PPLUL Split: The Complete 5-Day Push Pull Legs Upper Lower Programme

A PPLUL split is a five-day routine that runs push, pull and legs sessions followed by an upper-body day and a lower-body day. Every muscle gets trained twice a week, once on its push, pull or legs day and again on the upper or lower day, and you still get two full rest days. That combination is why it has become the default recommendation for intermediate lifters who want more volume than a four-day plan but can't face the gym six days running. Below is the full programme in tables you can copy straight into a notes app, a home-gym version, and the rules for progressing it.

What a PPLUL split is

PPLUL is a hybrid of two older routines. The first three days come from push/pull/legs: chest, shoulders and triceps on push day, back and biceps on pull day, then the whole lower body. The last two days come from an upper/lower split, so your upper body gets a second, more balanced session and your legs get a second day built around the hinge instead of the squat.

The maths is the appeal. Five sessions, each muscle hit twice, and no muscle trained on consecutive days if you place the rest day properly.

Why does twice a week matter? A 2016 meta-analysis found that training a muscle twice weekly produced more growth than once weekly when total volume was the same (Schoenfeld, Ogborn and Krieger, Sports Medicine). The evidence for going beyond twice is much weaker. A separate meta-analysis of 12 studies on strength found no significant effect of frequency once volume was equated (Ralston and colleagues, Sports Medicine Open, 2018), which tells you frequency is mostly a way of fitting your weekly sets into sessions short enough to do well. PPLUL does that job on five days, and that's all it needs to do.

Weekly schedule options

The order of the sessions matters more than the weekdays. Keep push, pull and legs together, then put at least one rest day before upper so your chest and shoulders have recovered from push day.

Day	Option 1: classic	Option 2: weekends free	Option 3: split rest days
Monday	Push	Upper	Push
Tuesday	Pull	Lower	Pull
Wednesday	Legs	Push	Rest
Thursday	Rest	Pull	Legs
Friday	Upper	Legs	Upper
Saturday	Lower	Rest	Lower
Sunday	Rest	Rest	Rest

Option 1 is the one to start with, because the midweek rest day falls right where fatigue peaks. Option 2 suits anyone who guards their weekends, although push day lands only 48 hours after upper day, so your pressing on Wednesday may feel a rep or two down. Option 3 never asks for more than two sessions in a row; the cost is legs on Thursday and lower on Saturday with one day between them.

If your week is unpredictable, ignore the calendar and run the five sessions in order, resting whenever you've trained three days in a row.

The full PPLUL programme

The push, pull and legs days carry the heaviest work and the most sets. Upper and lower are slightly lighter, use different exercises and lean on higher reps, so the second hit of the week adds volume without repeating Monday's joint stress. Every set should finish with one or two reps left in the tank, apart from the last set of isolation exercises, which you can take to failure.

Day 1: Push

#	Exercise	Sets	Reps	Rest
1	Barbell bench press	4	5 to 8	2 to 3 min
2	Standing overhead press	3	6 to 10	2 to 3 min
3	Incline dumbbell press	3	8 to 12	90 sec
4	Lateral raise	3	12 to 15	60 sec
5	Triceps pushdown	3	10 to 15	60 sec
6	Overhead triceps extension	2	10 to 15	60 sec

If you want alternatives or a dumbbell-only layout for this session, our push day workout guide has three versions.

Day 2: Pull

#	Exercise	Sets	Reps	Rest
1	Pull-ups (add weight once you pass 10)	4	6 to 10	2 to 3 min
2	Barbell row	4	6 to 10	2 min
3	Seated cable row	3	10 to 12	90 sec
4	Face pull	3	15 to 20	60 sec
5	EZ bar curl	3	8 to 12	60 to 90 sec
6	Hammer curl	2	10 to 15	60 sec

There's no deadlift here on purpose. It sits on lower day, three days away from the heavy squats, so your lower back isn't loaded hard on consecutive days.

Day 3: Legs

#	Exercise	Sets	Reps	Rest
1	Back squat	4	5 to 8	3 min
2	Romanian deadlift	3	8 to 10	2 to 3 min
3	Leg press	3	10 to 12	2 min
4	Leg curl	3	10 to 15	60 to 90 sec
5	Standing calf raise	4	10 to 15	60 sec
6	Hanging leg raise	3	8 to 15	60 sec

Day 4: Upper

#	Exercise	Sets	Reps	Rest
1	Incline bench press	3	6 to 10	2 to 3 min
2	Chest-supported row	3	8 to 12	2 min
3	Seated dumbbell shoulder press	3	8 to 12	2 min
4	Lat pulldown	3	10 to 12	90 sec
5	Cable fly	2	12 to 15	60 sec
6	Lateral raise	3	15 to 20	60 sec
7	Incline dumbbell curl paired with skull crushers	2 each	10 to 15	60 sec after each pair

Day 5: Lower

#	Exercise	Sets	Reps	Rest
1	Deadlift	3	3 to 6	3 min
2	Bulgarian split squat	3	8 to 12 per leg	2 min
3	Hip thrust	3	8 to 12	2 min
4	Leg extension	3	12 to 15	60 sec
5	Seated calf raise	3	15 to 20	60 sec
6	Cable crunch	3	10 to 15	60 sec

How the weekly volume adds up

Counting direct sets only, the programme gives you 12 for chest, 17 for back, 13 for quads and around 9 for hamstrings (the hip thrusts and split squats add more for the glutes). Biceps, triceps and side delts each get 6 or 7 direct sets on top of everything they do during presses and rows.

Those numbers are deliberate. A 2022 systematic review of trained lifters grouped weekly volume into low (under 12 sets), moderate (12 to 20) and high (over 20), found no difference in quad or biceps growth between moderate and high, and concluded that 12 to 20 weekly sets per muscle is a reasonable standard. The triceps were the one muscle that responded better to more. So start at the low end, and if a muscle lags after eight weeks, add a set or two for it instead of adding sets everywhere.

How to progress: double progression

Every exercise above has a rep range, and that range is the progression system.

1. Pick a weight you can lift for the bottom of the range on every set with a rep or two in reserve.
2. Keep that weight each week and try to add reps, even one rep on one set.
3. When every set reaches the top of the range, add the smallest load you can: 2.5kg on barbell lifts, the next dumbbell up on everything else.
4. The heavier weight will knock you back towards the bottom of the range, and you climb again from there.

Because you train each muscle twice with different lifts, you track ten or so main exercises separately. The bench press on push day and the incline bench on upper day progress on their own timelines, and it's normal for one to stall while the other keeps moving.

Who PPLUL suits

PPLUL suits someone with at least six months of steady training who can reliably get to the gym five days a week. If that's you, it's the best-balanced split available.

PPLUL vs a 6-day PPL. Both train everything twice. The six-day version gives arms and shoulders more total sets because push and pull each come round twice, but it leaves one rest day and no slack: miss Thursday and the whole rotation slips. PPLUL trades a little upper-body volume for a second rest day, and most people recover and progress better with that trade.

PPLUL vs a 4-day upper/lower. Same frequency, fewer sessions. Upper/lower has to fit chest, back, shoulders and arms into one workout twice a week, so those sessions run long or the arm work gets rushed. PPLUL spreads the upper body across three days. If four days is your honest limit, though, run upper/lower and don't feel short-changed, because the difference comes down to a few extra sets.

PPLUL vs body-part splits. A bro split also uses five days but hits each muscle once, and an Arnold split needs six days to reach twice-weekly frequency. Neither is wrong; PPLUL gets you the same frequency in fewer sessions.

Beginners should skip it for now. Three full-body sessions a week will build muscle faster in your first six months than any five-day split, purely because you practise the squat, press and row three times as often.

Home-gym PPLUL: rack, barbell, dumbbells and bench

The whole programme survives the move to a garage. You need a squat rack with a pull-up bar (or a full power cage if you train alone and want safeties for heavy benching), an Olympic barbell with plates, a pair of adjustable dumbbells and an adjustable weight bench. Everything not listed below stays exactly as written.

Gym exercise	Home swap	Note
Triceps pushdown	Close-grip bench press	Drop to 3 sets of 8 to 12
Seated cable row	Dumbbell row	10 to 12 per arm
Face pull	Rear delt fly	Light dumbbells, 15 to 20 reps
Leg press	Front squat	Or a heavy goblet squat
Leg curl	Nordic curl	Anchor your feet under a loaded barbell
Chest-supported row	Incline dumbbell row	Bench set to about 30 to 45 degrees
Lat pulldown	Chin-ups	Underhand grip to vary from pull day
Cable fly	Dumbbell fly	Flat or low incline
Leg extension	Reverse lunge	10 to 12 per leg
Seated calf raise	Single-leg dumbbell calf raise	Off a plate or step, 12 to 15 per leg
Cable crunch	Reverse crunch	On the bench, 10 to 15

Hamstrings are the weak point at home. Nordic curls are brutally hard, and most people can't do five clean reps at first, so lower yourself as slowly as you can and push back up with your hands until you're strong enough for full reps. If they aggravate your knees, a third set of Romanian deadlifts covers most of the gap.

Double progression works especially well with adjustable dumbbells, since the jumps between settings are small. Starting from an empty room? Our guide on how to build a home gym covers the order to buy things in and what the whole setup costs.

Common mistakes

Treating upper day as a second push day. Friday's session should feel different from Monday's: incline before flat, dumbbells where you used a bar, higher reps. Repeating the same heavy bench twice in five days is how shoulders start to complain.

Putting upper straight after legs with no rest. It looks harmless because the muscles differ, but three hard days leave you flat, and a fourth in a row means your pressing and rowing suffer. Keep the rest day before upper unless your schedule forces option 2.

Adding exercises in week one. The programme looks short on arms and delts if you're coming from a bro split. Run it as written for eight weeks before adding anything, then add two sets for one lagging muscle. Twelve good sets beat eighteen tired ones.

Deadlifting heavy on pull day as well. Some PPLUL templates put deadlifts on pull and again on lower. That's two heavy hinges plus squats and Romanian deadlifts in one week, which is more than most lower backs tolerate.

Skipping lower day. It's the fifth session of the week and the easiest to drop. If it keeps happening, move to option 2 so legs and lower fall on Tuesday and Friday, when motivation is higher.

Deloads

Five sessions a week accumulates fatigue faster than a four-day plan. Plan a lighter week every six to eight weeks, or sooner if two or more main lifts go backwards in the same week and your sleep hasn't changed.

Keep the five sessions and the same exercises, cut the sets on each roughly in half and leave three or four reps in reserve. Don't test anything. Our deload week guide explains the options in more detail, including when to take a deload early and when to push through.

When you come back, start each lift at the weight and reps you hit two weeks before the deload, and pick the double progression up from there.

Recommended reads

• Upper/lower split: the 4-day plan
• Push day workout: 3 sample sessions
• The best squat racks in the UK
• The best adjustable dumbbells in the UK
• How to build a home gym