5 Day Workout Split: Four Ways to Organise Five Gym Days

A 5 day workout split can be organised in four common ways: a body part split with one area per day, upper/lower plus push/pull/legs, a seven-day cycle of PPL and upper/lower, or a strength program such as nSuns LP. For muscle growth, none of them is better in principle, as long as each muscle gets a similar number of sets per week. Whether a 5 day workout plan suits you therefore comes down to two questions: how much work does each muscle get per week, and can you actually make five sessions in a busy week?

If you only want one recommendation: for muscle growth with five fixed gym days, upper/lower plus PPL is the most straightforward route. Every muscle is trained twice a week, and no session gets excessively long.

Which splits work for five training days?

Body part split. This is the classic five-day split: chest on Monday, back on Tuesday and so on. Each session gives you plenty of time for one area, so you can give it three or four exercises without them competing for space with other muscle groups. The trade-off is that each muscle gets direct work only once a week; your shoulders and triceps help out on chest day, your biceps on back day. The weak spot shows when you miss a day: that area then gets hardly any direct work for a whole week. If you like the idea but want each area twice a week, take a look at the Arnold Split with six days: Chest & Back, Shoulders & Arms, and Legs.

Upper/lower + PPL. You start with one upper-body and one lower-body session and spread the rest of the week across push, pull and legs. That puts every major muscle group in the plan twice a week, once in the upper or lower session and once on its PPL day. The first two sessions are the heavy ones, with compound lifts done for 6–8 reps.

PPL + upper/lower. Push, pull, legs, rest, upper, lower, rest. This is the same seven-day cycle as the hybrid, just started at a different point. The only difference is which days carry the heavy compound lifts.

Strength program. nSuns LP organises its days around lifts, not muscles. In the 5-day version, every session opens with a heavy main lift for nine sets, followed by a second main lift for eight sets and two accessory exercises. Progress comes every week through the Training Max, a planning number that initially sits at 90% of a realistic 1RM (the weight you can lift exactly once). How far it goes up is decided by one heavy set with as many reps as possible. This is a plan for people who want to get stronger in the big barbell lifts and will accept long sessions to do it. More on this in the article on nSuns 5/3/1 LP.

There is also rotating PPL: the three sessions keep cycling regardless of the weekday, so each one comes round about 1.7 times a week on average. What that looks like over two weeks is shown in the push/pull/legs guide.

Once or twice a week per muscle?

Behind the body part split lies a simple question: is it enough to train your chest only on Mondays?

For muscle growth, the answer is yes, as long as the sets add up. The most direct test was a trial with 20 trained men. One group trained each muscle group once a week with 16 sets, the other twice a week with 8 sets each. After eight weeks, there was no significant difference in either strength or muscle thickness. A meta-analysis of 25 studies reaches the same conclusion: when volume is equal, frequency makes no meaningful difference to muscle growth. The picture is not completely uniform; in another small study, the elbow flexors grew more with full-body training three times a week than on a split. That is no reason to write off the body part split.

Strength is a different matter. If you want to get stronger in the squat or bench press, you benefit from doing the lift several times a week: in a meta-regression of 67 studies, strength gains increased with frequency, albeit with diminishing returns. That is exactly how nSuns is built.

What this means for you: If you train for muscle, pick the split you enjoy and that fits your week, and keep an eye on the sets per muscle. If you train for strength in particular lifts, they belong in the plan more than once a week. How to set the frequency for yourself is covered in the article on training frequency per muscle group.

A five-day weekly plan: upper/lower + PPL

The Upper/Lower + PPL Hybrid is a muscle-building plan for people who can already perform the main compound lifts confidently. You need a gym with a barbell, dumbbells, cables and machines; there is no home version. This is what one round looks like:

The durations include rest periods, but not warming up.

Progression follows double progression: you work your way up through the rep range, and only once you reach the top of it in all sets do you add weight. If you cannot do chin-ups yet, use the machine-assisted chin-up.

Five days, Monday to Friday?

Monday to Friday is the obvious week if you want to keep your weekends free. That works, but it changes the spacing. The hybrid is built around a different rhythm: two sessions, one rest day, three sessions, one rest day.

Monday to Friday drops the rest day between Lower Heavy and Push, and both rest days move to the weekend. For back and legs, that changes little: there are still three and four days between their two sessions, just in a different order. Where you notice it is in the chest, shoulders and triceps. They work heavy on Monday and are already back on Wednesday, then rest until the following Monday. So instead of three and four days, there are two and five days between their sessions.

Rule of thumb: If you keep falling short of your rep target on the dumbbell incline bench press and dumbbell seated shoulder press on Wednesdays for several weeks, the rhythm with Wednesday off is the obvious change to make. If the Push session goes as normal, there is no reason not to train Monday to Friday.

With a body part split, the question hardly comes up, because each area has only one day. If shoulders and arms do fall on consecutive days, though, your triceps work two days in a row, first in the overhead press and then on arm day. If you notice that, swap legs and shoulders.

How many sets per muscle? The plans compared

Here is how sets are counted: a set counts in full for the exercise’s primary muscle and as half for each secondary muscle. A set of bench presses therefore counts in full for the chest and as half for the triceps and front delts. How the calculation works in detail is explained in How to calculate training volume.

For plans with several variants, the full-gym variant is counted; for nSuns LP, the five-day version.

Five days do not mean more volume. The hybrid and the 4-day upper/lower are level on almost every muscle. The fifth day adds six working sets per week, and most of them go to the triceps (13 instead of 10); the glutes actually get less in the hybrid (9.5 instead of 12.5). Only the six-day plans are clearly higher, at 124 and 138 sets.

nSuns distributes the work very differently. Front delts, triceps and chest sit at 30 to 34 counted sets, lats and upper back at 7.5 and 6. For a strength program built around four barbell lifts, that is to be expected. If you are looking for a muscle-building plan for the whole body, the hybrid is the more balanced choice.

More sets bring more on average, but each additional set brings a little less than the one before. There is no number at which you have “enough”. Useful starting points are in the article How many sets per muscle group?

Who five days suit, and who they don’t

Who it suits: Five days suit you if you are confident with the main compound lifts and can schedule five sessions a week over the long term. Both plans need a gym: the hybrid a barbell, dumbbells, cables and machines, nSuns mainly a barbell. Be honest about the time, too: the hybrid comes to an estimated good four hours a week, nSuns to just under six, at 69 to 73 minutes per session.

Not ideal for beginners. When you are starting out, progress comes more easily with three full-body sessions, for example with Tiered Progression (GZCLP) or Full Body (Fierce 5). Three sessions are easier to stick to, and each one includes several compound lifts. What matters in the first few months is covered in Strength training for beginners.

Not ideal if your week keeps changing. A good test before you start: in how many weeks of the last two months could you really have trained five times? If you regularly miss a day, the round shifts, and in a body part split one area goes without for a whole week. In that case, four days are the more robust choice.

4 or 5 days?

Comparing two plans with a similar structure shows what the fifth day changes:

The fifth day costs you around 20 minutes more per week and adds 6 sets, about 7%. Above all, it makes each session shorter: by around three sets and eight minutes on average. Warming up comes on top for both.

Four days suit you if fewer trips to the gym matter more to you. Five suit you if you prefer shorter sessions or like the PPL days with their isolation exercises. The underlying question of when a split makes sense at all is answered in Full body vs. split.

The 5-day plans in hitPR

The Upper/Lower + PPL Hybrid and nSuns LP are ready to go in the app, with all exercises, sets and rep ranges. Progression is already set up: if you hit 8 reps in all four sets on the barbell bench press, there is 2.5 kg more on the bar next time, and you start again at 6. With nSuns LP, the heavy set decides how much the Training Max goes up: by 2.5 kg for two reps or more, 5 kg for four or more, 7.5 kg for six or more. After every workout, you see what changed.

Sources

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• Schoenfeld, B. J., Grgic, J. and Krieger, J. (2019). How many times per week should a muscle be trained to maximize muscle hypertrophy? A systematic review and meta-analysis of studies examining the effects of resistance training frequency. Journal of Sports Sciences, 37(11), 1286–1295. Publication and DOI.
• Brigatto, F. A. et al. (2019). Effect of Resistance Training Frequency on Neuromuscular Performance and Muscle Morphology After 8 Weeks in Trained Men. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 33(8), 2104–2116. Publication and DOI.
• Schoenfeld, B. J., Ratamess, N. A., Peterson, M. D., Contreras, B. and Tiryaki-Sonmez, G. (2015). Influence of Resistance Training Frequency on Muscular Adaptations in Well-Trained Men. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 29(7), 1821–1829. Publication and DOI.
• Pelland, J. C., Remmert, J. F., Robinson, Z. P., Hinson, S. R. and Zourdos, M. C. (2026). The Resistance Training Dose Response: Meta-Regressions Exploring the Effects of Weekly Volume and Frequency on Muscle Hypertrophy and Strength Gains. Sports Medicine, 56(2), 481–505. Publication and DOI.