per exercise during PPL sessions.

Why No Upper/Lower?

Honestly, I just don't enjoy upper lower splits that much. The lower body sessions are the same as they would be in PPL, but the upper body sessions are either limited or just become too long trying to squeeze so many exercises into each upper body session. If you can make it work – great. 

Admittedly, I've spent lots of time training upper/lower in the past. But, I felt like it was always mentally and physically draining trying to make the upper body sessions work. 

The best solution I found was to do 5 exercises on upper body sessions. One for the chest, back, shoulders, biceps, and triceps. But even with twice a week frequency that's less volume then I'd get from just once per week frequency doing PPL, with way more systematic fatigue. I'd rather do full body training if I'm going to get the same fatigue and nearly the same time spent in the gym anyway, and do 3 full body sessions and accumulate more monthly volume with fewer sessions than the more fatiguing 4 day upper/lower split, or the lower volumes from just 2-3 weekly upper/lower sessions. 

It can be a great split. But, it's not as simple and flexible as Full Body training – making it less ideal for the general population (who's training just 1-3 days per week and are less consistent), and it's not as much fun nor as much upper body volume as PPL and it comes with longer sessions and more systematic fatigue then PPL sessions – making it less ideal for the always consistent, dedicated to 3-6 days per week in the gym, gym rats.

Therefore, I think people should either look at a 3 day split (of which, I find PPL the best, most sensible, and the most flexible as far as scheduling goes anywhere from 3-6 days per week, hitting each muscle 1-2 times per week with minimal crossover interference from session to session) or a 2 day Full Body split (which can be done 1-3 days per week).

Upper/Lower splits represent kinda an awkward middle man – or even purgatory, if you will – and I think, even after years of trying to make it work, you're best bet is to go to something like PPL (if you're consistent and committed to 3 or more days per week) or stick with Full Body (if consistency is lacking but you can get motivated to train regularly 1-2 days per week).

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That was a doozy. It went on a little longer than I expected. I try to keep these articles brief and easy to consume for you (similar to how I like my training sessions). But, sometimes I get unpacking ideas and find there's more detail to extract. Oh well. 

If you want specific programs, or want to train personally with me online, here are some options:

12 week 30 Minute PPL (4X) Program ($49): https://www.trainerize.me/profile/benen/?planGUID=3858ac98c9544034aed3c08f9757eab6

1-on-1 Online Personal Training ($119 per month):

https://www.trainerize.me/profile/benen/?planGUID=ea67cfc5edf8420593bdad8e3e041c4a

Lightning WOD Squad ($15 per month):

https://www.trainerize.me/profile/benen/?planGUID=12cc75b2d31542d7b3cc372b91bd7763

Simple Transformation Protocol ($79 one time payment for 3 month long program):

https://www.trainerize.me/profile/benen/?planGUID=10c2b02170d240b59ac8ab57cd7a1065

8 Week PPL 3X Program (~30 minutes per session. $35): https://www.trainerize.me/profile/benen/?planGUID=7f23151503084caf962f42408d915654

8 Week Full Body Program ($39): https://www.trainerize.me/profile/benen/?planGUID=4a98b045e1884e3db343d268e931d583

I recently moved back to the Huntsville, Alabama area, so if you're close by and are interested in training with me in-person (be it in a gym, my garage, or your own home gym) feel free to drop me a comment or direct message.

As always, thanks for reading and supporting.