Upper/Lower Split: The 4-Day Plan for Intermediate Lifters

An upper/lower split divides your training into upper-body days and lower-body days, and you run it four times most weeks: two upper sessions and two lower sessions. It's the natural next step once full-body workouts start running long and you want more attention per muscle, and it sits a level below the six-day grind of a classic bodybuilding split. Each muscle group gets trained twice a week, which lands in the sweet spot for building size and strength without living in the gym. Here's what the split is, who it's built for, how it stacks up against full-body and push/pull/legs, and a four-day plan you can start this week.

What an upper/lower split actually is

You train your whole upper body (chest, back, shoulders and arms) on one day, then your whole lower body (quads, hamstrings, glutes and calves, plus core) on the next. Repeat each twice over the week and you've covered everything, with every muscle getting two doses of work spaced a few days apart.

Why twice a week? Because that frequency is one of the few training variables with solid evidence behind it. A volume-matched study found that spreading the same weekly work across three sessions beat cramming it into one, producing a 65% strength gain versus 43% over eleven weeks (higher training frequency and strength, PMC). The practical takeaway is simple: hitting a muscle more than once a week tends to beat blasting it once and leaving it for seven days. An upper/lower split bakes that in without any clever scheduling.

Who it suits

This is an intermediate's split. If you've trained consistently for roughly six months to a year, you've outgrown the point where three weekly full-body sessions can hold all the exercises you want to do. A full-body dumbbell workout is still the better starting point for a true beginner, because it lets you practise the main movements more often while the loads are light and technique is the priority.

Four training days is the other requirement. If your week realistically allows four gym sessions, the upper/lower split fits like it was made for it: Monday and Tuesday, rest Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, then the weekend off. You get two hard swings at every muscle, a built-in rest day in the middle, and enough recovery that you turn up to each session fresh. People juggling shift work or young kids can still run it; they just lean on the three-day version further down.

How it compares to full-body and push/pull/legs

Full-body workouts hit everything each session, usually three times a week. They're brilliant for beginners and for anyone short on days, but as you get stronger each session balloons, and a heavy squat early on leaves your legs too cooked to do them justice later. The upper/lower split fixes that by giving your legs their own day.

Push/pull/legs (PPL) goes the other way. It carves training into pushing muscles, pulling muscles and legs, which is excellent once you're training five or six days a week and want maximum volume per muscle. On four days, though, PPL gets awkward: you either train each muscle less than twice a week or you end up with an uneven rotation. For a four-day lifter, upper/lower is the cleaner fit. The NHS also recommends working all the major muscle groups on at least two days a week, and this split meets that comfortably.

The 4-day plan

Four workouts, two upper and two lower. The "A" days skew a little heavier and strength-focused; the "B" days use slightly higher reps and hit the muscles from different angles so you're not repeating yourself. Rest 2 to 3 minutes on the big compound lifts and 60 to 90 seconds on the smaller stuff.

Upper A (push-led)

• Bench press: 4 sets of 5 to 8. The bench press is your main upper-body strength lift, so treat it with respect and add weight slowly.
• Bent-over barbell or dumbbell row: 4 sets of 6 to 10
• Standing overhead press: 3 sets of 6 to 10
• Lat pulldown or pull-up: 3 sets of 8 to 12
• Dumbbell lateral raise: 3 sets of 12 to 15
• Biceps curl paired with triceps rope pushdown: 3 sets of 10 to 15 each

Lower A (squat-led)

• Back squat or goblet squat: 4 sets of 5 to 8
• Romanian deadlift: 3 sets of 8 to 10
• Walking lunge or split squat: 3 sets of 10 per leg
• Lying or seated leg curl: 3 sets of 10 to 12
• Standing calf raise: 4 sets of 12 to 15
• Hanging knee raise or plank: 3 sets to a hard effort

Upper B (pull-led)

• Pull-up or lat pulldown: 4 sets of 6 to 10
• Incline dumbbell press: 4 sets of 8 to 12
• Chest-supported or seated cable row: 3 sets of 10 to 12
• Seated dumbbell shoulder press: 3 sets of 10 to 12
• Face pull or rear-delt fly: 3 sets of 15 to 20
• Hammer curl paired with overhead triceps extension: 3 sets of 12 to 15 each

Lower B (hinge-led)

• Deadlift: 3 sets of 3 to 6. Keep the deadlift reps low and the form sharp; it's the most fatiguing lift in the whole plan.
• Front squat or leg press: 3 sets of 8 to 10
• Hip thrust: 3 sets of 10 to 12
• Bulgarian split squat: 3 sets of 10 per leg
• Seated calf raise: 4 sets of 15 to 20
• Ab wheel or cable crunch: 3 sets of 10 to 15

That gives each muscle group roughly 10 to 16 hard sets a week, which is a sensible amount for most intermediate lifters chasing muscle.

How to progress

Log every set: the weight, the reps and roughly how hard it felt. Each week, aim to add a rep or a little weight to at least one or two lifts, not all of them at once. Progress on the big compound movements (bench, squat, deadlift, overhead press) will be slow and measured in small plates; progress on curls and raises comes faster but matters less.

When a lift stalls for two or three weeks, don't force it. Drop the weight by about 10%, rebuild over a fortnight, and you'll usually blow past the old sticking point. Every six to eight weeks, take an easier week where you cut your sets roughly in half. You'll come back stronger, not weaker.

Fitting it around a busy week

Can't commit to four fixed days? Run the same four workouts as a rolling rotation instead. Ignore the calendar, train three times a week, and just do the next session in the list each time: Upper A, Lower A, Upper B, Lower B, then back to the top. One week you might complete Upper A, Lower A and Upper B; the next picks up at Lower B. Over a fortnight you get through the four workouts about one and a half times, and each muscle still averages close to twice-weekly training, which keeps the frequency that makes this split work in the first place.

The same rotation rescues a missed session. Skip a day and nothing's wrong; you simply carry on where you left off rather than trying to cram two workouts together.

The kit that makes it run at home

You can do most of this plan with surprisingly little. A pair of adjustable dumbbells covers the presses, rows, lunges, curls and raises, and their small jumps are perfect for the double-progression method above. Add an adjustable weight bench and the incline presses, hip thrusts and split squats all open up.

The one investment that turns a corner of a room into a proper strength setup is a power cage with a barbell. It lets you squat, bench and press heavy loads safely on your own, with the safety bars catching the weight if a rep goes wrong. That's what makes the heavier "A" day work sustainable at home over the long run. For the full rundown of what's worth buying and what isn't, our home gym section has the buying guides.

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2. The best power cage in the UK
3. The best weight bench in the UK
4. How to bench press properly
5. How to deadlift properly