Is PPL good for beginners?

It can be, especially the 3-day version. That said, many complete beginners do well on full-body training first and switch to PPL once they want more volume or more training days. See the beginner PPL guide for the details.

How many days a week is best for PPL?

Three days runs the cycle once and suits beginners or busy schedules. Six days runs it twice and hits each muscle about twice a week, which tends to build muscle faster once you can recover from the volume.

What goes on push day?

The pressing muscles: chest, shoulders, and triceps. A typical day leads with a bench press and an overhead press, then adds movements like dips, lateral raises, and triceps pressdowns.

Push/Pull/Legs (PPL): The Complete Guide

By Zachary, builder of Mariposas · Last updated June 2026

Push/pull/legs is one of the most popular training splits for good reason, it is simple, scalable, and groups exercises so that the muscles you train together also recover together. This guide covers how the split works, who it suits, what to put on each day, and how to run it on 3 or 6 days a week.

Key takeaways

PPL groups your training into three days: pushing muscles, pulling muscles, and legs.
It runs cleanly on 3 days a week (each day once) or 6 days (each day twice) for higher frequency.
Lead every session with heavy compound lifts, then add isolation work.
It is one of the easiest splits to manage recovery on, because the muscles you work together also rest together.

How the split works

The idea is to group exercises by the movement pattern and the muscles that drive it, so a day trains muscles that already work together. A push day handles everything you press away from you, a pull day handles everything you pull toward you, and legs gets its own day.

Push day: chest, shoulders, and triceps (bench press, overhead press, dips, lateral raises, pressdowns)
Pull day: back and biceps (rows, pulldowns or pull-ups, face pulls, curls)
Legs day: quads, hamstrings, glutes, and calves (squats, hinges, lunges, calf work)

Why it manages recovery so well

Because triceps already assist on every press and biceps assist on every pull, training them on the same day as the big lifts means they are not getting hit again on a separate day before they have recovered. That clean separation is a big part of why PPL stays sustainable as your weights climb and the sessions get more demanding.

Who it is for

PPL suits anyone who can commit to either 3 or 6 training days a week. On 3 days you run the cycle once, which is plenty for a beginner or anyone with a busy schedule. On 6 days you run it twice, hitting each muscle group about twice a week, which is a strong setup for adding muscle once you have some training experience. If you can only train 3 or 4 days and you are brand new, a full-body routine is often the better starting point, more on that in the beginner PPL guide below.

A sample week

A common 6-day layout is Push / Pull / Legs / Push / Pull / Legs with one rest day, often Sunday. On 3 days, just do each workout once with rest days in between, for example Push Monday, Pull Wednesday, Legs Friday. Whichever frequency you pick, lead every day with one or two heavy compound lifts while you are fresh, then fill in with isolation movements for the smaller muscles.

Progressing on PPL

The split only works if the workouts get harder over time. Track your lifts and aim to add a little, a rep or a small jump in load, when a weight starts to feel manageable. That principle, progressive overload, is what actually drives the results; the split is just the container that organizes it.

Load a PPL workout in one tap Mariposas has push, pull and legs templates ready · collect a cute pet 🐾

FAQ

Is PPL good for beginners?: It can be, especially the 3-day version. That said, many complete beginners do well on full-body training first and switch to PPL once they want more volume or more training days. See the beginner PPL guide for the details.
How many days a week is best for PPL?: Three days runs the cycle once and suits beginners or busy schedules. Six days runs it twice and hits each muscle about twice a week, which tends to build muscle faster once you can recover from the volume.
What goes on push day?: The pressing muscles: chest, shoulders, and triceps. A typical day leads with a bench press and an overhead press, then adds movements like dips, lateral raises, and triceps pressdowns.