6 day workout split: the complete 6 day gym plan

What is a 6 day workout split?

A workout split is the way you divide your muscles across the week. A 6 day split fills six sessions and leaves one day of rest. Because six divides cleanly by three, the most common versions run a three day cycle twice: push pull legs, or the Arnold split of chest and back, shoulders and arms, and legs. Either way each muscle is trained twice a week, with two or three days between sessions.

That is the main difference from a five day week. With six sessions you do not have to bolt two splits together or leave one muscle with a single session. You also get shorter workouts: the same weekly work spread over six days instead of four means less to do each time you walk in.

The first two are the strongest choices and both are written out in full below. Upper lower three times a week works too, but six sessions of the same two workouts gets repetitive, and the 4 day upper lower split already covers that structure well.

The best 6 day workout split: push pull legs, heavy and volume

Running the same push, pull and legs workouts twice a week is the simple way to do six days, and the full push pull legs routine shows it. This version goes one step further: the A days are heavy and the B days are for volume. Push A opens with the bench press at 5 to 7 reps, Pull A with the barbell row, Legs A with the squat. The B days train the same muscles with dumbbells, cables and machines for 8 to 20 reps. You get heavy practice on each big lift once a week, and your elbows, shoulders and lower back get a lighter day before the next heavy one.

Pull A uses pull-ups; swap in the lat pulldown until you can do six clean reps. Legs B starts with the hip thrust so glutes get their hardest work while you are fresh, and the Bulgarian split squat adds single leg work without loading the spine after Legs A's squats and Romanian deadlifts.

Weekly sets per muscle

Chest, back and quads land between 11 and 15 direct sets a week, and every other muscle is topped up by the compound lifts. That is enough for steady growth in an intermediate lifter. No session goes past 17 sets, which is why the workouts stay between 45 and 65 minutes. If arms or side shoulders lag, add one set to each of their exercises on the B days; those sessions have the room.

6 day gym workout schedule: where to put the rest day

The planner above switches between these two weeks. Both keep two or three days between sessions for the same muscle; they differ only in when you rest.

Monday to Saturday is the classic: train six days, take Sunday off. It suits people with a fixed routine and gyms that are quiet on Saturday mornings. Rest midweek splits the week into two blocks of three, which is easier on sleep and joints, and leaves Thursday free for whatever comes up. If one day of rest is not enough, there is a third option the planner does not show: run the six workouts as a rolling cycle of three on, one off. Each muscle then gets slightly less than two sessions a week, and you never miss a workout because the calendar moved.

The 6 day Arnold split

The Arnold split pairs opposing muscles: chest with back, shoulders with arms, then legs, and repeats the cycle. Pairing chest and back means you can alternate a press and a pull with little rest, so the session moves fast. Shoulders and arms on the same day gives the arms more direct work than any push pull legs plan. The cost is that the arms are already tired from the presses and rows of the day before, so this version keeps each session between 15 and 20 sets rather than the marathon days the split is famous for.

Pick the Arnold split if you enjoy supersets, want bigger arms, and recover well from heavy squats twice a week. Pick push pull legs with A and B days if you want one heavy session per lift and a lighter one after it. Both reach similar weekly volume, which is what drives growth.

How to progress on a 6 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 a recent set with the one rep max calculator.

Six days a week leaves little slack. Every four to six 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 pick up from your last good numbers.

Is a 6 day workout split too much? What the research says

Six days is not too much if the weekly sets are sensible. It is also not better by itself. The most direct test put 27 trained men on the same weekly volume, spread over either 3 or 6 sessions, for six weeks. Both groups gained lower body strength (+22% on three days, +18% on six) and grew the triceps and quads by similar amounts, with no significant difference between them (Saric et al., 2019).

That fits the larger picture. Pooling 25 studies, Schoenfeld and colleagues found no significant difference in muscle growth between higher and lower frequencies when weekly volume was matched, and concluded that people can pick a frequency on preference (Schoenfeld et al., 2019). For strength, a meta-analysis of 22 studies saw effect sizes rise from 0.74 at once a week to 1.08 at four or more times, but that gap disappeared in the studies that matched volume (Grgic et al., 2018). More frequent training helps mainly because it makes more total work easy to fit in.

And total work does matter. A meta-analysis of 15 studies found that each extra weekly set was linked to a slightly larger gain in muscle size, and the higher-volume groups gained about 3.9 percentage points more than the lower-volume ones (Schoenfeld et al., 2017). This is the real case for six days: it lets you reach 12 to 16 sets per muscle in sessions of under an hour. The split type itself matters little. A 2024 meta-analysis of 14 studies and 392 people found split and full body routines gave similar strength and muscle growth when volume was equal (Ramos-Campo et al., 2024).

Pros and cons of a 6 day split

• Pro: short sessions. High weekly volume, with no workout past about an hour.
• Pro: every muscle twice. Two sessions a week without stacking two splits together.
• Pro: heavy and light days. Each big lift gets one heavy day and a lighter day for its muscles.
• Con: one rest day. Poor sleep or a hard week at work shows up fast.
• Con: easy to overdo. Adding sets because you have the time is the most common way six days goes wrong.
• Con: missed days cost more. Lose one session and the week's order shifts.

Who should run a 6 day workout split?

Intermediate and advanced lifters with a year or more of steady training, who enjoy being in the gym most days and sleep seven hours or more. If you already run the 5 day workout split and want shorter sessions, moving to six days with the same weekly sets is a natural step.

Beginners should not start here. Six days of new lifts is a lot of soreness and a lot to learn, and three days already builds muscle fast at the start. Begin with a three day full body workout routine or the 3 day workout split, and add days once your sessions run past an hour.

Women can run either plan as written. If glutes are the priority, add a set of hip thrusts at the end of Legs A and a set to the Bulgarian split squat on Legs B. For fat loss, keep the lifting as it is, eat in a moderate calorie deficit and walk on the rest day; drop the last isolation exercise of each session if recovery suffers. At home with dumbbells and a bench, run the dumbbell versions in the dumbbell workout plan.

Common 6 day split mistakes