5 day workout split: three 5 day split routines that work

Who should train 5 days a week?

Five days is a lot of gym. It pays off for lifters who have trained consistently for a year or more, have stopped making easy gains on three or four days, and can sleep and eat enough to recover from more work. It also suits people who like shorter sessions: spreading the week's sets over five days keeps most workouts around an hour.

• Good fit: intermediate lifters chasing muscle gain, people with a flexible schedule, anyone who would rather train five times for 50 to 60 minutes than three times for 90.
• Poor fit: beginners, who progress perfectly well on three days and gain little from the extra two; people who already miss sessions on a four day plan; athletes in season.
• Rule of thumb: if you could not keep four days for the last three months, a five day workout plan will not fix that. Start with the 4 day split or a 3 day split.

The 3 best 5 day workout splits at a glance

All three can run Monday to Friday with the weekend off. If you want a rest day in the middle, use Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday instead. Either works; what matters is that the hardest leg session is not the day before your other hardest leg session.

Split 1: upper, lower, push, pull, legs

This is the go-to answer for a 5 day workout split where each muscle is trained twice a week. The first two days are an upper and a lower session in the strength range; the last three are push, pull and legs in the 8 to 15 rep range. You get heavy practice on the main lifts early in the week and volume for muscle growth later, when you are fresher on different muscles. It borrows the second half from push pull legs and the first from the upper lower split.

Squats on Tuesday and leg press on Friday leave the legs two full days off in between, and the chest gets a day off between Monday's bench press and Wednesday's dumbbell press. Abs can go at the end of any two days: hanging knee raises or ab wheel rollouts, 3 sets each.

Split 2: the 5 day body part split

Chest, back, legs, shoulders, arms: one muscle group per day, 12 to 18 sets for it, and a week before it is trained directly again. Many lifters love the long, focused sessions and the pump that comes with them. The trade off is frequency, since each muscle gets one direct session instead of two. The full plan with every exercise, plus 4 and 6 day versions, is on the bro split page.

If you like the body part format but want more frequency, swap Friday's arm day for a short upper body session (two presses, two rows, one curl, one triceps exercise). Chest and back then get a second hit and arms still get direct work.

Split 3: a 5 day strength split

For lifters who care about their squat, bench, deadlift and overhead press numbers as much as their muscle. Each of the first four days leads with one main lift, heavy, followed by supporting exercises. Friday is a lighter full body day to add volume without more heavy loading.

The main lifts here suit a percentage based approach. Use the 1RM calculator to set your work sets around 80 to 87 % of your estimated max, or plug the main lift slot into a program like Wendler 5/3/1.

How to choose your 5 day split

• Muscle gain, every muscle twice a week: upper, lower, push, pull, legs. This is the best 5 day workout split for most intermediates.
• You love long sessions for one muscle: the body part split, ideally with the upper body Friday tweak.
• Strength numbers are the main goal: the strength split, or a dedicated program such as PHAT with a fixed progression.
• Glutes and legs are the priority: take split 1 and replace Wednesday's push day with a second lower session, so the week runs upper, lower, lower, pull, push.

Searches for a 5 day workout plan for men and for women lead to the same answer: the split does not change with sex. Pick by goal and schedule, then adjust exercise choice. Someone focused on glutes might lean on hip thrusts and split squats, someone after a bigger upper body adds sets of rows and presses. For a full plan built around the lower body, see the workout plan for women.

How to progress on a 5 day routine

More training days do not make progress automatic. The weights or reps still have to go up, session by session. Use double progression on every exercise with a rep range:

1. Work inside the rangeStart at a weight that lets every set hit the bottom of the range with two reps left. Lat pulldown 3 x 10 to 12 at 60 kg (130 lb): you get 10, 10, 10.
2. Add reps before weightNext week try 11, 10, 10, then 11, 11, 10. Only the reps change while the weight stays put.
3. Move up at the topAt 12, 12, 12 you have earned the next step: 2.5 kg (5 lb) on most cable and upper body exercises, 5 kg (10 lb) on squats, leg press and deadlifts.

Five days a week accumulates fatigue faster than three. Plan a lighter week every 5 to 8 weeks, or as soon as several lifts stall at once; the deload week guide has the details. If you want a sense of how many sets to aim for in total, how many sets per week covers the ranges.

Common 5 day split mistakes

• Training to failure every day. With five sessions, failure on every set adds up. Keep most sets 1 to 3 reps short and save failure for the last set of isolation exercises.
• Heavy legs two days in a row. Squats Tuesday and deadlifts Wednesday leaves the lower back no time to recover. Keep a day or two between the heaviest lower body lifts.
• Adding a fifth day of junk volume. Every session needs a purpose. If day five has no plan, use it to rest.
• Ignoring sleep. Five gym days on six hours of sleep is how a plan turns into a slog. Train four days well rather than five days badly.

The exercises

Barbell bench pressChestGuidePull-upLatsGuideBarbell overhead pressFront deltsGuideBarbell back squatQuads and glutesGuideRomanian deadliftHamstrings and glutesGuideIncline dumbbell pressChest and front deltsGuideDumbbell lateral raiseSide deltsGuideChest-supported dumbbell rowUpper back and latsGuideLat pulldownLatsGuideBent-over rear delt flyRear deltsGuideLeg pressQuads and glutesGuideBarbell hip thrustGlutesGuideBulgarian split squatQuads and glutesGuideBarbell deadliftGlutes and hamstringsGuide

Questions people ask