Written by Patrick Dale, PT, ex-Marine

The push-pull-legs training split is a very powerful way to organize your workouts. Using this split ensures you train all your major muscles equally to build a muscular, balanced physique.

There are several ways you do the push-pull-legs routine, so you can modify it to suit the time you have available, your recovery ability, and how often you like to work out.

Popular configurations of the push-pull-legs split include:

Alternatively, you could use a revolving approach with flexible rest days where you train for three days in a row and then take one day off, like this:

Regardless of how you use it, the P-P-L routine is a great way to ensure you train all your major muscles equally.

You can find a great push-day workout here, and there are plenty of leg training plans in our workout library. So, for this article. We’re going to share two tried-and-tested pull workouts designed to beef up your back, traps, and biceps.

So, why are we giving you two pull workouts? Because we’re generous!

Actually, the real reason is that if you do two push, pull, and leg workouts per week, it’s usually best to avoid repeating the same program. Alternating between two different pull workouts will make your training less boring, more motivating, and therefore more productive.

However, if you plan on only doing one pull workout per week, just choose one program, do it for 6-8 weeks, and then switch to the other.

Either way, these two workouts will ensure all your pulling muscles get the best possible workout.

Of course, to get the most from your training and reduce your risk of injury, you must prepare your muscles and joints before you touch the weights. Warm up with 5-10 minutes of easy cardio followed by some dynamic mobility and flexibility exercises for your upper body, such as the DeFranco Agile 8 program.

Complete your warm-up with a couple of light sets of your first exercise to dial in your technique and activate your muscles.

There are two ways to do any exercise – the right way and the wrong way. The right way provides plenty of muscle-building tension while minimizing stress on your joints and connective tissue. The wrong way is usually less effective and more likely to cause injury.

Target muscles: Latissimus dorsi, rhomboids, trapezius, posterior deltoids, erector spinae, biceps, forearms.

Your first pulling exercise rack pull is a total back builder. Working every muscle from the base of your spine to the nape of your neck, this exercise will build back thickness and strength.

Because you’ll be lifting from blocks, boxes, or pins, your lower body is less involved than it would be for conventional deadlifts. The raised bar should also mean you can go heavier, so grip it and rip it!

Target muscles: Latissimus dorsi, rhomboids, trapezius, posterior deltoids, biceps, forearms.

A lot of lifters use too much weight for lat pulldowns. Because of this, they can barely do a complete rep and struggle to pull the bar down to their chins, let alone their chests.

So, for this exercise, go a little lighter and really focus on pulling down and back with your elbows. This will light up your back – not just your lats but your mid-back muscles, too.

Target muscles: Latissimus dorsi, rhomboids, trapezius, posterior deltoids, biceps, forearms.

Where vertical pulling exercises like pull-ups and pulldowns develop upper back width, horizontal rows tend to increase back thickness. The single-arm dumbbell row is a classic back-building exercise that works even better when each rep starts from a dead stop with the dumbbell resting on the floor.

Target muscles: Latissimus dorsi, pectoralis major.

The dumbbell pullover is part chest exercise and part back exercise. Unlike almost every other back builder, it doesn’t involve your biceps, so it’s the ideal finisher for your lats. Focus on getting a good stretch during this exercise and putting your muscles under tension in an elongated position.

Cheats never prosper, or so the saying goes. While that might be true for marriage and taxes, a little tactical cheating can be good for building muscle, exposing your body to more tension than it can usually handle. The power shrug uses your legs to overwork your traps to help you get yoked!

The barbell curl is THE classic biceps exercise. It’s a proven mass builder that allows you to use relatively heavy weights. Use a narrow, medium, or wide grip as preferred or, better yet, do one set with each hand position to train your biceps from all the angles. Use a straight bar or EZ curl bar as preferred.

Concentration curls are often viewed as a shaping exercise. Still, they can actually be a great mass builder, too, especially when you do them after a more challenging exercise like barbell curls. For this exercise, you will perform your reps as a descending rep pyramid with no rest between arms. This will leave your biceps pumped and burning.

This workout follows a similar format to workout #1, but the exercises are slightly different to prevent boredom and movement fatigue. As before, do each exercise with the best possible form to make them effective and safe.

Target muscles: Latissimus dorsi, rhomboids, trapezius, posterior deltoids, erector spinae, biceps, forearms.

Pendlay rows are named after US weightlifting and powerlifting coach Glen Pendlay. Each rep starts with the barbell resting on the floor, which helps reduce lower back fatigue while forcing you to engage your upper back more for better muscle-building results. Another benefit of this exercise is that it allows you to go heavier than traditional bent-over rows.

Target muscles: Latissimus dorsi, rhomboids, trapezius, posterior deltoids, biceps, forearms.

While doing lat pulldowns with a medium or narrow grip involves mainly shoulder extension, a wide grip involves more adduction, so it hits your lats slightly differently. As with bar-to-chest lat pulldowns, avoid the temptation to go too heavy. Instead, use a moderate weight, focus on your mind-muscle connection, and really concentrate on pulling your arms and shoulders down and back.

Target muscles: Latissimus dorsi, rhomboids, trapezius, posterior deltoids, biceps, forearms.

This exercise uses a hybrid of pulldowns and bent-over rows to hit your lats from several angles at once. Using a cable instead of freeweights also keeps muscles under tension for longer. This all adds up to a very effective lat exercise.

Target muscles: Latissimus dorsi, triceps, core.

This exercise is basically a bodyweight pullover. As well as working your lats, the tuck front lever raise will also hammer your abs, and you should also feel it in your triceps. This is a very functional gymnastics exercise that will leave your lats begging for mercy!

When you do barbell or dumbbell shrugs, you may find that your grip fails before your traps. With this variation, you don’t need to use your hands at all, leaving you free to focus on working your traps to the max!

Spider curls are similar to preacher curls. However, you don’t need a special bench to do them. Like preacher curls, they all but eliminate momentum and cheating, making them a pure biceps exercise.

Read also: Spider Curls: How To Do The Spider Curl

Many lifters have a weak mind-muscle connection, making it much harder to build bigger, stronger muscles. This exercise starts with an isometric or static contraction which helps connect your muscles to your mind and also pre-fatigues your muscle fibers for a more challenging biceps workout.

The main difference between cutting and bulking is your diet rather than the workout you are following. For example, if you eat 300-500 calories above your TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure), you should bulk up and build muscle.

In contrast, if you reduce your calorie expenditure to 300-500 calories BELOW your TDEE, you should burn fat and get leaner.

So, adjust your diet according to your body composition goal. Eat more to build muscle and less to lose fat. Train hard to stimulate muscle growth or preserve your existing muscle mass during your cutting diet.

Providing you use similar exercises, you are free to make changes to the programs. However, don’t increase training volume or use different rep ranges. Also, try and use similar exercises if you choose to make alterations.

For example, replacing rack pulls with conventional deadlifts is fine, but doing back extensions instead of rack pulls is not. Always remain faithful to the spirit of the workout.

Muscle soreness is simply a sign that you’ve done something new and isn’t necessarily an indicator that anything is wrong or that you aren’t recovered from your last workout.

If you are sore, spend a little extra time warming up and do 3-5 ramped sets of the first exercise to ease yourself into your workout.

Soreness should become less of an issue as you become accustomed to this workout.

Stick with this program for 6-8 weeks or until you feel it is no longer productive. During that time, do your best to use more weight, do more reps, or just do each set with greater technical proficiency. These “micro progressions” are what keep your muscles growing.

If your gains start to stall, switch to a different back-building program that utilizes different exercises and set/rep schemes.

The push-pull-legs workout has been popular for decades, which means it works. By grouping body parts by function and rotating muscle groups workout to workout, you can train hard every day but still get plenty of recovery between training sessions.

That said, the P-P-L workout is just one of many equally effective bodybuilding training splits. Other options include upper body/lower body, anterior/posterior, and body part splits where you train just 1-2 muscle groups per workout.

Ultimately, the best split is the one you can stick to and enjoy; they all work!

Try the P-P-L workout and see how it works for you. If it’s not the perfect fit, move on to another approach until you find the one that works best for you.

Patrick Dale is an ex-British Royal Marine, gym owner, and fitness qualifications tutor and assessor. In addition, Patrick is a freelance writer who has authored three fitness and exercise books, dozens of e-books, thousands of articles, and several fitness videos. He’s not just an armchair fitness expert; Patrick practices what he preaches! He has competed at a high level in numerous sports, including rugby, triathlon, rock climbing, trampolining, powerlifting, and, most recently, stand up paddleboarding. When not lecturing, training, researching, or writing, Patrick is busy enjoying the sunny climate of Cyprus, where he has lived for the last 20-years.

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