Masheen

Planning a week

Upper lower split

Also called upper/lower, upper lower, upper/lower split, UL split

An upper lower split divides training into two kinds of day: upper-body days and lower-body days, taking turns through the week.

UpperMonLowerTueWedUpperThuLowerFriSatSun
Sunday: rest. 4 training days so far. Monday upper, Tuesday lower, Wednesday rest, Thursday upper, Friday lower, weekend off. Four sessions; each half trained twice.

In plain words

Upper days take chest, back, shoulders and arms. Lower days take legs and glutes. The two kinds of day alternate, and the usual shape is four of them: upper, lower, rest, upper, lower. That means each half of the body is trained twice a week. Twice matters, because a 2016 meta-analysis found that, at equal volume, training a muscle twice a week produced more growth than once. That does not make this split better than the others: a 2024 meta-analysis found split and full-body routines gave similar results at equal volume, so the choice is about fitting your week.

An example

The common week runs Monday upper, Tuesday lower, Wednesday rest, Thursday upper, Friday lower, and the weekend off. Four sessions in all. Your upper body is trained twice and your lower body twice. Each half gets two or three days before it comes round again.

Often confused with

Push pull legs Push pull legs has three kinds of day; upper / lower has two.
Split A split is the way a training week is divided up: which muscles or movements you train on which day.
Push pull legs Push pull legs is a split with three kinds of day: one for the muscles that push, one for the ones that pull, and one for the legs.
Full body workout A full body workout trains every major muscle group in one session: at the least the legs, a push and a pull.
Frequency Frequency is how often you train in a week: either how many sessions you do, or how many times each muscle gets trained.

Go deeper

Beginner strength programs compared Starting Strength, StrongLifts 5×5, GZCLP and 5/3/1 for Beginners in one table. Days, lifts, sets and reps, how the weight goes up, and what to do on a miss. Updated

Sources

  1. Schoenfeld, Ogborn, Krieger 2016. Effects of resistance training frequency on measures of muscle hypertrophy. Sports Med 46(11):1689–1697 Read
  2. Ramos-Campo et al. 2024. Efficacy of split versus full-body resistance training on strength and muscle growth. J Strength Cond Res 38(7):1330–1340 Read

Updated . How these pages are researched and corrected: editorial policy. Every term in the glossary.