3 Day Upper Lower Split

There are several different ways you can use a 3-day upper/lower split routine to build muscle.

The first is to take a standard 4-day upper lower split, insert an extra day of rest, and turn it into a 3-day routine. 

This works well if you’re busy and don’t have the time to train four days a week. Over the course of a month, each group of muscles is worked an average of 1.5 times per week rather than twice.

3-Day Upper/Lower Split

Week 1

• Monday: Upper Body Workout A
• Tuesday: Off
• Wednesday: Lower Body Workout A
• Thursday: Off
• Friday: Upper Body Workout B
• Saturday: Off
• Sunday: Off

Week 2

• Monday: Lower Body Workout B
• Tuesday: Off
• Wednesday: Upper Body Workout A
• Thursday: Off
• Friday: Lower Body Workout A
• Saturday: Off
• Sunday: Off

In week three, the upper body workout ends up back on Monday, and you start the cycle all over again.

Because you’re only training each muscle group 1.5 times per week, rather than twice, you will need to increase the volume in each workout to compensate for the reduction in frequency.

Here’s what it looks like:

Upper Body Workout A

• Bench Press 4 sets x 5-8 reps [3 mins]
• Wide Grip Lat Pulldown 4 sets x 12-15 reps [2 mins]
• Incline Dumbbell Press 4 sets x 8-12 reps [2 mins]
• Seated Row 4 sets x 8-12 reps [2 mins]
• Overhead Press 3 sets x 8-12 reps [2 mins]
• Incline Curl 3 sets x 8-12 reps [90 seconds]
• Triceps Pressdown 3 sets x 8-12 reps [90 seconds]

Lower Body Workout A

• Squat 4 sets x 5-8 reps [3-5 mins]
• Romanian Deadlift 4 sets x 8-12 reps [2-3 mins]
• Leg Extension 4 sets x 12-15 reps [90 seconds]
• Seated Leg Curl 4 sets x 8-12 reps [2 mins]
• Standing Calf Raise 4 sets x 5-8 reps [2 mins]

Upper Body Workout B

• Dumbbell Bench Press 4 sets x 8-12 reps [2 mins]
• Chin-up OR Reverse Grip Lat Pulldown 4 sets x 8-12 reps [2 mins] *
• Dumbbell Flyes 4 sets x 12-15 reps [90 seconds]
• Dumbell Row 4 sets x 5-8 reps [2 mins]
• Lateral Raise 3 sets x 12-15 reps [90 seconds]
• Standing Dumbbell Curl 3 sets x 12-15 reps [90 seconds]
• Lying EZ Bar Triceps Extension 3 sets x 12-15 reps [90 seconds]

* If you’re doing chin-ups rather than pulldowns, just aim for as many good reps as possible.

Lower Body Workout B

• Deadlift 4 sets x 5-8 reps
• Leg Press 4 sets x 8-12 reps
• Bulgarian Split Squat 4 sets x 8-12 reps
• Lying/Seated Leg Curl 4 sets x 12-15 reps
• Seated Calf Raise 4 sets x 12-15 reps

Upper and Lower Body Specialization Cycles

Your muscles tend to grow relatively quickly when you start lifting weights, and impressive results can often be had with a relatively small amount of training.

But over time, gains in muscle mass tend to slow down.

Getting the message to your muscles that they need to keep on growing will often require more work in the gym. And by more work, I’m talking about an increase in the number of sets you do.

Problem is, 3-day training routines don’t always lend themselves to a higher training volume. As your set count goes up, so does the length of your workouts. And most people don’t have an unlimited amount of time to spend in the gym.

The alternative is the addition of more training days. Three training days becomes four, four training days becomes five, and five training days becomes six.

Problem is, not everyone has the time to spend longer in the gym, or train more often. For a lot of people, it’s just not practical.

One solution is to use specialization cycles, where you focus on improving one region of the body at a time, hitting those muscle groups with more total sets. 

Training volume for the rest of the body is reduced, with the aim of simply maintaining size and strength in those muscle groups. Research shows that it takes fewer sets to maintain muscle mass than it does to build it in the first place.

3-Day Upper/Lower Split: Upper Body Focus

A 3-day upper/lower split with a focus on the upper body would look like this, with two of the three weekly sessions devoted to the upper body.

• Monday: Upper Body
• Tuesday: Off
• Wednesday: Lower Body
• Thursday: Off
• Friday: Upper Body
• Saturday: Off
• Sunday: Off

This phase might last 1-3 months. During this period, you’re still training the lower body, but with less overall volume.

Once your upper body specialization cycle is done, you might spend the next 1-3 months focused on the lower body. You’d still keep training the upper body, but with a reduced volume, aiming to maintain the muscle you’d gained in the previous cycle.

3-Day Upper/Lower Split: Lower Body Focus

A 3-day upper/lower split with a focus on the lower body would look like this, with two of the three weekly sessions devoted to the lower body.

• Monday: Lower Body
• Tuesday: Off
• Wednesday: Upper Body
• Thursday: Off
• Friday: Lower Body
• Saturday: Off
• Sunday: Off

These specialization cycles can work well for intermediate and advanced lifters who typically need a higher volume of training to keep the gains coming, but don’t have the time to train 4, 5 or 6 days a week.

Rest Intervals

How long should you rest between sets?

Most research shows that longer (2-3 minutes) rest periods work better for muscle growth than shorter rest periods lasting 60 seconds or less [1, 2].

Why do longer rest intervals work better?

As the inter-set rest periods go down, the accumulation of fatigue goes up. This limits the number of repetitions you’re able to do in subsequent sets.

As a result, the strength of the muscle-building stimulus generated by a given workout is weakened, and muscle will be built more slowly.

I’d suggest taking at least two minutes of rest between sets of compound exercises that work a large amount of muscle mass, such as squats, barbell rows, deadlifts, leg presses and so on. 

Need more than a couple of minutes between sets to catch your breath? If so, take it.

You’re better off giving yourself too much rest rather than not enough. Some lifters will rest for upwards of 5 minutes between sets, especially when they’re training the lower body.

You’re not going to need as much rest between sets of single-joint exercises involving fewer muscle groups, such as dumbbell curls, lateral raises and pressdowns. Somewhere between 90 and 120 seconds will do the job.

Training Intensity

How hard should you push yourself in each set?

Building muscle takes a lot of hard work and effort, and you may end up failing on some of your work sets whether you planned to or not.

However, doing so will give you no better gains than finishing each set feeling like you could grind out another rep or two. While muscle fatigue plays a role in stimulating growth, it’s not necessary to take a set to failure in order to create that fatigue.

In other words, it doesn’t matter if you hit muscle failure, or cut a set short knowing that you could have cranked out another rep or two. Your muscles will still grow at much the same rate.

You also need to consider the issue of safety. Towards the latter stages of a set, the build-up of fatigue can easily lead to a breakdown in technique.

It’s not so much of a problem with exercises like the leg extension or dumbbell curl, which don’t require a great deal of skill to perform. But training to failure on big compound lifts like the squat and deadlift, where technique is paramount, isn’t a great idea.

On the flip side, the popularization of concepts like reps in reserve and RPE has left many people worried that hitting failure is going to sabotage their results.

When you reach failure, all that’s happened is the amount of force produced by the various muscles involved in an exercise – not all of which are fatigued to the same extent – is no longer sufficient to move the bar past a certain point.

In the bench press, for example, failure is the point when, after lowering the bar to your chest, you can’t get it back to the starting position.

While your chest, triceps and shoulders are experiencing high levels of fatigue, they’re still capable of doing more work.

Once you hit the point where you’re unable to lift the bar, you’ll still be able to lower it under control. And when you’re unable to lower it under control, you’ll still be able to hold it in place, if only very briefly. Even after reaching concentric failure, your muscles still have plenty left in the tank.

While failure isn’t something you need to chase, it’s not something to be feared either. 

Stimulating growth does require that you reach a certain threshold of effort, and pushing yourself to the limit is one sign that you’ve crossed that threshold.

However, there’s very little evidence to suggest that intentionally training to failure needs to be the focus of your workouts, or that doing so is necessary for muscle growth.

Repetition Speed

How fast (or slowly) should you do each rep?

For most exercises, the lifting, or concentric phase of a lift, should last roughly 1-2 seconds. Lowering the weight should take a little longer than it did to lift it. 

That is, if it took you one second to lift a weight, take a couple of seconds to lower it back to the starting position.

With very few exceptions, slow training speeds won’t make your muscles grow any faster compared to simply lifting and lowering the weight under control [3].

Researchers from the University of Sydney, for example, report that taking six seconds to do a dumbbell curl is no better for muscle growth than a rep lasting two seconds [4].

A similar trial, this time using the leg extension, found that reps lasting four seconds were no more effective for building muscle than reps lasting two seconds [5].

In short, there’s very little point in trying to extend the duration of a rep beyond the point where you’re simply lifting and lowering the weight under control.

How to Make Your Muscles Grow

To build muscle, you need to apply the principle of progressive overload. 

By that, I mean your goal in every workout should be to push yourself to increase the amount of work your muscles are doing, whether that’s lifting heavier weights, doing more reps with the same weight, or increasing the number of sets you do for each muscle group.

You’re not going to register an improvement in every single workout. To do so indefinitely isn’t realistic, and there’ll be training sessions where you end up using the same amount of weight, doing the same number of sets and reps you did in the workout before.

However, you need to expend a high level of effort in each training session, striving to add reps or weight.

The last 1-2 reps of every work set should be extremely difficult. Those are reps that take a muscle out of its “comfort zone” and make the largest contribution to muscle growth.

You don’t need to take each to failure, or the point where you’re unable to complete another rep, but you want to get close.

Doing so will give your muscles a reason to grow. Without a sufficient level of training stress, your muscles will remain stuck at the same size they are right now.

More Upper/Lower Split Routines

• Upper/Lower/Full Body
• Upper/Lower Split: Dumbbell Workout Routine
• 4 Day Upper/Lower Split
• 5 Day Upper/Lower Split
• 6 Day Upper/Lower Split