Written by Sam Coleman | Co-founder
Fact checked by Kirsten Yovino, CPT Brookbush Institute
FACT CHECKED
Finding an effective program in a sea of training routines can be more challenging than the workouts themselves.
For serious muscle-building results, it's best to go with tried-and-true programs that have been used by lifters everywhere. One such routine is a push-pull workout split, which divides your pushing and pulling muscles into separate training days. A push-pull program tends to follow a 4-day workout split, providing you with an ideal schedule for building muscle and recovering from training, and is a smart way to incorporate both strength and hypertrophy training into your routine.
We're about to show you a highly-effective 4-day push-pull workout split, along with key programming tips, pointers for continuing to progress, benefits of a push-pull program, and why it's important to follow a structured routine.
Table of Contents:
- What Is A Push-Pull Workout Plan?
- About This Push-Pull Workout Split
- The Best 4-Day Pull-Pull Workout Split
- Programming & Progression Tips
- Benefits Of A Push-Pull Workout Split
- Why You Need To Follow A Structured Training Program
What Is A Push-Pull Training Split?
The push pull split involves breaking your workouts into push days (both upper/lower body push muscles) and pull day workouts (both upper/lower body pull muscles). It is typically done as a 4 day split, with 2 push sessions and 2 pull sessions per week.
What You Need To Know About The Push Pull Split
The push-pull split works by organizing your training days into working specific major muscle groups, dividing your training between the muscles that push and those that pull.
Here's a breakdown of which muscle groups will be trained on each day. You will notice that this split will effectively train every single muscle group.
Pushing Days
Here are your upper and lower pushing muscles.
Upper Body Pushing Muscles:
- Chest
- Shoulders
- Triceps
Lower Body Pushing Muscles:
- Quadriceps
- Calves
Pulling Days
Here are your upper and lower pulling muscles.
Upper Body Pulling Muscles:
- Back
- Biceps
Lower Body Pulling Muscles:
- Glutes
- Hamstrings
So basically, within the two main days (pushing, pulling) there will be two body parts (upper, lower). Therefore, in order to utilize the entire rep spectrum, you will concentrate on a different variable for each body part, swapping strength and hypertrophy. Doing so will give us four days of training which is perfect as it will let us train each body part twice while using different loading patterns.
The four days will look like this.
Session 1 Pull Exercises:
- Upper - Strength
- Lower - Hypertrophy
Session 2 Push Exercises:
- Upper - Strength
- Lower - Hypertrophy
Session 3 Pull Exercises:
- Lower - Strength
- Upper - Hypertrophy
Session 4 Push Exercises:
- Lower - Strength
- Upper - Hypertrophy
As you see, this gives us a very clear and organized plan to work off of. This is a crucial component of an effective program.
Strength Training
The strength training will consist of your significant compound movements. Further, these will work with heavier loads of >85% 1RM as loads of larger magnitudes have shown to be more effective in producing strength gains.
Hypertrophy Training
Your hypertrophy training will consist of smaller accessory compound movements as well as isolation work. Further, you will use loads of 70%-80% 1RM and moderate reps.
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The Best 4-Day Push-Pull Workout Split For Strength And Muscle Mass
Below is your 4 day push pull workout program. After, we will provide more information on progressive overload and how to progress with this push pull workout split.
Session 1 Pulling
| Upper Body - Strength | Sets: | Reps: |
| Chin Ups (weighted if necessary) | 5 | 5 |
| Bent-Over Row | 3 | 6 |
| Barbell Front Shrugs (with pause at top of rep) | 3 | 5 |
| Lower Body - Hypertrophy | ||
| Barbell Good Morning | 3 | 8-10 |
| GHD or Reverse Hyper | 3 | 8-12 |
| Leg Curls | 3 | 12-15 |
Session 2 Pushing
| Upper Body - Strength | Sets: | Reps: |
| Bench Press | 5 | 5 |
| Military Press | 3 | 6 |
| Dips (weighted if necessary) | 3 | 6 |
| Lower Body - Hypertrophy | ||
| Walking Dumbbell Lunges | 100 steps (total) | |
| Bulgarian Split Squat | 3 | 8-10 |
| Seated Calf Raise | 3 | 12-15 |
| Leg Extension | 2 | 12-15 |
Session 3 Pulling
| Lower Body - Strength | Sets: | Reps: |
| Deadlift | 5 | 5 |
| Hip Thrust | 3 | 6 |
| Barbell Romanian Deadlift | 3 | 6 |
| Upper Body - Hypertrophy | ||
| Seated Row | 3 | 8-10 |
| Reverse Fly | 3 | 10-12 |
| Face Pulls | 3 | 10-12 |
| Arm Curls | 2 | 10-15 |
Session 4 Pushing
| Lower Body - Strength | Sets: | Reps: |
| Back Squat | 5 | 5 |
| Front Squat or Hack Squat | 3 | 6 |
| Upper Body - Hypertrophy | ||
| Seated Dumbbell Shoulder Press | 3 | 8-10 |
| Cable Fly | 2 | 10-12 |
| Lateral Raises | 2 | 10-12 |
| Triceps Extensions | 2 | 10-15 |
| Barbell Rollout | 3 | 5 |
How To Run This Program
This program is meant to be trained 4 days a week, and you should spread your sessions out over the week.
You can run this program using two different strategies:
- Include three 1-day rest periods each week.
- Have one 1-day rest period and one 2-day rest period each week.
Here's how each option would look like for your weekly training days.
- Option 1: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday
- Option 2: Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday
Some trainees tend to train better with shorter rest durations so having three 1-day rest periods is ideal; some like two. And remember, you can alter this as you go depending on the situation.
How To Apply Progressive Overload
It doesn’t matter how well a program is written; it’s worthless if the person following it doesn’t apply progressive overload. Progressive overload simply refers to gradually adding weight to an exercise or performing more reps as a method to produce a greater stimulus.
This is the driving force behind any program and is what invokes adaptations to occur. That being said, there are several ways to apply progressive overload, which we’ll explain now. To make it simple, we will divide the different methods so that they apply to strength or hypertrophy.
1) Progressive Overload For Strength Movements:
You will probably have noticed that your strength movements are all of your main movements. These are the movements that we want to focus on and see improvement. The reason being is these are your foundational movements, and if these are getting stronger, all of your other lifts will get stronger and your muscles will get bigger. For example, if you bench press improves, your chest, triceps, and shoulders will all receive a larger stimulus for growth.
This is because when it comes to strength gains, increasing the load is the most critical factor. While volume does play a role, it’s secondary to merely putting more weight on the bar.
For these, you’re simply going to try and consecutively increase the weight for progressive overload.
2) Progressive Overload For Hypertrophy Movements:
After the first half of each training session, you’re going to move on to your hypertrophy work. You will notice that instead of straight sets, you will have a range of reps to work in for your hypertrophy work. This is because when training for hypertrophy, studies show that total volume is the main driver1. In fact, new analysis has shown that it doesn’t even really matter what rep range was used for the volume; it’s merely the total volume that was important.
Therefore, you don’t need an exact number of reps to hit for these hypertrophy movements. You should definitely be attempting to load more weight on the bar over time, but bringing each set close to failure in an attempt to get as much volume as possible is key.
One factor to consider is that these movements come later in the session so you will be at varying places of fatigue. This means that you might find you are able to lift more or less weight during different sessions. Also, remember that if you were able to improve the load for your strength movements, that counts as volume for the hypertrophy movements.
Let's look at an example.
- Let’s say one week you performed 3x5 on the bench press with 150lbs and then did cable fly 3x10's with 40lbs.
- The next week you use 155lbs for your bench press 3x5 and then do 3x10 with 40lbs again.
- Since you increased the weight on the bench press, you will still have placed more volume on the chest muscles even though you used the same weight for the cable flies.
Therefore, you will use a weight that will allow you to work within these ranges to increase the weight over time gradually.
How To Continue To Progress
You can follow the above program for some time, but adding some variance is critical when things begin to slow down. There are a few very simple ways to do this.
- Change The Exercise Order: The first method you can use is to swap the exercise order simply. However, only swap with the movements in the same section. In other words, alter the exercise order for the strength movements with the other strength movements; don’t alter the hypertrophy movements. For example, on the upper body pushing day, you can start with military press instead of doing bench press first. As you are less fatigued, you should be able to use a greater load.
- Swap Out Movements: Another very effective method is simply swapping movements with the same biomechanics. For example, you can swap out the bench press for the incline bench press. Both of those movements are a horizontal pushing exercises, yet they are different enough to cause slightly different muscle activation. The same concept applies to pulling exercises. If you’re not sure what movements to swap out, one of the easiest methods is to swap the barbell and dumbbell.
- Alter The Rep Scheme: The last method is to alter the reps scheme. For example, if you find that your bench press begins to stall using 5x5, you can choose to lift heavier loads with a 3x3 rep scheme. You could even go higher to a 3x8 rep scheme for a month or so.
Remember that it will not be linear forever when it comes to progressive overload. This means that it’s not a straight path. There will be moments where you’ll need to back off and lift a lighter weight. However, you should be able to notice an overall trend over time.
Benefits Of A Push-Pull Split
The push pull split is ideal for lifters for quite a few reasons. These are the top reasons you should try a 4-day push pull split:
- Easy Organization: Ease and organization are key to an effective training program. The push pull handles this nicely as you can even see the organization in the name: pushing movements and pulling movements. Further, this can also be broken down into upper body muscles and lower body muscles for that specific session. This basically leaves you with specific muscle groups that you need to train on that day such as “upper pulling” or “lower pushing”. Now you know exactly what type of exercises you need to perform on that day.
- Manages Fatigue: This push-pull split operates on four days a week. That in itself is great for managing fatigue as you have three days of rest to use in between training sessions. Even still, the movements will be divided into four quadrants: upper, lower, pushing, pulling, which can be more effective than a full body workout routine for more advanced lifters. This variation allows even more fatigue management as you can alter the schedule.
- Easy To Personalize: While you have different muscle groups to train on a specific day, you can personalize the program by choosing what exercises you do and what type of rep scheme to use. This can be great as a trainee of any level can use it to reach the goals they want. Beginner, elite, bodybuilder, powerlifter…all populations can use a push pull split.
- Simple To Modify: Similar to above, you can alter this split for your goals. Or, you may find that you are having an issue when you run it and need to change some things. As long as you stay within the exercise group, you have a bit of freedom to alter as you need.
Why You Need To Follow A Structured Program
Very few people ever start going to the gym using a program. Most often, they will go to the gym and follow what other people do or listen to what some friends tell them to do. When you first start, this can actually work as your body has never felt this type of stimulus before; thus, it’s sufficient for muscle growth (pretty much anything will be at first).
However, this is going to wear off relatively quickly, and you’ll find that you are no longer enjoying the easy progress. This is because to continue progress, you must continually place a greater and greater stimulus on your muscles. Without following a structured program, this is very hard to do.
The easy fix to this issue is to simply follow a program. Doing so will ensure you are checking off all of the main variables you need to optimize your training.
The push-pull split is an awesome structured program to do that.
Primary Training Variables
When developing an effective program, there are a few variables that all should follow.
There can definitely be some variance, but a good program should have the top 3 components:
1. Primary Movement Patterns
When developing a training program, there are several basic movement patterns that it must consist of. Including all of these movement patterns into your program will not only work your body the way it’s supposed to be worked, you can also be confident that you will train every muscle in your body.
Below are the major movement patterns with examples of exercises.
Vertical Pushing:
Movements consist of pushing a load vertically overhead. For vertical push exercises, the shoulders will be the primary movers and will work with the triceps to finish the lockout overhead. These are also going to improve your overhead mobility greatly.
- Dumbbell Strict Press
- Dumbbell Press
Horizontal Pushing:
Movements that consist of pushing a load away from you. Horizontal push exercises are going to train the chest, shoulders, and triceps.
- Bench Press
- Push-up
Vertical Pulling:
Movements that consist of pulling a load above you down towards you. Vertical pull exercises are going to train the entire back as well as the biceps and forearms.
- Chin-ups/Pull-ups
- Lat Pulldown
Horizontal Pulling:
Movements that consist of pulling a load from in front of you. Again, every back muscle will be trained with horizontal pull exercises. However, when using a horizontal pulling movement, the muscles will get hit from a different angle as well as perform different biomechanics. except from a different angle. The one unique muscle to be hit is the erector spinae. During many horizontal pulling movements, especially free weights, the trainee will be bent over, requiring an isometric hold.
- Bent over Row
- Seated Row
Squat:
Movements that consist of knee flexion and hip flexion. To be clear, all lower body compound movements will train every muscle. What differs is the degree to which it is trained; with squatting movements, the emphasis tends to be placed on the quadriceps due to the increased knee flexion which is involved. Therefore, we will consider these to be pushing movements.
- Back Squat
- Front Squat
- Hack Squat
Hip Hinge:
Movements that primarily consist of hip flexion and minimal knee flexion. Hip hinges are going to use the erector spinae, glutes, and hamstrings primarily. Together, these three muscles are known as the posterior lateral chain and activate to extend the hips.
- Deadlift
- Hip Thrust
Lunges:
Lunges consist of a movement pattern in which the legs are off-set with one being placed in front of the other. These will also work the entire lower body with differentiation coming from what style of the lunge is performed. That being said, these are generally performed with the squat.
- Walking lunges
- Split squats
2. Train Each Muscle Group Two Times A Week
Training frequency refers to how often you will train a muscle group weekly. For example, you could possibly train your chest once per week, twice per week, or even every day if you really wanted!
However, in order to optimize your training and balance fatigue, studies have shown that training a muscle group twice a week produces the greatest results2. Ideally, your workout plan will represent this by training each muscle with 2-3 days of rest in between.
3. Utilize The Entire Rep Spectrum
It doesn’t matter if your primary goal is muscle hypertrophy or strength, you should be training with the entire rep spectrum. While muscle strength and hypertrophy operate on two very different physiological systems, there is a distinct beneficial relationship between the two.
In other words, a bigger muscle has the potential for being a stronger muscle, and a stronger muscle has greater potential to become a bigger muscle. Further, using different loading patterns can be a great way to add some variance in your training for continual growth.
Push-Pull: The Best 4-Day Split There Is?
So is this push-pull split the best 4 day split there is for strength and hypertrophy? That’s a bit hard to say as there’s really no such thing as “best” when it comes to training programs. But, it’s pretty damn effective.
You will notice that it has everything you need to progress. All of the major movement patterns are included across a wide rep range. Plus, there are options for variability so that you have a path to follow in case you get stuck. We included great methods for you to continue progressing and never stall.
If you have four days a week that you can dedicate to running this program, you’re definitely going to see results.
Interested in more push-pull training content? Check out the best Push Day Workout and Pull Day Workout!
Prepare to maximize your strength with our exclusive 13-week strength training program. 3, 4, and 5 day per week programming options.
References:
- Schoenfeld BJ, Ogborn D, Krieger JW. Dose-response relationship between weekly resistance training volume and increases in muscle mass: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of sports sciences. 2017;35(11):1073-1082. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/02640414.2016.1210197
- Schoenfeld BJ, Ogborn D, Krieger JW. Effects of Resistance Training Frequency on Measures of Muscle Hypertrophy: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Sports Medicine. 2016;46(11):1689-1697. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-016-0543-8
Sam Coleman
Author