If you want to use a 3 day workout split for hypertrophy, but you’re not quite sure what muscle groups to train on which days, this page will show you what to do.
Since you’re Googling around for advice about 3 day workout splits, I’m going to assume a few things are true about you.
First, you want to build muscle, and you’ve decided that a training frequency of three days a week is the way to go. However, you’ve got a lot of questions about exactly what your training program should look like.
- How many times a week should each muscle group be trained?
- What muscle groups should be trained with what other muscle groups?
- Should you target specific muscles in different workouts, or will you see faster gains if you train your whole body three times a week?
In this article, I’ll show you some of the most effective 3 day workout routines, as well as answer some of the most popular questions people are asking.
The Push/Pull/Legs 3-Day Split
First up, we have the classic push/pull/legs 3-day split, which involves training your chest, shoulders and triceps on Monday, your back and biceps on Wednesday, and your legs on Friday. Each muscle group is trained once every seven days.
- Monday: Chest, Shoulders, Triceps (Push)
- Tuesday: Off
- Wednesday: Back, Biceps (Pull)
- Thursday: Off
- Friday: Quads, Hamstrings, Calves (Legs)
- Saturday: Off
- Sunday: Off
Although hitting a muscle group just once a week is less popular than it used to be, research shows that it’s still an effective way to build muscle.
While I’d still recommend hitting each muscle group more often than once a week, that doesn’t mean you won’t see results with just one weekly training session per muscle group.
It’s not like leaving seven days between each body part produces zero gains. Training three days a week, and hitting each muscle just once during that training week can and will make your muscles grow.
The Full Body Workout Routine
As the name suggests, a full-body workout routine involves training your whole body – chest, back, shoulders, arms and legs – in a single training session.
This is the default version of the 3 day full-body workout. You train on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, then take the weekend off.
- Monday: Full Body Workout 1
- Tuesday: Off
- Wednesday: Full Body Workout 2
- Thursday: Off
- Friday: Full Body Workout 3
- Saturday: Off
- Sunday: Off
If you end up missing a workout, you can just push things back a day. For example, if you’re not able to train on Monday, you can start your training week on Tuesday instead.
- Monday: Off
- Tuesday: Full Body Workout 1
- Wednesday: Off
- Thursday: Full Body Workout 2
- Friday: Off
- Saturday: Full Body Workout 3
- Sunday: Off
In an ideal world, you’ll train on alternate days, so your muscles get at least 48 hours of rest between workouts.
But let’s say you miss your Wednesday workout, and your schedule doesn’t allow you to train at the weekend. In this case, training on consecutive days isn’t necessarily a problem.
- Monday: Full Body Workout 1
- Tuesday: Off
- Wednesday: Off
- Thursday: Full Body Workout 2
- Friday: Full Body Workout 3
- Saturday: Off
- Sunday: Off
In fact, training the same muscle groups on consecutive days has been shown to have a similar effect on hypertrophy compared to taking a day of rest between workouts [2].
There are many different ways to set up a full-body workout.
All three workouts can be exactly the same, or you can switch things up from one workout to the next.
Your first training session could involve heavy weights and lower reps (5-8 reps), with workout two revolving around moderate weights and reps (8-12 reps), and workout three comprising lighter weights and higher reps (15-20).
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You can also focus on specific muscles in different workouts. That is, your first training session of the week might focus on the chest, shoulders and triceps. You still train the legs, back and biceps, but with a lower volume of training.
In the second workout, the back and biceps get the extra attention, with correspondingly fewer sets for the legs, chest, shoulders and triceps.
Then in workout three, the focus shifts to quads, hamstrings and calves, with correspondingly less work for the upper body.
SEE ALSO: Upper/Lower Split vs Full Body: Which is Better?
The Upper/Lower 3-Day Split
With an upper/lower split, you work the muscles in your lower body and upper body in separate training sessions.
An upper body workout will normally hit your chest, back, shoulders, biceps and triceps. Lower body days center on your quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes and calves.
Let’s say you want to focus on gaining size in your upper body. In this case, you can do two upper body workouts and one lower body day over the course of the week.
- Monday: Upper Body
- Tuesday: Off
- Wednesday: Lower Body
- Thursday: Off
- Friday: Upper Body
- Saturday: Off
- Sunday: Off
This way, the muscles in your chest, back, shoulders and arms are trained twice a week, while the legs are only trained once. This means you can hit the upper body muscles with more volume, which should translate into a faster rate of growth.
If you do want to give your legs an equal amount of work, you can still use an upper/lower split. All you do is switch the order of the workouts the following week, so you start off with a lower body workout.
WEEK 1
- Monday: Upper Body
- Tuesday: Off
- Wednesday: Lower Body
- Thursday: Off
- Friday: Upper Body
- Saturday: Off
- Sunday: Off
WEEK 2
- Monday: Lower Body
- Tuesday: Off
- Wednesday: Upper Body
- Thursday: Off
- Friday: Lower Body
- Saturday: Off
- Sunday: Off
In week three, the upper body workout ends up back on Monday, and you start the cycle all over again. This way, each muscle group is trained with a frequency of three times in every two-week period.
SEE ALSO: 3 Day Upper/Lower Split
The Upper/Lower/Full 3-Day Split
The 3 day upper/lower/full body split merges an upper/lower split with a full-body workout. You hit the upper body on Monday and the lower body on Wednesday. Then, you train your whole body on Friday. With this 3-day split, the training frequency for each muscle group is twice a week.
- Monday: Upper Body
- Tuesday: Off
- Wednesday: Lower Body
- Thursday: Off
- Friday: Full Body
- Saturday: Off
- Sunday: Off
The Push/Pull 3-Day Split
If you don’t like the idea of days where you train only your legs and nothing else, you can use a push/pull split.
The push workout is focused on the pushing movements for the upper body, which involve the chest, shoulders and triceps. The pull workout is based around pulling movements for the upper body, which involve the back and biceps.
Rather than devote an entire training session to your lower body, you also do a little bit of leg work every time you train. That is, the push day workouts involve exercises that focus on your quads, while the pull day workouts include some work for your hamstrings.
Here’s what it looks like:
WEEK 1
- Monday: Push
- Tuesday: Off
- Wednesday: Pull
- Thursday: Off
- Friday: Push
- Saturday: Off
- Sunday: Off
WEEK 2
- Monday: Pull
- Tuesday: Off
- Wednesday: Push
- Thursday: Off
- Friday: Pull
- Saturday: Off
- Sunday: Off
In the third week, the upper body workout ends up back on Monday, and you repeat the cycle.
The Push/Pull/Full 3-Day Split
As with the upper/lower split, you can also throw in a full-body workout on the Friday, and turn the push/pull split into a push/pull/full routine (or a full-body/push/pull split).
- Monday: Push
- Tuesday: Off
- Wednesday: Pull
- Thursday: Off
- Friday: Full Body
- Saturday: Off
- Sunday: Off
The Upper-Body Focus 3-Day Split
As the name suggests, this 3-day split is focused on the upper body, with correspondingly less work for the legs.
The chest, back, and shoulders are trained twice a week, while the arms are worked directly once a week, and indirectly twice a week.
- Monday: Upper Body
- Tuesday: Off
- Wednesday: Legs + Arms
- Thursday: Off
- Friday: Upper Body
- Saturday: Off
- Sunday: Off
The Benefits of a 3-Day Workout Routine
1. A 3-day routine allows you to hit the major muscle groups 2-3 times per week, which is an effective training frequency for muscle growth. Training a muscle at least twice every seven days tends to stimulate more muscle growth than once a week.
2. A key advantage of any 3-day workout routine is that it tends to make for a more consistent training schedule. And your ability to stay consistent with a workout routine plays a key role in determining how well it works.
If you’re following a training program that requires you to train 3 times a week, you’re far more likely to stick to that program compared to training 4, 5 or 6 days a week.
3. Most 3-day splits leave you with plenty of time and energy to do other things. You can lift weights three days a week, and still have both the time and energy to run, swim, cycle, kayak, play sport or whatever you like on the days you’re not lifting weights.
The Drawbacks of a 3-Day Workout Routine
Over time, your body adapts to a given amount of training. A 3-day workout routine may have provided a sufficient stimulus for growth when you were starting out, but you’ll likely need a higher volume of training to keep the gains coming once you’ve moved past the beginner stages of training.
Typically, 3-day workout routines are used by resistance-training novices, while more advanced lifters will gravitate towards lifting weights 4-6 days a week.
Competitive bodybuilders, for example, will often train six times a week, sometimes twice a day, to ensure that every region of every muscle is developed to its full potential.
One way to increase training volume without having to increase the number of weekly training days is with the use of body part specialization cycles.
During a specialization cycle, you focus on improving 2-3 specific muscle groups at a time, doing more weekly sets for those muscles.
Other muscles aren’t left out completely, they’re just trained with less volume, with the goal being to maintain size and strength in those areas. Maintaining a given level of muscle mass doesn’t require as much volume as gaining it.
3 Day Workout Split: Popular Questions
Before I wrap this up, let’s take a look at some of the most popular questions about 3 day workout splits.
Avoid doing anything that’s going to interfere with your recovery from the last workout, or impair your ability to do the next one. I know that’s a really vague answer, but without knowing a lot more about you and the sort of shape you’re in at the moment, it’s hard to say for sure.
When they ask this type of question, most people are usually wondering if they can do some cardio on their rest days, and if so, how much and what type. That’s a subject I cover in this article on cardio and muscle growth.
As a rough guide, 10-12 sets per muscle group per week is a good starting point. Then you can adjust the number of sets based on how your body responds. Any increase in weekly training volume should be done gradually, where you add a set or two each week.
You can use a 3 day workout split to help you lose weight, but it’s your diet that will do most of the heavy lifting as far as weight loss is concerned. When it comes to getting lean, the food you eat (or, more importantly, that you don’t eat) matters more than what you do in the gym.
That depends on how you define being ripped. If you want to step on stage in a physique contest, chances are you’re going to need more than 3 days a week of training to get the job done.
But if all you want is a bit more muscle here or a little less fat there, working out 3 days a week should be enough, just as long as you combine that training with the right diet.
If you have access to the right equipment, there’s nothing to stop you doing a 3 day workout split at home.
Back when I started out lifting weights, I had a bench, a barbell, a pull-up bar and a couple of adjustable dumbbells tucked away in the corner of my living room. That was it. I didn’t even have a squat rack, and did barbell hack squats instead.
But I made a lot of progress in those early years, simply because I showed up, worked hard, and made the best of what I had.
You can get a solid workout in with your own bodyweight and some dumbbells, or even just a few bits and bobs you have lying around the house, which is something I show you how to do here: How to Build Muscle at Home
However, if training at home is going to be a regular thing, a bench, pull-up bar, and some gymnastic rings (or a suspension trainer) will come in very handy.
Training in a garage or spare room still requires self-discipline (in some ways, I used to find it harder to train at home, because of all the distractions).
But if you’re short on time, there isn’t a gym for miles around, or you just like the idea of having your own “Fortress of Solitude” where you can train in peace and quiet, training at home will do the job just fine.
Give yourself a couple of minutes rest between sets, longer if you need more time to catch your breath. Research to compare short (60 seconds or less) with longer (2-3 minutes) rest periods generally shows superior gains in both size and strength with the latter [3].
If I wanted to build muscle as fast as humanly possible, and had to pick one of the 3 day splits on this page, it would be the push/pull split.
If you want a good 4 day split workout, I’d go with a push/pull or an upper/lower split.
If you’re just starting out, lifting weights 3 days a week is a good place to start. Once you’ve moved past the beginner stages of training, you may need to move to a 4 or 5 day routine to keep the gains coming.
A 3 day workout split can work well for beginners and intermediates alike. It’s relatively simple, and shouldn’t take up more than 2-5 hours a week. It’s also flexible, and can be set up in various different ways depending on which days of the week you’re able to train.
If you want to gain muscle, there’s no need to do any cardio at all. But if you do want to do some for health reasons, or just to keep your cardiovascular fitness ticking along, I’d suggest doing cardio on your rest days. That is, if you’re lifting weights on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, you could do cardio on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
I’d also recommend mainly low-impact cardio, such as cycling, swimming, rowing or even incline treadmill walking, rather than running, which has the potential to interfere with your gains if you’re not careful.
Weight training for 45 to 90 minutes, 3 days a week is enough to see results. However, building muscle is a relatively slow process, so don’t be discouraged if the pace seems slow. Train hard, keep pushing yourself in the gym, and in a few months time you will have more muscle than you have right now.
For the chest and shoulders, you’ve got the dumbbell bench press (both flat and incline), barbell bench press (flat and incline), cable crossovers, dumbbell flyes, the overhead press (both barbell and dumbbell) and lateral raise, along with pressdowns and dumbbell/barbell extensions for your triceps.
For the upper back, you’ve got rows (bent over barbell rows, dumbbell rows and cable rows), pull-ups/chin-ups, lat pulldowns, as well as dumbbell/barbell curls for your biceps. For the legs, it’s parallel squats, leg presses, deadlifts, leg curls and calf raises (both seated and standing).
You can gain muscle with relatively light weights and high reps (20-30 reps), moderate weights and reps (10-15 reps), as well as heavy weights and low reps (5-8 reps). If strength gains are high up on your list of priorities, go with heavy weights and lower reps. But if hypertrophy is your main focus, you can gain size with a variety of weights and reps, from light to medium to heavy.
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See Also
- Muscle Evo – a training program for people who want to build muscle and get strong while minimizing fat gain.
- MX4 – a joint-friendly training program for gaining muscle as fast as humanly possible.
- Gutless – a simple, straightforward, science-backed nutrition system for getting rid of fat.
