PPLUL Split: A 5-Day Push Pull Legs Upper Lower Plan

A PPLUL split trains five days a week in the order Push, Pull, Legs, Upper, Lower. The first three days divide the body by movement and the last two divide it by region, so every major muscle is trained twice a week and two days are left for rest. Most versions, including this one, use the Push, Pull and Legs days for moderate-load volume work and the Upper and Lower days for heavier compound lifts.

Below is the full week with sets, reps and effort targets, a count of every set per muscle, and a comparison of PPLUL with ULPPL and the other ways to order the five days.

What is a PPLUL split?

A PPLUL split is a five-session week: Push (chest, shoulders, triceps), Pull (back, rear delts, biceps), Legs (quads, hamstrings, glutes, calves), Upper (the whole upper body) and Lower (the whole lower body). Because the Upper and Lower days revisit what the first three days trained, each muscle gets two sessions a week.

Twice a week is the point of the structure. A 2016 meta-analysis by Schoenfeld, Ogborn and Krieger found that higher training frequencies produced more growth than lower ones (an average effect size of 0.49 against 0.30), and that among volume-matched studies, training a muscle twice a week beat once a week. Their later 2019 analysis of 25 studies found no significant difference between frequencies once volume was equated, and concluded that lifters can choose a frequency by personal preference.

In short, twice a week is a sensible floor, mostly because it splits the week's sets into two sessions you can do well. Our guide to training frequency per muscle group covers the research.

What does a PPLUL week look like?

The standard week runs Monday to Friday with the weekend off. In this plan the first three sessions use moderate loads for 8 to 15 reps, and the last two use heavier loads for 3 to 8 reps on the main lifts.

A midweek rest day spaces the sessions better; the PPLUL vs ULPPL section below shows how much.

The 5-day PPLUL workout plan

Each day below lists the working sets only. RIR is reps in reserve: RIR 2 means you stop with about two good reps left. If RIR is new to you, read training to failure vs RIR first. Warm up before the first lift of each day; our guide to how many warm-up sets you need covers how to ramp up.

Day 1: Push

Day 2: Pull

Day 3: Legs

Day 4: Upper (heavy)

Day 5: Lower (heavy)

Rest longer on the heavy compound lifts. In a trial of 21 trained men, Schoenfeld and colleagues found that 3-minute rests between sets produced more strength and more thigh muscle than 1-minute rests over 8 weeks. Take 2 to 3 minutes or more on squats, deadlifts, presses and rows, and less on isolation work. Our article on rest between sets has the details.

Swap any exercise for one that trains the same muscle in the same way and suits your gym and joints. A hack squat for a front squat, or a chest-supported machine row for a dumbbell row, changes very little.

How many sets per muscle does PPLUL give you?

This plan gives chest, back, quads, hamstrings and glutes 10 to 14 direct sets a week. Counting compound lifts at half credit for the muscles that assist them, the arms reach about 12 sets and the front and rear delts 7 or 8, which leaves side delts and calves, at about 6, the thinnest.

The half-credit method comes from Pelland and colleagues' 2025 meta-regression of 67 studies and 2,058 participants. Of the counting methods they tested, the evidence was strongest for counting a set at half weight for a muscle that assists rather than leads, such as the triceps in a bench press.

Which muscle leads a lift is a judgement call, and these calls are ours: presses count as indirect work for the triceps and front delts, pulls for the biceps, rows for the rear delts, and the leg press and front squat for the glutes. Treat the totals as estimates.

More sets generally build more muscle, up to a point. A 2017 meta-analysis by Schoenfeld, Ogborn and Krieger found a graded dose-response, with each additional weekly set linked to slightly more growth, and Pelland's team found diminishing returns as volume climbs. So the gaps in the table are where to add work first:

• Side delts: add 2 or 3 sets of lateral raises to the Lower day.
• Calves: add one or two sets to each calf exercise if your calves lag.
• Arms: add direct sets only if your arms are a priority; the compound work covers a lot.

PPLUL vs ULPPL: does the order of the days matter?

ULPPL runs the same five sessions in a different order: Upper, Lower, Push, Pull, Legs. The training is identical, but the order changes how many days each muscle gets between its two sessions and whether the heavy days start or end the week.

The table shows the gap in days between each area's two sessions: first within the week, then to the next week's first session.

Monday to Friday PPLUL puts the heaviest leg session, with deadlifts, on the fifth straight training day and only two days after squats and Romanian deadlifts. ULPPL starts the week with the heavy days after two rest days and spaces the legs better, but its chest sessions fall two days apart. Inserting one rest day midweek gives every area three or four days between sessions, at the cost of a Saturday session.

This is reasoning from the calendar; no trial we found compares these orders directly. If your legs feel flat on Friday, try ULPPL or move the rest day before changing exercises.

PPLUL vs PPL vs Upper/Lower: which should you run?

All three train each muscle twice a week if you run them as designed. The real difference is how many days you train: six for twice-through PPL, five for PPLUL and four for Upper/Lower. Pick the one whose day count you can keep for months.

The research backs choosing by schedule. The 2019 frequency meta-analysis found no meaningful difference in muscle growth between frequencies when volume was equal. For strength, a 2018 meta-analysis of 22 studies by Grgic and colleagues found that higher frequencies helped mainly by adding volume, and Pelland's 2025 analysis found strength gains rising with frequency but with diminishing returns.

PPLUL's fifth session adds weekly sets without lengthening any one session. For the parent splits head to head, see Push Pull Legs vs Upper/Lower, and for a six-day plan, our push pull legs routine.

Who should run a PPLUL split?

PPLUL suits lifters with at least several months of consistent training who can recover from five sessions a week and want both size and strength work in one plan. Beginners do well on two or three full-body sessions a week, which leave more room to recover and to practise the main lifts.

The American College of Sports Medicine's position stand recommends 2 to 3 training days a week for novices, 3 to 4 for intermediates and 4 to 5 for advanced lifters, which puts PPLUL at the top of the range. Newer lifters should start with a 3-day workout split.

PPLUL is a poor fit if:

• You often miss a day. A missed Monday leaves the push muscles one session that week; a 4-day plan absorbs misses better.
• Your sport already loads your legs. Two leg days on top of running or team training is a lot to recover from.
• You are peaking one lift. A powerlifter close to a meet needs more specific practice.

How do you progress a PPLUL split?

Progress the Push, Pull and Legs days with double progression: keep the load until every set reaches the top of its rep range at the target RIR, then add a small amount and start again at the bottom of the range. Progress the Upper and Lower main lifts with small load jumps whenever all sets are completed at RIR 2.

The ACSM position stand suggests a small load increase once you can do one or two reps more than the target: the smallest plates you have for upper-body lifts, slightly bigger jumps for squats and deadlifts. Our double progression guide has worked examples.

Keep most sets one or two reps short of failure. A 2023 meta-analysis by Refalo and colleagues found no evidence that training to momentary failure builds more muscle than stopping short, and over five sessions a week its extra fatigue adds up.

Plan deloads. An international Delphi study of strength and physique coaches defined deloading as "a period of reduced training stress designed to mitigate physiological and psychological fatigue, promote recovery, and enhance preparedness for subsequent training". The panel agreed that deloads can be planned in advance, taken when fatigue builds, or both, and that volume should come down. A practical start is a lighter week with fewer sets after every three to five hard weeks, or sooner if your heavy lifts stall two weeks running. See our deload week guide.

How do you run a PPLUL split in IronLedger?

IronLedger has no built-in PPLUL program, so you build it once as a custom program. On the Routine tab choose Custom ("Build week by week"), add five days to week 1, name them Push, Pull, Legs, Upper and Lower, and add each exercise with its sets, reps, load and an RPE or RIR target.

Then use Fill Forward to write the rest of the block from week 1. You choose a rule for each exercise:

• Linear adds 2.5 kg (or 5 lb) per work week.
• Double progression raises the rep target by one each work week for two weeks, then adds the load step and returns the reps to where they started.
• Hold keeps the numbers the same.

You also set the program length (2 to 24 weeks) and a work-to-deload ratio from 2:1 to 5:1. Deload weeks cut the load by a tenth and trim the sets. The rule belongs to the exercise, so an exercise that appears on two days follows the same rule on both.

If you plan in a spreadsheet, import it instead: IronLedger reads CSV, TSV and Excel files, offers a template, and keeps weeks, days, sets, reps, RPE and RIR. See our spreadsheet import guide.

Two limits. A custom program doesn't get IronLedger's live load recommendations, which run only on five built-in programs, including Push/Pull/Legs Strength Bias and Upper/Lower Powerbuilding; if you want the app to suggest your next weight, run one of those from the programs page. And the app counts weekly sets in total, not per muscle, so keep the table above as your per-muscle check.

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