You may or may not have heard of a push/pull/leg split. This is a type of workout routine that involves splitting up your weekly workouts into a push day, pull day and a leg day. The push and pull days include upper body workouts and the leg day involves lower body workouts.

This is a great way to split up your week. A push/pull/leg split routine breaks up your body into three parts working different muscle groups. This guarantees you hit all of the major muscles of the body by the end of the week.

Let’s discuss each one of these days and the specific muscle groups involved in them:

Push days recruit the muscles of the upper body that are involved in pushing movements. These muscles include the chest, triceps and front shoulders. Best way to approach this is to do several exercises for each muscle group including dumbbells, barbells, cables and bodyweight exercises and movements.

Here is a sample workout for a push day:

Chest:

  • Bench Press (flat, incline and/or decline)
  • Dumbbell flys (flat, incline and/or decline)
  • Cable chest fly (double and single arm)
  • Pushups

Triceps:

  • Cable rope tricep push downs
  • Overhead dumbbell tricep extensions
  • Single arm tricep dumbbell kickbacks
  • Tricep dips

Front shoulders:

  • Cable straight bar push down
  • Overhead dumbbell press
  • Dumbbell lateral raise
  • Single arm dumbbell frontal raise

Pull days recruit the muscles of the upper body that are involved in pulling movements. These muscles include the back, biceps and rear shoulders. Best way to approach this is to do several exercises for each muscle group including dumbbells, barbells, cables and bodyweight exercises and movements.

Here is a sample workout for a pull day:

Back:

  • Cable lat pulldowns
  • Barbell bent over rows
  • Barbell deadlifts
  • Single arm dumbbell rows
  • Pull-ups

Biceps:

  • Cable straight bar curls
  • Barbell preacher curls
  • Single arm rotating or hammer curls
  • Concentration curls

Rear shoulders:

  • Standing cable reverse flys (double and single arm)
  • Cable rope face pulls
  • Bent over dumbbell reverse flys
  • TRX wide row

Leg days recruit the muscles of the lower body that are involved in all lower body movements. These muscles include the quads, hamstrings, hips, glutes and calves. Best way to approach this is to do several exercises for each muscle group including dumbbells, barbells, cables and bodyweight exercises and movements. Also important to include in leg days are compound exercises. A compound exercise are multi-joint movements that work several muscles or muscle groups at a time. A squat is an example of a compound movement as it engages several muscles of the lower body including quads, hamstrings, glutes and calves.

Here is a sample workout for leg day including several compound movements and a few muscle specific exercises:

Compound movements:

  • Squats
  • Lunges
  • Step ups
  • Deadlifts

Quads:

  • Machine leg press
  • Seated single leg extensions

Hamstrings:

  • Machine hamstring curls
  • Bulgarian split squat

Hips:

  • Machine hip abduction
  • Standing cable single leg hip abduction
  • Dumbbell Plié squat
  • Side lunges

Glutes:

  • Cable single leg hip extension
  • Wide stance goblet squat
  • Hip thrust or bridge
  • Single leg donkey kick

Calves:

  • Standing calf raises
  • Seated machine calf raises (on calf machine or leg press)

Now that you have have the exercise list for your push/pull/leg days let’s see what a typical week may look like:

  • Monday: Push day
  • Tuesday: Pull day
  • Wednesday: Leg day
  • Thursday: Rest day
  • Friday: Push day
  • Saturday: Pull day
  • Sunday: Leg day

With this plan you know that you will hit all these muscle groups twice a week. You can include the same workout twice a week for your push/pull/leg day or you could mix up your exercises for each workout. For example on Monday push day you could do all barbell and dumbbell push exercises and on Friday push day you could do all cable and bodyweight push exercises. This will mix up your workouts so you don’t get bored and challenge those muscles in a different way.

If you don’t have time to do 6 strength days a week, just include one push/pull/leg day each week instead of two.

Now you just need to figure out where to place your cardio and abs. Cardio and abs can be included into any of these days either before after or included with your strength training workout. Specific ab workouts can also be done on your rest day. Plan the days that you are going to include cardio and/or abs into your routine around your push/pull/leg days

A few examples of how to include cardio:

  • as a warm up or a finisher to your strength training workout.
  • included on the days that you have shorter strength training workouts planned. Leg days may take longer and require more energy since they include some bigger muscle groups and therefore you may not want to include longer steady state cardio on those days.
  • within in your strength training workout. A HIIT style workout would be perfect to get both strength and cardio in by adding bursts of cardio such as plyometric in between sets of strength.

Push/pull/leg split is a great way to plan your workout week. You ensure hitting all of the major muscle groups of the body keeping your body strong and balanced.

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