The 6 Day Workout Split: Push/Pull/Legs Twice, and Who Should Wait

Six days a week sounds like the serious option, and that reputation is doing a lot of damage. People jump to it because it is what the lifters they follow run, then discover that six sessions is not just more training, it is a different relationship with your week. Miss two days and half your programme is gone.

Here is the honest case for it. Six days is genuinely the best schedule in this cluster for one specific reason, and it is not volume. It is that six days lets you hit every muscle twice a week in sessions short enough to stay sharp. Three sets of quality beats five sets of grinding, and six days buys you that.

This guide gives you the six day week, the two layouts worth running, and a clear account of who should not be doing this yet.

Build your 6 day split in Pocket Fit. It writes the sessions around your equipment and runs the weight progression so six days of tracking does not become a second job. Free on the App Store and Google Play.

Why push/pull/legs twice is the default

Six divides into three twice, so push/pull/legs run through the week twice is the obvious layout, and for once the obvious answer is the right one.

• Monday: Push A
• Tuesday: Pull A
• Wednesday: Legs A
• Thursday: Push B
• Friday: Pull B
• Saturday: Legs B
• Sunday: rest

Every muscle gets two sessions. Every session has a single clear job. Nothing is trained on consecutive days, because push, pull and legs use largely different muscles, so Tuesday's back work is not fighting Monday's chest work for recovery.

The alternative worth knowing is the Arnold split: Chest and Back, Shoulders and Arms, Legs, repeated twice. It also gets everything to two sessions a week. The difference is that it pairs antagonists in one session, which some people find more enjoyable and which lets you superset. Both work. Push/pull/legs is easier to keep straight in your head, which is why it is the default here.

What does not work at six days is a full body split. Six full body sessions means six sessions a week for every muscle, which is more than you can recover from at any intensity worth doing.

The real advantage: shorter sessions, not more work

This is the part people get backwards. Six days is not for doing more total work than four days. It is for doing the same work in smaller pieces.

Take back training. Sixteen hard sets a week is a solid target. On a four day upper/lower split that is eight sets per session, and by set six you are tired and the quality is dropping. On a six day push/pull/legs split it is eight sets across two pull days, so four or five sets each, every one of them sharp.

Schoenfeld, Ogborn and Krieger, in the Journal of Sports Sciences, pooled fifteen studies and found higher weekly volume beat lower by about 3.9% more growth, with each extra weekly set adding a little more. But every one of those sets has to actually be a hard set to count. Six days is the schedule that makes twenty weekly sets per muscle feel manageable rather than punishing.

If you take that advantage and use it to do eight sets per session across six days instead, you have thirty two weekly sets for back and a recovery problem. The point is shorter sessions, not longer weeks.

The full six day week

Around forty five minutes each. Compounds first, rest 90 seconds to two minutes on the heavy sets and around a minute on isolation.

Push A

• Flat Bench Press: 4 sets of 6 to 8
• Seated dumbbell shoulder press: 3 sets of 8 to 10
• Incline dumbbell press: 3 sets of 10 to 12
• Cable lateral raise: 3 sets of 12 to 15
• Rope Pushdown: 3 sets of 12 to 15

Pull A

• Bent-Over Barbell Row: 4 sets of 6 to 8
• Lat Pulldown: 3 sets of 8 to 10
• Seated cable row: 3 sets of 10 to 12
• Face pull: 3 sets of 15
• Standing Barbell Curl: 3 sets of 10 to 12

Legs A

• Back Squat: 4 sets of 6 to 8
• Romanian Deadlift: 3 sets of 8 to 10
• Leg press: 3 sets of 10 to 12
• Seated leg curl: 3 sets of 12 to 15
• Standing calf raise: 4 sets of 12 to 15

Push B

• Overhead Press: 4 sets of 6 to 8
• Flat dumbbell press: 3 sets of 8 to 10
• Machine chest fly: 3 sets of 12 to 15
• Dumbbell lateral raise: 3 sets of 12 to 15
• Triceps Dips: 3 sets of 8 to 12

Pull B

• Pull-Ups or assisted pull-up: 4 sets to near failure
• Chest-supported row: 3 sets of 8 to 10
• Single-arm dumbbell row: 3 sets of 10 to 12
• Rear delt fly: 3 sets of 15
• Incline dumbbell curl: 3 sets of 10 to 12

Legs B

• Deadlift: 3 sets of 5
• Bulgarian Split Squat: 3 sets of 8 to 10 each leg
• Barbell Hip Thrust: 3 sets of 8 to 10
• Lying leg curl: 3 sets of 12 to 15
• Seated calf raise: 4 sets of 15 to 20

Five exercises a session, three or four sets each. A days lead with horizontal pressing, horizontal pulling and a squat. B days lead with vertical pressing, vertical pulling and a hinge. Same muscles twice, different joint stress, no session that feels like a repeat of one you did three days ago.

Who should not run this yet

Three groups, and being in one of them is not a character flaw.

If you have trained for less than about six months. Not because you cannot handle the work, but because your technique is still changing and six sessions a week of a movement you are still learning bakes in whatever you are doing wrong. Learn the lifts on three days or four first.

If you sleep badly or your life is unpredictable. Six days assumes recovery you may not have. Six sessions on six hours of sleep is not a more advanced programme, it is the same programme done worse, and the research that supports high volume assumes you are recovering between sessions.

If you are in a meaningful calorie deficit. Murphy and Koehler, in Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports, found that energy deficiency impaired gains in lean mass, though strength held up better. Six days of training while eating well under maintenance is a lot of stress for a body that is short on fuel. The workout split for weight loss guide covers what to change instead.

Four days on upper/lower, run for a year, beats six days abandoned in six weeks. That is not a consolation prize, it is the actual better outcome.

Where the evidence runs thin

The case for six days rests on frequency and volume findings that are shakier than they get quoted as. Schoenfeld, Ogborn and Krieger found twice weekly training produced a larger effect on muscle size than once weekly, 0.49 against 0.30, but when Schoenfeld, Grgic and Krieger revisited it in the Journal of Sports Sciences with weekly volume held equal, frequency stopped being the driver and total work took over. Grgic and colleagues reached the same conclusion for strength in Sports Medicine. Six days is not better because six is a better number. It is better because it is a convenient container for a lot of quality sets.

And the volume research has a ceiling nobody has mapped properly. More sets is better up to a point, that point differs by person, and the studies stop long before you would. Six days makes it easy to run past your own limit without noticing, because nothing feels wrong until progress stalls and the joints start complaining.

Where Pocket Fit fits

Six days is six times the admin. Which of the six am I on, was that Pull A or Pull B, what did I row last Friday, do I add weight or hold.

Pocket Fit carries that. It builds the six day structure around your equipment, tracks every set, and tells you when to nudge the weight and when to leave it, which is the decision that matters most at this frequency. Miss a session and the scheduler moves the rest along instead of dropping it, so a lost Wednesday does not cost legs a whole week of frequency. And because it adjusts from what you log rather than what the plan assumed, an honest bad week shows up as a lighter next week rather than a stalled programme.

For the full picture of how the app builds a programme and every split it offers, the walkthrough is here.

Put it together

Six days works, and it works for a reason people usually miss. Push, Pull, Legs, twice through the week, gets every muscle two sessions in workouts short enough that every set is a real set. Use the extra days to shorten your sessions, not to double your weekly volume.

Earn it first. Six months of consistent training, sleep you can rely on, and food that supports the work. If any of those three is missing, four days will get you further this year. The workout split pillar covers how to make that call, and the 5 day guide is the middle step.

Start with Pocket Fit, free. Six days in, and it keeps the thread. On iOS and Android.

References

1. Schoenfeld, B. J., Ogborn, D., & Krieger, J. W. (2016). Effects of Resistance Training Frequency on Measures of Muscle Hypertrophy: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Sports Medicine, 46(11), 1689-1697. DOI: 10.1007/s40279-016-0543-8
2. Schoenfeld, B. J., Ogborn, D., & Krieger, J. W. (2017). Dose-response relationship between weekly resistance training volume and increases in muscle mass: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Sports Sciences, 35(11), 1073-1082. DOI: 10.1080/02640414.2016.1210197
3. Schoenfeld, B. J., Grgic, J., & Krieger, J. (2019). How many times per week should a muscle be trained to maximize muscle hypertrophy? A systematic review and meta-analysis of studies examining the effects of resistance training frequency. Journal of Sports Sciences, 37(11), 1286-1295.
4. Grgic, J., Schoenfeld, B. J., Davies, T. B., Lazinica, B., Krieger, J. W., & Pedisic, Z. (2018). Effect of Resistance Training Frequency on Gains in Muscular Strength: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Sports Medicine, 48(5), 1207-1220.
5. Murphy, C., & Koehler, K. (2022). Energy deficiency impairs resistance training gains in lean mass but not strength: A meta-analysis and meta-regression. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports, 32(1), 125-137.

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Pocket Fit is a fitness and wellbeing app, not a medical device. It does not diagnose, treat or prevent any condition. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before starting or changing a training or nutrition programme.

Georgi, founder of Pocket Fit. He went from 122 kg to competing at The Yard Games, having lost 38 kg along the way.