Push pull legs routine (push, pull and legs)

What is a push pull legs routine

Push pull legs, or PPL, splits the week into three types of day based on movement. The push day groups the exercises where you move the weight away from your body, like the incline dumbbell press, the shoulder press and triceps extensions. The pull day groups the ones where you bring it toward you, like the barbell row, the lat pulldown and the barbell curl. The leg day works the quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes and calves.

Grouping them this way follows a simple logic. Muscles that work together are trained on the same day. A chest press also uses triceps and shoulders, so the push day ends with triceps and shoulders that are already warmed up. Each session has a clear focus and leaves room for several exercises per area. In Mobbe routines, the pull day shows up as Pull.

No trials study PPL as such. What has been studied are the variables that make it work, like the hard sets you do per muscle each week, how many times you train each muscle and how close to failure you finish each set. With the same weekly volume, splitting the body or training it all in every session gives similar strength and muscle results (Ramos-Campo et al., 2024, a meta-analysis of 14 studies). Choosing PPL is mostly a matter of the days you have available and your preference.

How to spread the days across the week

PPL adapts to 3, 5 or 6 days. With 6 days you run the cycle twice and every muscle is trained twice a week. With 3 days you run it once, so every muscle is trained only once. With 5 days the usual approach is to add an upper day and a legs day after the cycle, so everything repeats twice without reaching six days.

With 6 days, the same type of day comes back every three days, so each muscle rests about 72 hours between one session and the next. You can train on consecutive days because each day works different muscles. If your week has no fixed order, another option is to train three days and rest one. That way the cycle shifts across the calendar and each type of day comes back every four days.

Who push pull legs is for

• Intermediate or advanced level. The sources that describe it place it after full body and upper/lower. For advanced lifters, the ACSM (2009) proposes 4 to 6 days with muscle-group splits, which allow more volume per muscle.
• 6 days a week, or 3 if you accept a low frequency. Those are the two numbers of days where the cycle comes out complete. With 4 days, one type of day repeats and the other two don't.
• Goal: build muscle. It is the split that leaves the most room for chest, back and shoulder sets in every session. If your main goal is strength, check out the strength routines.
• A week you can sustain. If missing sessions is common in your week, losing one day leaves an entire pattern untrained until the next cycle.

If you're just starting out, you can also do PPL. With 3 days, a full body routine trains each muscle more often in the same time, and with 4 days an upper lower split trains it twice. The ACSM (2026) notes that many different programs work for beginners, as long as they keep progressing and stick with it over time.

Volume and frequency per muscle

Volume is the number of hard sets each muscle does per week, and it is the variable that matters most for building muscle. Schoenfeld, Ogborn and Krieger (2017) found a dose-response relationship, where more weekly sets give more growth. The 2026 ACSM position stand associates the greatest hypertrophy with 10 or more sets per muscle per week, and sees the curve flatten around 18 to 20 sets.

Going past 20 adds little. 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. Pelland et al. (2026), with 67 studies, also find diminishing returns, more marked for strength than for muscle. For most people, 10 to 20 sets per muscle per week is a good working range. You can also build muscle with fewer sets (Currier et al., 2023), which is a good starting point if you're just beginning.

Frequency is how many times per week you train each muscle. A meta-analysis by Schoenfeld, Ogborn and Krieger (2016) saw more hypertrophy when training each muscle twice a week than once. A later one, with 25 studies, found no differences when weekly volume is the same (Schoenfeld, Grgic and Krieger, 2019). Frequency mostly helps you spread the volume. Eighteen sets of chest in a single day is a lot, and split across two days they are done with less accumulated fatigue.

That explains the difference between the versions. With 6 days, reaching 10 or more sets per muscle is easy without endless sessions. With 3 days, reaching 10 means doing them all on the same day, so those versions tend to end up with less volume per muscle. For strength, frequency seems to matter a bit more. Pelland et al. (2026) see strength rise with frequency, although each extra session adds less, while Grgic et al. (2018) attribute almost all of the effect to volume.

The table counts the sets where each muscle is the primary mover and the days of the week it is trained. The main lifts also add work for other muscles. The chest press adds triceps and shoulders, and the squat adds glutes.

A set counts if it is hard. The ACSM (2026) concludes that you don't need to reach failure and proposes finishing with 2 or 3 reps in reserve (RIR). The meta-analyses by Grgic et al. (2022) and Refalo et al. (2023) also find no clear advantage of failure for building muscle. Every Mobbe routine lists the RIR for its exercises.

Common mistakes with push pull legs

1. Copying day A into day B. With 6 days, the second push day doesn't have to be identical to the first. The usual approach is to repeat the main exercise with a different rep range and swap the accessories for others that work the muscle from another angle. Rotating exercises randomly or too often, on the other hand, can backfire (Kassiano et al., 2022).
2. Neglecting the rear delts and hamstrings. The push day loads the front delts, and the leg day tends to revolve around the squat. Add a pull for the rear delts, like the cable face pull, and an exercise for the hamstrings, like the Romanian deadlift or the lying leg curl.
3. Filling the day with similar exercises. Four chest press variations in the same session add fatigue more than new stimulus. Choose exercises that change the angle. The triceps extension with the arm overhead, like the cable overhead triceps extension, grew the triceps about 1.4 times more than the same extension with the arm at the side (Maeo et al., 2023).
4. Taking every set to failure. With 6 days in a row, fatigue accumulates. Reaching failure doesn't give more muscle than stopping close to it (Refalo et al., 2023), and in one study it delayed recovery by up to 24 to 48 hours (Morán-Navarro et al., 2017). Leave 1 to 3 reps in reserve on most sets.

How to progress with push pull legs

Progressing means doing a bit more than last time, with one more rep or a little more weight. Plotkin et al. (2022) compared adding load with adding reps over 8 weeks in trained people, and both approaches worked. Mobbe's push pull legs routines use double progression, which combines the two.

1. Pick a load that lets you reach the bottom of the range with the indicated RIR. If the routine says 3 × 8–12 at RIR 2, look for a weight you can lift for at least 8 reps with 2 left in reserve.
2. Add reps with that weight, session after session, without changing your technique or range of motion.
3. Raise the weight when all sets reach the top of the range. Use the smallest increase available and build back up from the bottom of the range.

An example. With 3 × 8–12, doing 12, 10 and 9 reps doesn't mean you have to go up. Doing 12, 12 and 12 at the indicated RIR does. 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. To choose your starting weight, the 1RM calculator estimates your max and your working weights.

With 6 days a week, the main exercise for each muscle can show up twice. Progress each appearance separately, with its own range. If your performance drops for several sessions in a row, check your sleep, rest and food before adding sets. To build muscle you also need to eat enough protein, and the protein calculator gives you the grams for your weight. If you still don't move forward, do a week with about half the sets and the same load. The expert consensus by Bell et al. (2023) agrees that a deload lowers volume, and sees no evidence that you need to schedule it every so many weeks.

In Mobbe every set is saved. When you train, you see next to each set what you did in the previous session, so you know what you need to beat.

Questions about push pull legs

Sources

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