3 day workout split: the best 3 day workout plans

What is a 3 day workout split?

A workout split is how you divide your muscles across the training week. A 3 day split does it over three sessions with four rest days, almost always one day on and one day off: Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Every muscle gets at least 48 hours to recover, and the weekend stays free.

Three days leaves less room than four or five, so the way you fill them matters more. The real question is how often each muscle gets trained: three short visits, two medium ones, or one long one.

The best 3 day workout split: full body

Each day trains the whole body but leads with a different main lift. Day A opens with the squat and bench press, Day B with the Romanian deadlift and overhead press, and Day C with the leg press and incline press, so no lift is done heavy twice in a row and the lower back gets a break between hinges. Sessions run 15 to 18 sets and about 60 minutes.

This is the right first program for most people and a fine long-term one. If you are brand new to lifting, the full body workout routine has a gentler first month, a 2 day schedule and a dumbbell version for home.

Best 3 day split for muscle gain: upper, lower, full body

After six months or so, full body days start to feel crowded: you want more sets for chest and back, but adding them makes every session long. The fix is to give the upper body and legs one dedicated day each, then finish the week with a lighter full body day. Every muscle is still trained twice, and the first two days can go heavier because they have fewer jobs.

Upper is the long day at 21 sets and about 65 minutes; Lower and Full body are 17 sets each. On the Monday, Tuesday, Thursday week, keep Lower on Tuesday and Full body on Thursday so the legs get two days between sessions.

3 day push pull legs split

Push pull legs fits three days exactly: chest, shoulders and triceps on Monday, back and biceps on Wednesday, legs on Friday. It is popular because each day has one clear job and the sessions never overlap. The cost is frequency: every muscle is trained once a week, so each session needs enough sets to carry the whole week.

Run this if you enjoy long sessions on one area, or as a bridge to the six day version once you have more days free. The full push pull legs routine has the 6 day schedule and how to move from three days to six.

3 day workout split for women (glute focus)

Women and men build muscle the same way, so every plan above works for both. Many women, though, want their glutes and legs to come first, and a general plan gives glutes only indirect work from squats and deadlifts. This plan trains the lower body twice and the upper body once, with direct glute work on both leg days.

Glutes get 10 direct sets a week from hip thrusts, the hip abduction machine and cable kickbacks, before counting squats, split squats and Romanian deadlifts. For men who want the upper body first, push pull legs gives chest, back and arms the most work, and the upper lower full body plan is the balanced choice for either.

Weekly sets per muscle in each 3 day split

Here is what each plan gives every muscle per week, counted straight from the planners. Use it to pick the split that matches what you want to grow.

The big muscles land at 7 to 10 hard sets a week in every general plan, which is a solid dose for beginners and intermediates. Three days cannot give every muscle 15 or more sets without very long sessions; if you want that, you need a fourth day. If one muscle lags, add one set to one of its exercises in each session that trains it.

3 day workout schedule: which days to train

The rule is one day on, one day off, so the same muscles are never trained on back to back days. The planners above switch between these weeks.

Monday, Wednesday, Friday is the default: weekends free and two rest days before the week starts again. Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday suits people who train better on a Saturday morning. If your week only allows back to back days, upper lower full body handles it best, since Upper and Lower can sit side by side.

How to progress on a 3 day split

Use double progression on every exercise. Pick a weight you can lift for the bottom of the rep range with one to three reps left, which is RPE 7 to 9 on the effort scale. Keep it until every set reaches the top of the range, then add the smallest jump and work back up.

Warm up with two or three lighter sets before the first lift of the day; the warm-up calculator works out the weights and the plate calculator loads the bar. To set starting weights from a recent set, use the one rep max calculator. Every six to eight weeks, or when two lifts stall for two weeks running, take a lighter week with half the sets, then carry on from your last good numbers.

Is a 3 day split enough to build muscle?

Yes. The most direct test put 27 trained men on the same weekly volume, done either 3 or 6 days a week, for 6 weeks. Both groups gained strength (lower body +22% on three days, +18% on six) and grew their triceps and quads by similar amounts, with no significant difference between them; only the three day group significantly grew the biceps (Saric et al., 2019).

That fits the wider evidence. A meta-analysis of 25 studies found no significant difference in muscle growth between training frequencies when weekly volume was equal, and concluded that people can pick a frequency by preference (Schoenfeld et al., 2019). A 2024 meta-analysis of 14 studies and 392 people found the same for split versus full body routines: similar strength and similar growth with volume equated (Ramos-Campo et al., 2024).

Where full body three days a week has an edge, it is small. In 20 well-trained men, training every muscle three times a week grew the forearm flexors more than a split that trained each muscle once, while bench press and squat strength did not differ (Schoenfeld et al., 2015). That is one reason full body sits first on this page.

The number that matters most is weekly sets. Across 15 studies, more weekly sets meant more growth: each extra set added a little, and the higher-volume groups gained 3.9 percentage points more than the lower-volume groups (Schoenfeld et al., 2017). Three days give 7 to 10 sets for each big muscle in about an hour a session. Past that, the sessions get long, which is when a fourth day earns its place.

3 day vs 4 day split

A fourth day buys more sets or shorter sessions, not a better kind of training. Stay on three days while you keep adding weight and the sessions fit your week. Move to the 4 day workout split when you want more than about 10 sets a week for chest, back or legs, or when your three workouts run past 75 minutes. Three days you never miss beat four days you skip one of.

Common 3 day split mistakes