Arnold Split: The 6-Day Workout Plan, Sample Week and Home Version

The Arnold split is a six-day workout plan that trains chest and back together, then shoulders and arms, then legs, and runs that three-day cycle twice a week before a rest day. Every muscle gets hit twice a week with fairly high volume, which is why it's a favourite for intermediate lifters chasing size. It's demanding, though: if you can't commit to six sessions or you struggle to recover, there are better options, and a trimmed four-day version works well for a lot of people.

How the Arnold split works

The structure is simple. You have three workouts and you cycle through them twice:

Day	Workout
Monday	Chest and back
Tuesday	Shoulders and arms
Wednesday	Legs (plus calves and abs)
Thursday	Chest and back
Friday	Shoulders and arms
Saturday	Legs (plus calves and abs)
Sunday	Rest

The name comes from Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose 1970s training is widely associated with this chest-and-back pairing. What sets it apart from a classic "bro split" (one muscle per day, once a week) is the frequency. Twice-weekly training per muscle is backed by research: a 2016 meta-analysis found that training a muscle group twice a week produced better hypertrophy than once a week on a volume-equated basis (Schoenfeld et al., Sports Medicine, 2016).

There's an important follow-up. A larger 2019 meta-analysis of 25 studies found that once weekly volume is matched, frequency itself makes little difference to muscle growth, and people can choose a frequency they prefer (Schoenfeld et al., Journal of Sports Sciences, 2019). So the real advantage of the Arnold split is that two sessions per muscle make it far easier to pile up a lot of quality weekly sets without any one workout becoming a two-hour slog.

That matters because volume does drive growth. A dose-response meta-analysis found that each extra weekly set was associated with a small increase in muscle gain, and that 10 or more sets per muscle per week tended to outperform lower volumes (Schoenfeld et al., Journal of Sports Sciences, 2017). The sample week below gives most muscles 12 to 20 hard sets across the two sessions.

Sample Arnold split week

Rest 2 to 3 minutes on the big compound lifts and 60 to 90 seconds on isolation work. "Hard sets" means stopping one to three reps short of failure, not cruising. The second round of each workout (Thursday to Saturday) can repeat the first or swap in the alternatives shown.

Day 1 and 4: Chest and back

Exercise	Sets x reps
Bench press (or incline bench on day 4)	4 x 6 to 8
Pull-ups or lat pulldown	4 x 6 to 10
Incline dumbbell press	3 x 8 to 12
Barbell or dumbbell row	3 x 8 to 12
Cable or dumbbell fly	3 x 12 to 15
Straight-arm pulldown or pullover	3 x 12 to 15

Pair the chest and back moves as supersets (bench press, then pull-ups, then rest) if you're short on time. Many lifters find that pulling between pressing sets lets them keep their bench numbers up, but if it costs you reps, run them straight.

Day 2 and 5: Shoulders and arms

Exercise	Sets x reps
Overhead press or dumbbell shoulder press	4 x 6 to 10
Lateral raise	4 x 12 to 15
Rear delt fly or face pull	3 x 12 to 15
Barbell or EZ-bar curl	3 x 8 to 12
Close-grip bench press or dips	3 x 8 to 12
Incline dumbbell curl	2 x 10 to 15
Overhead tricep extension	2 x 10 to 15

Your front delts already get plenty from pressing on chest day, so most of the shoulder volume here goes to the side and rear delts.

Day 3 and 6: Legs

Exercise	Sets x reps
Back squat (or front squat on day 6)	4 x 5 to 8
Romanian deadlift	3 x 8 to 10
Leg press or Bulgarian split squat	3 x 10 to 12
Leg curl	3 x 10 to 15
Standing calf raise	4 x 10 to 15
Hanging leg raise or cable crunch	3 x 10 to 15

Who the Arnold split suits (and who it doesn't)

It's a good fit if you have at least a year or two of consistent lifting, you sleep and eat well enough to recover from six sessions, and you genuinely have six free slots in your week. It's also a sensible choice if your arms and shoulders lag, since they get a dedicated day instead of being an afterthought at the end of chest or back work.

It's a poor fit for beginners, who can grow on far less volume and will progress faster with fewer, simpler sessions. It also suits nobody with an unpredictable schedule: miss two days and the rotation falls apart. If you're over 40, run a physical job or train for a sport alongside lifting, the recovery cost of six heavy days often outweighs the benefit. For most people in those groups, an upper/lower split over four days gives the same twice-weekly frequency with two extra rest days.

Home-gym version

You don't need a commercial gym. A pair of adjustable dumbbells, an adjustable bench and some way to pull (a pull-up bar, a cable machine or a cable attachment on a rack) covers almost everything. If you're weighing up the kit, our guide on whether adjustable dumbbells are worth it covers the trade-offs, and a sturdy incline bench such as the one in our Metis adjustable weight bench review handles both flat and incline work.

Chest and back: dumbbell bench press 4 x 8 to 10, pull-ups (or band-assisted) 4 x 6 to 10, incline dumbbell press 3 x 10 to 12, one-arm dumbbell row 3 x 10 to 12 each side, dumbbell fly 3 x 12 to 15, dumbbell pullover 3 x 12 to 15.

Shoulders and arms: seated dumbbell shoulder press 4 x 8 to 10, lateral raise 4 x 12 to 15, chest-supported rear delt fly on an incline bench 3 x 12 to 15, dumbbell curl 3 x 10 to 12, dumbbell skull crusher 3 x 10 to 12, hammer curl 2 x 12 to 15, overhead dumbbell extension 2 x 12 to 15.

Legs: goblet squat 4 x 10 to 12, dumbbell Romanian deadlift 3 x 10 to 12, Bulgarian split squat 3 x 10 each side, single-leg hip thrust off the bench 3 x 12 each side, single-leg calf raise holding a dumbbell 4 x 12 to 15, lying leg raise 3 x 12 to 15.

The weak spot at home is legs. Once your dumbbells top out, slow the lowering phase to three seconds, add a pause at the bottom or push reps towards 15 to 20. With a cable station you can add lat pulldowns, face pulls, cable curls and leg curls with an ankle strap, which fills most of the gaps.

4-day modified Arnold split

Six days is a big ask. These two approaches keep the spirit of the plan with two fewer sessions.

Option A: rolling rotation. Train Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, cycling the three workouts in order. Week one is chest/back, shoulders/arms, legs, chest/back; week two starts with shoulders/arms. Each muscle gets about 1.3 sessions a week, so add a set to the main lifts to keep weekly volume up.

Option B: two-day pairing. Keep chest and back together, and split the rest:

Day	Workout
Monday	Chest and back
Tuesday	Legs and shoulders (side and rear delts)
Thursday	Chest and back
Friday	Legs and arms

Option B is the one we'd pick for most people. Chest and back still get two sessions, legs get two, and arms and side delts get one dedicated slot each plus indirect work from pressing and pulling. Given the 2019 frequency data, that's very unlikely to cost you meaningful growth as long as weekly sets stay similar.

How to progress

Use double progression. Pick a rep range (say 8 to 12), stay at the same weight until you hit the top of the range on every set, then add the smallest jump available, typically 2.5kg on a barbell or one dumbbell increment. Log every session so you're beating last week's numbers instead of guessing.

Add volume slowly. If you're coming from a lower-volume routine, start with two to three sets per exercise for the first couple of weeks and build up. Every 5 to 8 weeks, or whenever performance stalls and joints ache, take a deload week at roughly half the sets.

Common mistakes

Treating every set like a max effort. Six sessions of training to failure will flatten you within a fortnight. Leave a rep or two in the tank on most sets and save all-out efforts for the last set of isolation moves.

Junk volume on arm day. Ten sets of curls with sloppy form adds fatigue, not muscle. Keep arm work to the sets listed and make each one count.

Skimping on legs. Leg day sits at the end of the rotation and is the easiest to cut short. Don't; it's two of your six sessions.

Ignoring recovery. The plan assumes good sleep and enough protein and food. If your lifts are going backwards for two weeks running, the fix is usually more rest, not more effort.

Copying it from a magazine without adjusting. The original Arnold-era routines often ran far more sets than most natural lifters can recover from. The version above is deliberately more moderate.

Recommended reads

• Upper/lower split: the 4-day alternative
• Are adjustable dumbbells worth it?
• How to do the dumbbell shoulder press
• Metis adjustable weight bench review
• More workout guides