Of all the training programs I’ve used over the years, the upper/lower split is one of my favorites.
It’s simple. It’s flexible. And it can be used by just about anyone to achieve many different goals – building muscle, getting stronger, or even just retaining muscle while you drop fat.
What Is the Upper/Lower Split?
With an upper/lower split, you train the muscles in your lower body and upper body on separate days.
An upper body workout will normally hit your chest, back, shoulders, biceps and triceps, while the lower body workout works your quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes and calves
Because exercises like squats and deadlifts fall on lower body day, these workouts will also hit your lower back. You can throw in ab work whenever you want, normally I like to do it on lower body days.
The Upper/Lower Split: Why I Like It
With the standard upper/lower split, which involves training four days a week, you hit each muscle group twice every week.
Training a muscle once a week can and will make that muscle bigger. However, for most people at least, it’s probably the least effective way to train.
The majority of research out there shows that the major muscles should be trained at least twice a week in order to maximize growth [1].
Why does training a muscle twice a week or more work better than training it once a week?
The key driving force behind muscle growth is muscle protein synthesis, which refers to the creation of new muscle protein. And it’s the gradual accumulation of these proteins that makes your muscles bigger [2].
After you train, your body gets busy synthesizing new muscle protein. However, this process doesn’t continue indefinitely, and the rate of protein synthesis soon drops back to normal [3].
More interesting still, the rise in protein synthesis after a workout peaks earlier and returns to normal more quickly the longer you’ve been training [4]. That’s one reason why working a muscle group just once a week becomes less effective over time.
In other words, a muscle might spend a day or so “growing” after a workout. But leaving a full seven days before you train that muscle again means that several additional opportunities to stimulate growth have passed you by.
One of the other reasons I like the upper/lower split so much is its flexibility. You can set up your training week in various different ways, depending on your goals and the time you have available to train.
Upper Lower Split: 4-Day Routine
This is the default version of the upper/lower split. You hit the upper body on Monday, lower body on Tuesday, then take Wednesday off. Thursday is upper body, Friday is lower body and you have the weekend off. Each muscle group is trained twice a week.
Monday: Upper Body
Tuesday: Lower Body
Wednesday: Off
Thursday: Upper Body
Friday: Lower Body
Saturday: Off
Sunday: Off
The days that you train aren’t set in stone. If you miss a workout, you can move it to the following day. Skip the Friday lower body workout, for example, and you can just push it back to Saturday.
Monday: Upper Body
Tuesday: Lower Body
Wednesday: Off
Thursday: Upper Body
Friday: Off
Saturday: Lower Body
Sunday: Off
Or, if you prefer to train at the weekends, your week might look like this.
Monday: Off
Tuesday: Upper Body
Wednesday: Off
Thursday: Lower Body
Friday: Off
Saturday: Upper Body
Sunday: Lower Body
There’s nothing to stop you switching the order of the workouts so that you train your lower body first, turning it into a lower/upper split.
In fact, I prefer doing my lower body workouts first. Training the legs is hard work, much harder than training the upper body. I like coming into a lower body workout fresh from a day or two of complete rest.
The Upper Lower Split for Strength
Powerlifters have long used upper/lower split routines to build strength, and it works very well for this purpose. Pressing exercises (bench press and overhead press) are done on upper body days, as well as chins and pulldowns for the lats. On lower body days, it’s the deadlift and squat, along with any assistance exercises.
Monday: Upper Body (Bench Press focus)
Tuesday: Lower Body (Squat focus)
Wednesday: Off
Thursday: Upper Body (Overhead Press focus)
Friday: Lower Body (Deadlift focus)
Saturday: Off
Sunday: Off
Upper Lower Split: 3-Day Routine
You can also take the 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 muscle group is worked an average of 1.5 times per week rather than twice.
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.
Upper Lower Split: 5-Day Routine
A more advanced version of the upper/lower split involves ramping up the training frequency and training five days per week. 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.
Week 1
Monday: Upper Body
Tuesday: Lower Body
Wednesday: Off
Thursday: Upper Body
Friday: Lower Body
Saturday: Off
Sunday: Upper Body
Week 2
Monday: Lower Body
Tuesday: Off
Wednesday: Upper Body
Thursday: Lower Body
Friday: Off
Saturday: Upper Body
Sunday: Lower Body
In week three, the upper body workout ends up back on Monday, and you start the cycle all over again.
The higher frequency of training works well if you have the capacity to recover from the stresses of training five days a week. You also need a flexible schedule to pull this one off, as the workouts aren’t on set days. This is a more advanced version of the upper/lower split, and not everyone can do it, so approach with caution.
The transition from week two to three means you’ll be training four days straight without a rest day. This isn’t ideal. Although some folks can get away with it, I much prefer taking a day of rest for every two days of hard training.
One way around the problem is to use a modified version of the 5-day upper/lower split, where you train for two days followed by one day off, and keep repeating the process.
This way, you’d lift weights 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 four days in a row without getting a day off. Here’s what it looks like.
Week 1
Monday: Upper Body
Tuesday: Lower Body
Wednesday: Off
Thursday: Upper Body
Friday: Lower Body
Saturday: Off
Sunday: Upper Body
Week 2
Monday: Lower Body
Tuesday: Off
Wednesday: Upper Body
Thursday: Lower Body
Friday: Off
Saturday: Upper Body
Sunday: Lower Body
Week 3
Monday: Off
Tuesday: Upper Body
Wednesday: Lower Body
Thursday: Off
Friday: Upper Body
Saturday: Lower Body
Sunday: Off
Then in the fourth week, you’d start the cycle all over again.
Full-Body Routines vs Upper/Lower Split
Some say that beginners should avoid split routines and do full-body workouts that involve working each muscle group three times a week.
I think this is back to front. That is, if you’re brand new to lifting weights, your muscles will grow just as fast whether they’re trained once, twice or three times a week. Then, as you get more advanced, you’ll benefit from ramping up the training frequency.
In a group of untrained beginners, lifting weights once or three times a week for 11 weeks led to very similar gains in muscle size [5].
That is, in terms of muscle growth at least (strength gains were better with the higher frequency), six sets performed once a week worked just as well as two sets performed three times a week.
When scientists from Brazil’s University of São Paulo looked at the impact of training frequency in a group of untrained young men, they found no advantage to working a muscle more often than twice a week [6].
With the right training program, beginners can still make good progress on split routines that involve training 4-5 days per week.
In one Baylor University study, a group of beginners gained 12 pounds (5.6 kilograms) of muscle in just 10 weeks using a 4-day upper/lower split routine [7]. That’s an impressive rate of progress, even taking into account the fact they were beginners.
The program they used was very simple. Here’s what it looked like:
Monday & Thursday
Bench Press 3 sets x 6-8 repetitions
Shoulder Press 3 sets x 6-8 repetitions
Lat Pulldown 3 sets x 6-8 repetitions
Triceps Pressdown 3 sets x 6-8 repetitions
Biceps Curl 3 sets x 6-8 repetitions
Tuesday & Friday
Leg Press 3 sets x 6-8 repetitions
Leg Extension 3 sets x 6-8 repetitions
Leg Curl 3 sets x 6-8 repetitions
Calf Raise 3 sets x 6-8 repetitions
You’re not going to see the same kind of dramatic gains in muscle mass, especially if you’re not an untrained beginner in your late teens or early twenties. However, the results do show that a relatively simple upper/lower split can be used to achieve some impressive gains in muscle mass.
Sets and Reps
In terms of the number of sets you do for each muscle group, it is possible to build muscle with a relatively small number of sets. For some, as little as five sets per muscle group per week is enough to make your muscles grow [8].
However, if you want to maximize your rate of muscle growth, chances are you’re going to see better results with 10-20 sets per muscle group per week.
By “muscle group,” I’m not talking about an area of the body like the arms or the legs. Specifically, I’m talking about groups of muscles that work together to create movement at a joint, such as the quadriceps, hamstrings, biceps, triceps and so on.
For example, if you do four sets of squats, three sets of leg presses and three sets of leg curls over the course of a week, you’ve performed a total of 10 sets for the legs. But most of the work has been done by the quadriceps (the muscles on the front of your thigh).
Although the hamstrings are doing some work during the squat, for instance, it’s not equivalent to the work done by the quadriceps. That is, 10 sets of squats per week wouldn’t count as 10 sets for the quadriceps and 10 sets for the hamstrings.
As far as reps are concerned, anywhere between 5 and 30 reps will get the job done. You can go higher or lower and still build muscle, but I don’t think there’s much point in doing so.
Go too low and it can leave your joints sore and tender. On the flip side, high rep sets tend to last longer and be more painful than lower rep sets. But they haven’t been shown to deliver any additional benefits in the muscle growth department.
With the upper/lower split, you can rotate between two different workouts for each set of muscles, rather than just repeat the same workout each time.
For example, the first upper body workout might be a heavy day, where you focus on compound lifts and heavy weights in the 5-8 rep range. The second upper body workout might involve lighter weights, higher reps and more single-joint exercises.
There’s some interesting research out there to show that this type of approach can speed up your rate of muscle growth.
In one study, subjects lifted weights three times a week using either a constant or varied training program [9].
The constant group kept their training program the same, doing 8-12 reps on every set. The varied group changed both the weight and the number of reps, switching from heavy (2-4 reps) to medium (8-12 reps) to light (20-30 reps) on days one, two and three, respectively.
Statistically speaking, there was no significant difference in the rate of muscle growth between the two groups. But it was subjects following the varied protocol who saw the best results.
The differences between the groups weren’t dramatic – a little extra muscle here and there. But, this study only lasted eight weeks. Over months and years, those small differences may well add up.
You can also alternate between different exercises for each muscle group. For example, if you do deadlifts in your first lower body workout, do something less taxing like leg curls in the second.
Final Thoughts
If you’re looking for a highly effective training split that you can use to gain muscle, get stronger or even just to retain muscle while you drop fat, the upper/lower split ticks all the right boxes.
It works your muscles often enough to make them grow. It can be used by beginner, intermediate or advanced trainees alike. It’s also very flexible, and can be adjusted depending on how many times each week you want to train.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Christian Finn is an exercise scientist and former “trainer to the trainers” based in the UK. He holds a masters degree in exercise science, and has been featured in or contributed to major media on two continents, including the BBC and Sunday Times in the U.K. and Men’s Health and Men’s Fitness in the U.S.