What Is the Push Pull Legs Routine?

The push pull legs routine, also known as the push/pull/legs or PPL split, is a weightlifting program that has you do three kinds of workouts:

Push workout

push workouts focus on the muscles involved in your upper body pushing motions, with the major ones being your pecs, triceps, and shoulders.

push workouts will generally revolve around barbell and dumbbell bench press, overhead (military) pressing, dipping, and doing isolation exercises for your triceps.

Pull workout

pull workouts focus on the muscles involved in your upper body pulling motions, with the major ones being your back muscles and biceps.

generally revolve around deadlifting, barbell and dumbbell rowing, pulldowns, pull-ups and chin-ups, and doing isolation exercises for your biceps

Legs workout

leg workouts focus on training your quads, hamstrings, glutes, and calves. generally revolve around squatting, lunging, and doing various isolation exercises for each major muscle group noted above.

What Are the Benefits of Push Pull Legs?

Like most good weightlifting programs, PPL keeps you doing compound exercises most of the time. Compound exercises are movements that involve multiple large muscle groups that require (and develop) maximum full-body strength. And this kind of split allows you work at different muscle groups every other day, the muscle group you worked at the previous day can get sufficient rest. That’s the key to gain muscle mass and help you avoid injury! 

Traditional 6-Day Push, Pull & Legs Routine

Monday – Chest, Shoulder and Triceps

Tuesday – Back, Biceps and Abs

Wednesday – Legs

Thursday – Chest, Shoulder and Triceps

Friday – Back, Biceps and Abs

Saturday – Legs

Sunday – Rest

Push/Pull/Legs Workout Schedule