5 day workout split: the complete 5 day workout plan

What is a 5 day workout split?

A workout split is the way you divide your muscles across the week. A 5 day split does it over five sessions, usually with the weekend off. There are several ways to fill those five days, and they differ mainly in how often each muscle is trained: once a week in a bro split, twice a week in upper lower plus push pull legs, roughly twice in a rolling push pull legs cycle.

Five days is an odd number for most splits. Push pull legs needs three or six days, upper lower needs two or four. The fix that works best is to stack the two: an upper day and a lower day, then push, pull and legs. Each muscle gets one heavy session and one volume session, which is the program on this page.

The best 5 day workout split: upper, lower, push, pull, legs

The first two days are heavy. Upper opens with the bench press and the barbell row at 5 to 8 reps with long rests; Lower opens with the squat and the Romanian deadlift. These are the days you push the numbers on the big lifts. The last three days repeat every muscle with dumbbells, cables and machines for 8 to 20 reps. They add most of the muscle-building sets without hitting the same joints with heavy barbells a second time.

On the Pull day, swap pull-ups for the lat pulldown until you can do six clean reps. On the Legs day the hip thrust comes first, so glutes get their hardest work while you are fresh and the lower back gets a rest from the squat and Romanian deadlift of Lower.

Weekly sets per muscle

Every major muscle lands between 9 and 15 hard sets a week. That is more than the upper lower split gives on four days, and it comes from the fifth session, not from longer workouts. If arms or side shoulders lag, add one set to each of their exercises on Push and Pull; those days are short enough to take it.

5 day workout schedule: three ways to run the week

The planner above switches between these three weeks. Pick the one you can keep for two months, not the one that looks best on paper.

Monday to Friday is the most popular because it keeps both weekend days free. It works because the heavy days come first: by Wednesday's Push you have had a full day away from chest. Rest Wednesday is better if your legs are still sore from Lower when Legs comes round, or if four sessions in a row wear you down. The weekend heavy week puts the two long, heavy sessions on Saturday and Sunday, when there is more time, and the shorter volume days midweek.

The 5 day bro split, done right

The classic bodybuilding week gives each muscle group its own day: chest Monday, back Tuesday, legs Wednesday, shoulders Thursday, arms Friday. It is the most searched 5 day split, and it does work. The problem with most versions is volume: 20 or more sets for one muscle in one session, with the last third done on muscles too tired to lift much. The version below keeps each day between 14 and 19 sets: chest and back get 14 to 15 hard sets for the week, legs and shoulders a little less, with arms topped up on Friday.

Pick the bro split if you enjoy long, focused sessions on one muscle and recover well from them. Pick upper lower push pull legs if you want each big lift practiced twice a week and shorter sessions. Both build muscle when the weekly sets are similar; the research section below explains why.

How to progress on a 5 day split

Use double progression on every exercise. Start with a weight you can lift for the bottom of the rep range with one to three reps left in the tank, which is RPE 7 to 9 on the effort scale. Stay at that weight until you reach the top of the range on every set, then add the smallest jump and build the reps back up.

Warm up with two or three lighter sets before the first lift of each day; the warm-up calculator works out the weights and the plate calculator loads the bar. To start the heavy lifts from a percentage of your max, estimate it from any recent set with the one rep max calculator.

Five days a week adds up. Every five to eight weeks, or as soon as two lifts stall for two weeks in a row, take a lighter week: same exercises, half the sets, a couple of reps further from failure. Then carry on from your last good numbers.

Is a 5 day split good? What the research says

Five days is not magic, and neither is any particular split. A 2024 meta-analysis of 14 studies and 392 people found that split routines and full body routines gave similar strength gains and similar muscle growth when total volume was equal, and concluded that people can choose a routine on personal preference (Ramos-Campo et al., 2024).

What does matter is the number of hard sets. A meta-analysis of 15 studies found a graded dose-response: each extra weekly set was linked to a slightly larger gain in muscle size, and the higher-volume groups in each study gained about 3.9 percentage points more than the lower-volume ones (Schoenfeld et al., 2017). This is the real case for a fifth day. It lets you fit 10 to 15 sets per muscle into sessions of about an hour.

Frequency matters less than most people think. Pooling 25 studies, Schoenfeld and colleagues found no significant difference in growth between training a muscle more or less often when weekly volume was the same. In studies where volume was not matched, higher frequencies came out ahead, but the gap between once and three or more times a week was modest (Schoenfeld et al., 2019). Training twice a week mostly helps by making high volume easier to spread out.

The bro split has one direct test in trained lifters. Twenty men were matched on strength and split into a group training each muscle once a week with several exercises per session, and a group training the whole body three times a week with one exercise per muscle. Strength gains in the bench press and squat were not significantly different, while the forearm flexors grew more in the total body group (Schoenfeld et al., 2015). It is one small study, but it fits the pattern: a bro split works, and twice a week is a safer default.

Pros and cons of a 5 day split

• Pro: room for volume. Five sessions fit 10 to 15 sets per muscle without any workout running past 70 minutes.
• Pro: weekends free. The Monday to Friday week leaves Saturday and Sunday for rest, sport or life.
• Pro: heavy and light days. Barbell work twice a week, the rest on joint-friendly machines and cables.
• Con: five days is a real commitment. Miss one and a muscle drops to one session that week.
• Con: recovery is on you. Sleep, food and the lighter week matter more at five days than at three.

Who should run a 5 day workout split?

Intermediate lifters with six months or more of steady training, five free days and a goal of building muscle. If you already run a four day upper lower split and sessions are getting long, adding Push, Pull and Legs in place of the second upper and lower day is a natural next step. If you can train six days, three day push pull legs run twice is the other option.

Beginners do better on fewer days. Five sessions mean five sets of new lifts to learn and a lot of soreness. Start with a three day full body workout routine, and move to this plan once your sessions start running past an hour.

Women can run the plan as written. If glutes are the priority, add a set to the hip thrust on Legs and a set of hip thrusts at the end of Lower. For fat loss, keep every lifting session as it is and add walking or easy cardio on rest days; the program does the muscle-keeping, your diet does the fat loss. At home with dumbbells and a bench, swap each barbell lift for its dumbbell version and keep the sets and reps.

Common 5 day split mistakes