6-Day Gym Workout Routine: guide and 4 free routines

What is a 6-day routine

A 6-day routine spreads your training over six sessions a week and leaves one day free. Six full body sessions would be too many, so each day works only one part of the body and each muscle repeats two or three times a week. There are three common ways to split it, and each routine in this list uses one of them.

Push pull legs twice. Intermediate PPL 6 Days and PPL 6 days high volume do push, pull and legs, and repeat the cycle with other exercises. Each muscle is trained twice. How each type of day is built is in the push pull legs guide.
Arnold split. Arnold split 6 days pairs chest with back, shoulders with arms, and legs, twice each. Instead of grouping by push and pull, it pairs opposing muscles, which makes it easier to alternate a press with a row. Shoulders and arms get their own day and don't end up at the tail of a long session.
Upper-lower three times. Upper-lower advanced 6 days alternates upper and lower, so each half of the body is trained three times, with 3 or 4 exercises per session. The logic of the split is in the upper-lower guide.

Training six days is an advanced-level tool. The ACSM (2009) notes that advanced athletes and bodybuilders use high frequency, four to six sessions per week or more, with sessions in which not every muscle is trained, followed by recovery. The practical advantage is spreading a lot of weekly volume over more days, with fewer sets per session.

How to spread the 6 days and the rest

The four routines follow the same base calendar, with six training days and one rest day. What changes is what you train each day and how long each muscle rests before it repeats.

Three ways to build a 6-day week
Day	PPL × 2	Arnold split	Upper-lower × 3
Monday	Push A	Chest and back A	Upper A
Tuesday	Pull A	Shoulders and arms A	Lower A
Wednesday	Legs A	Legs A	Upper B
Thursday	Push B	Chest and back B	Lower B
Friday	Pull B	Shoulders and arms B	Upper C
Saturday	Legs B	Legs B	Lower C
Sunday	Rest	Rest	Rest

In the PPL and the Arnold split, each type of day comes back every three days, so chest, back and legs rest about 72 hours between sessions. In upper-lower, each half comes back every 48 hours, and that is why each session carries fewer sets. The delicate point of the Arnold split is the shoulders and arms day, which arrives right after chest and back, when the front delts and triceps have already worked in the presses. That is why Arnold split 6 days uses a moderate shoulder press.

The rest day is part of the routine. The ACSM (2009) includes rest days in the planning to allow recovery and lower the chance of overtraining. If six days in a row feel heavy, move the rest day to the middle, with three training days, one rest day and three more. The order of the sessions doesn't change and you reach the second half of the week more rested.

Who a 6-day routine is for

Advanced level, or intermediate with experience. Three of the four routines are advanced level. For advanced lifters, the ACSM (2009) proposes 4 to 6 days per week. If it is your first time with six days, Intermediate PPL 6 Days is the entry point, with slightly fewer sets and more reps in reserve on the main lifts.
Six days you can really stick to. With six sessions, missing one leaves a part of the body without its second session of the week. The ACSM (2026) considers it more important to adapt the program so the person actually does it than to follow an ideal prescription.
Goal of building muscle. All four routines are designed to build muscle or recomp the body. Also see the routines to build muscle mass. If your main goal is strength, see the strength routines.
If you want high frequency without high volume. Upper-lower advanced 6 days uses the six days for sessions with few exercises, not to add sets.

More days is not better on its own. With the same weekly volume, training a muscle 1 day or more than 5 days per week gave the same hypertrophy in the ACSM (2026) review, and the meta-analysis by Schoenfeld, Grgic and Krieger (2019) reaches the same conclusion. The extra days are for spreading the sets, they don't add stimulus by themselves. If your real week has 4 or 5 days, a 4-day routine or a 5-day one that you complete does more for you than a 6-day one where you often miss.

Weekly volume per muscle

With six days it is easy to reach a lot of volume, so the limit becomes how much each extra set adds. The ACSM (2026) associates the greatest hypertrophy with 10 or more sets per muscle per week, and sees the gain flatten around 18 to 20. Pelland et al. (2026), with 67 studies, also find diminishing returns, more marked for strength than for muscle. Baz-Valle et al. (2022) saw no differences in quadriceps or biceps between 12 to 20 weekly sets and more than 20, although the triceps did grow more with high volume.

That is why the routines in this list don't go past 20 direct sets per muscle. They differ in how they spread that volume. The two PPLs and the Arnold split put 15 to 19 sets on the large muscles, with 4 to 6 exercises per session. Upper-lower stays at 12, spread over three days, and makes for lighter sessions.

Direct sets per week in Mobbe's 6-day routines
Muscle	Intermediate PPL 6 Days	PPL 6 days high volume	Arnold split 6 days	Upper-lower advanced 6 days
Chest	15 over 2 days	19 over 2 days	17 over 2 days	12 over 3 days
Back	17 over 2 days	18 over 2 days	17 over 2 days	12 over 3 days
Shoulders	12 over 2 days	13 over 2 days	12 over 2 days	6 over 2 days
Quads	17 over 2 days	18 over 2 days	15 over 2 days	12 over 3 days
Hamstrings	9 over 2 days	10 over 2 days	10 over 2 days	6 over 2 days

The table counts the sets where each muscle is the primary one and the days of the week on which it is worked. The main lifts also add work to other muscles. Chest presses work the triceps and front delts, and the squat and the hip thrust work the glutes.

For strength, frequency matters a bit more. Pelland et al. (2026) see strength rise with more sessions per week, although each adds less than the one before, while Grgic et al. (2018) found no effect of frequency when volume was the same.

A set counts if it is hard, and with six days how close you get to failure matters more than in other splits. The ACSM (2026) proposes finishing with 2 or 3 reps in reserve (RIR), and Refalo et al. (2023) found no more muscle from reaching failure than from stopping close to it. Every Mobbe routine lists the RIR for its exercises.

Common mistakes with 6 days

Adding days without lowering the sets in each session. If you go from 4 to 6 days with the same sessions, the week's volume goes up 50%. Six days are for spreading the work, not stacking it.
Taking everything to failure. In a study with trained men, reaching failure delayed recovery by up to 24 to 48 hours compared with doing the same reps without reaching it (Morán-Navarro et al., 2017). With a muscle that works again at 48 or 72 hours, you notice it. The drop sets in these routines go on the isolation exercises at the end, and in the intermediate version they are optional.
Jumping straight into the highest volume. If you are coming from 3 or 4 days, go up gradually. Start with Intermediate PPL 6 Days or with Upper-lower advanced 6 days, and move to PPL 6 days high volume when you recover well from one week to the next.
Changing routines at the first plateau. Repeating the same sessions lets you compare and add weight. Rotating exercises at random or too often can take away from your progress (Kassiano et al., 2022). Before changing, try a deload week.

How to progress and when to deload

All four routines use double progression. You add reps with the same weight and, when all sets reach the top of the range at the indicated RIR, you go up by the smallest increase available and return to the bottom. Plotkin et al. (2022) compared raising the load with raising reps in trained people, and both approaches worked over 8 weeks. The ACSM (2009) gives a similar rule, which is to raise the load by 2 to 10% when you do 1 or 2 more reps than targeted in two sessions in a row.

In these routines, day A and day B use different main lifts, like the flat press and the incline barbell press, or the squat and the front squat. Track the progression of each exercise separately. To choose your starting weights, the 1RM calculator estimates your max and your working weights.

With six days, fatigue builds up faster than with three or four, and that is where the deload comes in. The expert consensus by Bell et al. (2023) defines it as a period with less training stress to recover. There was unanimous agreement that volume has to go down, and load can be kept only if volume drops. According to the same consensus, a deload can be planned or taken when fatigue shows up, and regularly scheduled deloads might not be needed.

When to deload. When performance drops for several sessions in a row, when fatigue and aches pile up, or at the end of the routine's block of weeks.
How to deload. A week with the same days, about half the sets, the same load and a few more reps in reserve.
After the deload. Go back to the full sets with the weights you had. If performance stays low, check your sleep and food before adding work.

To build muscle with this volume you also need to eat enough. The calorie calculator and the protein calculator give you a starting point. In Mobbe every set is saved and, when you train, you see what you did in the previous session on each exercise, so you know what to beat.

Questions about 6-day routines

Can I train all 7 days?

The routines in this list leave one day free, and it is worth respecting it. The ACSM (2009) includes rest days in the planning to recover and lower the chance of overtraining. On that day you can walk or move gently with no problem.

What do I do if I miss a day?

Pick up where you left off and move the rest back a day, instead of skipping the session. If you miss often, a 4 or 5-day routine might fit your week better.

How long should I rest between sets?

To build muscle, more than 60 seconds. Beyond 90 it hardly changes the result (Singer et al., 2024). On heavy main lifts, if you are after strength, more than 2 minutes works better in trained people (Grgic et al., 2018). In supersets of two opposing muscles, the rest goes at the end of each round.

Do the Arnold split supersets hurt results?

Alternating an exercise for one muscle with one for the opposing muscle, like a chest press with a row, shortens the session without losing volume or results, although it feels harder (Zhang et al., 2025). If you prefer regular sets, do the same exercises one after the other and rest between sets.

Can I do cardio with a 6-day routine?

Yes. In a meta-analysis of 43 studies, adding aerobic exercise did not hold back muscle or maximal strength (Schumann et al., 2022). If you do both on the same day, lifting weights first was associated with more leg strength (Murlasits et al., 2018).

6-day gym workout routine