Best workout split for 2 to 6 days a week at any level
The best workout split depends on two things: the days you can count on in a bad week and how long you've lifted. A clear pick for 2 to 6 days.
In this article7
The short answer
Two or three days a week: full body. Four: upper/lower. Five or six, once you've lifted steadily for six months: upper/lower plus a full-body day, or push/pull/legs. With equal weekly work the split barely changes results, so pick the one you'll keep.
Count the days you can train in a bad week, not a good one. That number, plus how long you've been lifting, decides almost everything, and the grid below turns the two into one pick. It works whether you've never touched a weight or you've lifted for years and wonder if it's time to move on from full body.
The names don't explain themselves, so here they are in plain words:
- Full body: every session works your legs, hips, chest, shoulders and back.
- Upper/lower: you alternate an upper-body day and a lower-body day.
- Push/pull/legs: a day of pressing (chest, shoulders, the backs of your arms), a day of pulling (back, the fronts of your arms) and a legs day.
- Body-part split (often called a bro split): one or two muscle groups a day, usually over five days.
Two questions pick your split
1. How many days can you count on in a bad week? Not the week you plan on Sunday night. The one with the work trip, the sick kid and the meeting that ran late. A plan built for your best week breaks on your normal one, and a plan that keeps breaking is how a lot of people drift off by month two.
2. How long have you been lifting steadily? "New" here means less than about six months of regular lifting. That includes anyone coming back after years away.
| Days you can count on | New, or coming back | Lifting steadily 6+ months |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | Full body, both days | Full body, both days |
| 3 | Full body, all three | Full body, or a rotation of upper, lower, full body |
| 4 | Upper/lower, or three full-body days and an easy fourth | Upper/lower |
| 5 | Three full-body days or a four-day upper/lower, the rest walking or a sport you like | Upper/lower plus a full-body day, or upper, lower, push, pull, legs |
| 6 | Three full-body days, plus three easier active days | Push/pull/legs, twice through |
Full body fills most of the new-lifter column for practical reasons: you practice each movement two or three times a week, there are only four or five moves to learn, and a missed day costs the least.
Push/pull/legs on three days is missing on purpose. It trains each muscle once a week, and one missed day leaves a whole group untrained, as the table further down shows.
Your goal barely changes the pick. You'll read that upper/lower is for strength and body-part splits are for size, but with the same weekly sets, split and full-body routines build similar strength and similar muscle.1 That review didn't test fat loss, so be wary of a split sold for it.
Your age doesn't push you toward more days either. In the research, training more often added strength mainly because the extra days added extra work, and the benefit didn't show up clearly past young adulthood.2 Two or three good days is a real plan at any age, and it meets the US guideline of muscle-strengthening work on at least 2 days a week.3
Four things can move you one box along:
- Your time slot. Full-body sessions grow as you add sets. When yours outgrow your slot, upper/lower turns one long session into two shorter ones. Whether 45 minutes is enough works out the minutes.
- How you recover. If you're sore for days or a knee keeps grumbling, stay with fewer full-body days and a rest day between each. Don't blame your birthday too quickly, though: healthy older lifters usually recover about as fast as younger ones from a session they're used to.
- What you dread. You'll skip the day you hate. If that's leg day, full body tucks legs into every session where they're harder to skip.
- Your other activity. A Saturday match, a long bike ride or a run club counts as a day in your week, so fewer lifting days may fit.
If you have a heart or blood pressure condition, are pregnant, have had recent surgery or a joint replacement, or have pain that doesn't settle, check with your doctor or physical therapist about how many days and how hard before you start.
What each week looks like
Full body means fewer, longer sessions. Upper/lower means shorter sessions, with each half of you trained twice. Push/pull/legs has the shortest sessions and the most days. The weekdays are only an example. The one rule: a day off lifting after each full-body session (a walk is fine). Split days can run back to back because they work different muscles.
The split that survives a bad week
Sample weeks assume you make every session. Here's what's left of each split when one falls out, by our own counting.
| Split | Each muscle, normal week | Miss one session |
|---|---|---|
| Full body, 3 days | 3 times | Still twice. Nothing goes untrained |
| Full body, 2 days | Twice | Once. Still a training week |
| Upper/lower, 4 days | Twice | One half of you drops to once |
| Push/pull/legs, 6 days | Twice | One group drops to once |
| Push/pull/legs, 3 days | Once | One group gets nothing that week |
| Body-part split, 5 days | Once | Skip it and that muscle goes two weeks between sessions |
The more often each muscle comes up in your week, the less a missed day costs, which is why full body and upper/lower fill most of the grid.
When you do miss one, run your split as a list, not a calendar. Missed Tuesday's lower day? Do it on Wednesday and slide the rest along a day, so that week of training takes eight days. Don't skip ahead to Wednesday's session and leave legs for next week, and don't cram two sessions into one day to catch up.
A word for the body-part split, because plenty of people love it: with the same weekly sets, it builds about as much as the others.4 Its costs are practical: it needs five steady days, it's the least forgiving of a missed one, and ten hard sets for one muscle in one session is long, with the last few done tired. Two sessions of five each are easier, which is why the grid leans toward training each muscle twice a week.
What goes in each session
A split is only a way of sharing the same movements across your week. Every week should cover a squat, a hinge (bending at the hips, like lifting a box off the floor), a push and a pull. They cover the upper and lower, push and pull regions that the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) suggests training.5
| Day | At home, with dumbbells and a band | In a gym |
|---|---|---|
| Full body: a squat, a hinge, a push, a pull, your trunk | Goblet squat, Romanian deadlift, floor press, one-arm row, plank | Leg press, Romanian deadlift, bench press, cable row, plank |
| Upper: two pushes, two pulls | Floor press, overhead press, one-arm row, band pull-down | Bench press, overhead press, cable row, lat pulldown |
| Lower or legs: a squat, a hinge, a one-leg move, calves | Goblet squat, Romanian deadlift, split squat, calf raise | Leg press, Romanian deadlift, split squat, calf raise |
| Push: two presses, the backs of your arms | Floor press, overhead press, triceps extension | Bench press, overhead press, triceps pushdown |
| Pull: a row, a pull-down, the fronts of your arms | One-arm row, band pull-down, curl | Cable row, lat pulldown, curl |
New to the names? A goblet squat is a squat holding one dumbbell at your chest. A Romanian deadlift is the hinge: knees soft, you push your hips back and slide the weights down your thighs, then stand tall. A floor press is a bench press lying on the floor. A split squat is a lunge where your feet stay put. A band pull-down pulls a band anchored above a door down to your chest, the home version of the lat pulldown.
The dose. End every set with two or three reps left in the tank.5 That's a hard set without grinding to failure. A simple place to start: 3 sets of each exercise (2 in your first few weeks), with a weight you can lift 8 to 12 times. Rest one to three minutes, the longer rests on the heaviest lift. When you can do 12 on every set with reps to spare, add a little weight next time and start back near 8. An upper or lower day comes to about 12 working sets and takes 40 to 50 minutes with a warm-up.
Over a four-day upper/lower, that adds up to 12 hard sets a week for your back (row and pull-down, twice) and about the same for your thighs. That clears the roughly 10 sets per muscle a week that the 2026 ACSM review linked with better growth.5 Fewer still works, and how many sets per week your muscles need shows how to count your own.
For a complete program with sets, reps and how to add weight, the three-hours-a-week plan is a full three-day full-body week for home or gym.
When to change your split
Good reasons to switch
- Your sessions keep running past the time you have
- Your number of days changed, up or down
- You keep missing the same day of the week. That's the split's fault, not yours: move the day, or fold its work into the others
- You've lifted steadily for six months, full-body days are getting long, and you have four days
Weak reasons to switch
- You're stuck on the same weights. That usually calls for better sleep, harder sets or a lighter week, not a new split
- You're bored. Swap two exercises and keep the split
- Someone at the gym said yours is wrong
Whatever you switch to, give it a couple of months before you judge it.
When a coach writes the split
Everything above works on your own, and it's free. Its weak spot is the one the missed-session table shows: when the week falls apart, you're the only one holding the plan together.
At Bespoke Fit every session is a live 1‑on‑1 video call with your own coach, in our app on iPhone, Android or a browser. Four things change about the split:
- Your coach writes it. Each workout goes on your training calendar. You open today's session and log it set by set.
- Your coach calls the weight. "Two or three reps left in the tank" is the hardest instruction on this page to follow alone. Your coach watches each set, judges how many you really had left, and fixes the hinge or the squat while you're doing it. Every coach works through a 90-day onboarding with our founder, Carl, before taking a member.
- The price doesn't pick your days. One flat price covers unlimited sessions, so three a week and five a week cost the same. Pay by the session and the budget quietly sets your days, and with them your split. Here your coach picks the split you need.
- Session length fits the split. Sessions run 45 to 90 minutes at the same price, and most people settle at around an hour. A four-day upper/lower of 45-minute sessions and a three-day full body of 75 minutes both fit.
A bad week, with a coach
Say you're on the four-day upper/lower from the figure: upper Monday and Thursday, lower Tuesday and Friday. Then a work trip lands on Tuesday and Wednesday. You mark the dates as away in the app, and your coach rebuilds the week with you: Thursday becomes a full-body day, Friday rests, and the second lower session moves to Saturday. Every muscle still gets its two sessions, and you didn't have to work any of it out.
Thursday you're straight off the flight. Your coach sees your heart rate climb faster than usual in the warm-up (live, from an Apple Watch or a Bluetooth heart rate strap if you wear one), keeps the full-body day, and takes a set off the squats because Saturday's lower day is still to come. You finish tired but not flattened. Saturday is already booked, with a person waiting on the call, and that's what gets it done on the morning you'd rather skip it (the appointment effect).
That only works because your coach knows you. Each coach has 12 members at most, and we hold to it when we assign coaches. A coach who is live on every session can't hold hundreds: twelve people training three times a week is already about 36 hours of calls. With 12, your coach remembers what you lifted last week.
You start with a 30-minute call with a head coach, who matches you to your coach. It's 14 days free, then $299/mo. At three sessions a week that's about $23 a session; at four, about $17. Two weeks usually brings at least one messy week, so treat them as a test: did your split survive it without you holding it together?
It isn't for everyone. If you already train steadily and enjoy writing your own plan, the grid above is all you need. If $299 a month would strain your budget, start with three full-body days and the three-hours plan linked above. And if you want someone in the room to spot a heavy barbell, or meal plans, look elsewhere: we train you on video, and we don't coach nutrition.
Other split questions
What's the best 5-day workout split? After six months or more of steady lifting, choose between two. Upper/lower plus a full-body day is the more forgiving: miss one session and every muscle still gets two that week. Upper, lower, push, pull, legs keeps sessions shorter, but a missed day drops one muscle group to once. If you're newer, three good lifting days and two days of walking beat five patchy ones.
Is a 3 or 4-day workout split better? Neither builds more on its own when the weekly sets match. Three days suits full body and leaves more rest days between sessions. Four suits upper/lower and keeps each session shorter. Pick the number you'll actually keep.
What is the Arnold split? Three sessions run twice a week: chest and back, then shoulders and arms, then legs. Each muscle gets two sessions over six days. It's a plan for experienced lifters with six free days, and it behaves like push/pull/legs, including what happens when you miss a day.
Do women need a different workout split? No. Women were included in the research behind this page, and none of the reviews cited here recommends a split just for women. One found women gained more strength with more sessions a week, but it also found the gain from extra days came mainly from the extra work they added. Use the same grid.
Does cardio count as a training day? Not as a lifting day. Easy walking fits anywhere, lifting days included. The thing to plan around is hard cardio: keep a hard run, a long ride or a match off the day before your heaviest leg work, or you'll probably feel it in both.
Sources
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Ramos-Campo, D.J., Benito-Peinado, P.J., Andreu-Caravaca, L., Rojo-Tirado, M.A. & Rubio-Arias, J.Á., 2024. Efficacy of split versus full-body resistance training on strength and muscle growth: a systematic review with meta-analysis. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 14 studies, 392 healthy adults; similar strength and muscle growth when volume was equal, so people can choose by preference. ↩
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Grgic, J., Schoenfeld, B.J., Davies, T.B., Lazinica, B., Krieger, J.W. & Pedisic, Z., 2018. Effect of resistance training frequency on gains in muscular strength: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Sports Medicine. 22 studies, most in people new to lifting. Frequency improved strength in young adults (p = 0.024) but not significantly in middle-aged and older adults (p = 0.093). Overall, the frequency effect was mainly driven by weekly volume; with volume matched, frequency made no significant difference. ↩
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U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. Top 10 things to know about the second edition of the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans. Adults need muscle-strengthening activity at least 2 days each week. ↩
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Schoenfeld, B.J., Grgic, J. & Krieger, J., 2019. How many times per week should a muscle be trained to maximize muscle hypertrophy? A systematic review and meta-analysis of studies examining the effects of resistance training frequency. Journal of Sports Sciences. 25 studies; no meaningful difference when weekly volume was equal. ↩
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Currier, B.S., D'Souza, A.C., Singh, M.A.F., and colleagues, 2026 (Phillips, S.M., senior author). American College of Sports Medicine position stand. Resistance training prescription for muscle function, hypertrophy, and physical performance in healthy adults: an overview of reviews. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. Covers 137 systematic reviews; recommends training the upper and lower, push and pull regions, sets taken to 2 or 3 reps in reserve, and found growth was better with 10 or more sets per muscle a week. ↩ ↩2 ↩3
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