Push Day Workout: 3 Sample Sessions, Exercises and How to Progress

A push day workout trains every muscle that pushes: your chest, your shoulders (mainly the front and side delts) and your triceps. It's one of the three sessions in a push/pull/legs (PPL) split, alongside a pull day for back and biceps and a leg day. A good push session opens with one or two heavy compound presses, follows with a second chest movement and some side delt work, and finishes on the triceps. Below you'll find three complete sessions with sets, reps and rest times (full gym, dumbbells only at home, and a beginner version), plus how to order the exercises, how much weekly volume to aim for and how to keep progressing.

What counts as a push exercise?

Anything where you press a weight away from your torso or straighten your elbow against resistance. That includes horizontal presses like the bench press, vertical presses like the overhead press, dips, push-ups and chest flyes. Lateral raises don't strictly push anything, but they train the side delts and nobody has found a better home for them than push day.

Because pressing works chest, shoulders and triceps together, the muscles share a lot of overlap. That's the whole logic of the split: you tire them out in one session, then leave them alone for two or three days while you train your back and legs.

Muscle	Main compound movers	Best isolation work
Chest	Flat and incline bench press, dumbbell press, dips	Cable fly, dumbbell fly, pec deck
Front delts	Overhead press, incline press	Front raise (rarely needed)
Side delts	Overhead press (a little)	Lateral raise, cable lateral raise
Triceps	Close-grip bench, dips, all presses	Pushdown, overhead extension, skull crusher

Sample session 1: full gym push day

This is the session to run if you've got a barbell, a cable stack and a rack. It suits intermediate lifters with six months or more of consistent training behind them, and it takes about 60 to 75 minutes.

#	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	Cable fly	3	12 to 15	60 to 90 sec
5	Lateral raise	4	12 to 20	60 sec
6	Triceps pushdown	3	10 to 15	60 sec
7	Overhead triceps extension	2	10 to 15	60 sec

That's 22 working sets, which sits at the upper end of sensible. If you're running PPL twice a week and recovering poorly, drop the overhead extension and one set of lateral raises.

On your second push day of the week, swap the flat bench for the incline bench press and the overhead press for seated dumbbell presses. Same muscles, slightly different angles, and your joints get a break from repeating the same bar path four times in eight days.

Sample session 2: dumbbell-only push day at home

Plenty of people search for a push workout because they train in a garage or spare room with a pair of dumbbells and a bench. You can build a perfectly good push day from that kit alone; the only things you really lose are cable work and heavy barbell loading.

#	Exercise	Sets	Reps	Rest
1	Dumbbell bench press	4	8 to 12	2 min
2	Seated dumbbell shoulder press	3	8 to 12	2 min
3	Incline dumbbell press	3	10 to 12	90 sec
4	Dumbbell fly	2	12 to 15	60 sec
5	Lateral raise	4	15 to 20	60 sec
6	Tricep dips off the bench	3	10 to 15	60 to 90 sec
7	Overhead dumbbell triceps extension	2	10 to 15	60 sec

The rep ranges run a little higher than the gym version for a practical reason: most home dumbbells top out somewhere between 20kg and 40kg per hand, so you'll run out of weight on the presses before you run out of strength. Taking sets closer to failure, slowing the lowering phase to three seconds or adding a pause at the bottom all make a fixed weight harder without buying more iron.

The kit matters more here than in a commercial gym. A flat-only bench rules out the incline press, and the fixed dumbbells you started with will stall your bench press within a few months. If you're kitting out a room, our guides to the best adjustable dumbbells and the best weight benches cover the options at most budgets, and the home gym hub has the rest.

Sample session 3: beginner push day

If you've been lifting for less than six months, you don't need seven exercises. You need a few movements done well, with enough repetition to learn them. This session takes about 40 minutes.

#	Exercise	Sets	Reps	Rest
1	Bench press (barbell or dumbbell)	3	8 to 10	2 min
2	Seated dumbbell shoulder press	3	8 to 12	90 sec
3	Push-ups (incline if needed)	2	As many as you can, stop 1 to 2 short of failure	90 sec
4	Lateral raise	3	12 to 15	60 sec
5	Triceps pushdown or band pushdown	2	12 to 15	60 sec

Thirteen sets is enough to grow on when you're new. Leave a rep or two in the tank on the presses for the first month while your technique settles, then start pushing sets harder.

Beginners often do better with a full-body or upper/lower split than a six-day PPL, simply because three or four sessions a week is easier to stick to. You can still use this session as the "upper push" half of an upper day.

Why the exercise order matters

Put the hardest, heaviest lifts first. A bench press or overhead press demands the most from your nervous system and the most coordination, and both get sloppy and dangerous when your triceps are already cooked. Isolation work goes last because it's low skill and you can push it hard while tired without much risk.

Within that rule, lead with whatever you most want to improve. If your shoulders are your weak point, start the session with the overhead press and do the bench second. Rotating which press comes first every week or two is a decent compromise if you can't decide.

Triceps almost always go at the end. They assist every press, so training them early leaves you weaker on the movements that matter more. The one exception is if your triceps are a real weak point and you're happy to accept a lighter bench that day.

How much weekly volume do you need?

Volume, counted as hard sets per muscle per week, is one of the strongest drivers of muscle growth. A 2017 meta-analysis of 15 studies found a graded dose-response relationship between weekly sets and muscle growth, with 10 or more weekly sets per muscle tending to produce more growth than fewer than five.

For most people training for size, that points to roughly 10 to 20 hard sets per muscle per week. Here's how the sessions above add up if you run push day twice a week:

• Chest: around 10 sets per session in the full gym version, so 20 per week. That's plenty; you can trim if recovery suffers.
• Side delts: 4 sets of lateral raises per session plus a bit from overhead pressing, so 8 to 10 direct sets a week.
• Triceps: 5 direct sets per session, plus heavy indirect work from every press. Most people don't need more than that.

Frequency matters too. A separate meta-analysis by the same research group concluded that training each muscle twice a week produced better growth than once a week when total volume was equal. That's the main argument for running PPL over six days rather than three. If six days won't fit your life, a three-day PPL still works, though you'll want to pack more sets into each session, or consider an Arnold split or an upper/lower plan instead.

How to progress your push day

Use double progression. Pick a rep range, say 8 to 12, and stay at the same weight until you can hit the top of the range on every set with good form. Then add the smallest jump you can (2.5kg on a barbell, 1 to 2kg per dumbbell) and work back up from the bottom of the range.

A few practical rules make this work over months rather than weeks:

• Log every session. You can't beat last week's numbers if you don't know them.
• Progress the compounds first. The bench and overhead press should creep up most weeks for a beginner and most months for an intermediate. Lateral raises will move painfully slowly, and that's normal.
• Add reps before load on isolation work. A jump from 8kg to 10kg on lateral raises is a 25% increase, so earn it with extra reps first.
• Deload when everything stalls. If your presses stop moving for two or three weeks and you feel beaten up, cut your sets roughly in half for a week, then carry on.

If you've done all of that and your chest still isn't growing, look at the basics before changing the programme: protein intake, sleep and whether your sets are genuinely close to failure. Our chest exercises guide covers swaps if a particular press doesn't suit your shoulders.

Common push day mistakes

Too much pressing, too little side delt work. Three different chest presses and no lateral raises will give you big front delts and narrow-looking shoulders. Side delts need direct work, and they recover fast enough to handle higher reps and sets.

Flaring the elbows on the bench. Letting your elbows go out to 90 degrees from your torso loads the front of the shoulder hard. Tuck them to roughly 45 to 70 degrees and keep your shoulder blades pulled back and down.

Treating push day as a chest day. Your shoulders and triceps are part of the session, not an afterthought. If you're spending 50 minutes on chest and five on everything else, rebalance.

Skipping the pull day. Push-heavy training without matching pulling work is a fast route to rounded shoulders. Keep pull day volume at least equal to push day.

Recommended reads

1. Bench press: how to do it properly
2. Lateral raises: form, muscles worked and variations
3. The best adjustable dumbbells in the UK
4. The best weight bench in the UK
5. Upper/lower split: the 4-day plan