5 Day Upper/Lower Split

The 4-day version of the upper/lower split works well for a lot of people. Followed consistently, it can deliver gains in size and strength for many months, if not years.

However, let’s assume that you’ve been following an upper/lower split for some time, your progress has stalled, and you want to try ramping up your training volume to get things moving in the right direction.

Problem is, you don’t want to make the workouts last longer than they already do.

How do you do it?

The solution is to ramp up the training frequency, and add a fifth training day.

In the first week, you’d do three upper and two lower body workouts, then two upper and three lower body workouts the following week.

Here’s what it looks like:

Week 1

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

Week 2

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

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

5-Day Upper/Lower Split: The Workouts

Upper Body Workout A

• Bench Press 3 sets x 5-8 reps
• Wide Grip Lat Pulldown 3 sets x 12-15 reps
• Incline Dumbbell Press 3 sets x 8-12 reps
• Seated Row 3 sets x 8-12 reps
• Overhead Press 3 sets x 8-12 reps
• Incline Curl 3 sets x 8-12 reps
• Triceps Pressdown 3 sets x 8-12 reps

Lower Body Workout A

• Squat 3 sets x 5-8 reps
• Romanian Deadlift 3 sets x 8-12 reps 
• Leg Extension 3 sets x 12-15 reps 
• Seated Leg Curl 3 sets x 8-12 reps 
• Standing Calf Raise 4 sets x 5-8 reps

Upper Body Workout B

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

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

Lower Body Workout B

• Deadlift 3 sets x 5-8 reps
• Leg Press 3 sets x 8-12 reps
• Bulgarian Split Squat 3 sets x 8-12 reps
• Lying/Seated Leg Curl 3 sets x 12-15 reps
• Seated Calf Raise 4 sets x 12-15 reps

If the upper body is your priority, you can also use that fifth workout day to focus exclusively on your chest, back, shoulders and arms. That is, you’d train your upper body three times a week, while your lower body is hit twice.

On the flip side, if your lower body needs some extra work, that fifth training day can be devoted to your quads, hamstrings and calves.

The higher frequency of training works well if you have the capacity to recover from the stresses of training five days a week. But not everyone can do it, so approach with caution.

If you do find yourself running into problems with recovery, one option is to use a modified version of the 5-day upper/lower split, where you get a day of rest for every two days of hard training.

That is, you train for two days followed by one day off, and keep repeating the process.

With this approach, you train five days a week in weeks one and two, and four days a week in the third week. 

The upside with this version is that you don’t have to train three days in a row without getting a day off. Here’s what it looks like.

Week 1

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

Week 2

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

Week 3

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

Then in the fourth week, you’d start the cycle all over again. The main downside is that the workouts aren’t on set days, so you’ll need a flexible schedule to pull this one off.

NOTE: If you’re able to train five days a week, the 5-day push/pull/legs routine is also worth looking into.

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

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