The Five-Day Push/Pull/Legs Week
Push, pull and legs across the first half of the week, then an upper and a posterior-chain leg day after a rest, for five quality sessions.
- GOAL
- Hypertrophy
- LEVEL
- Intermediate
- LENGTH
- 1 week
- SESSIONS
- 5 per week
Five sessions arranged as push, pull, legs, rest, upper, legs. The first three days run the classic rotation; Thursday's rest breaks the week before a second upper day and a posterior-chain leg day close it out. Chest, back and shoulders are trained twice; legs are trained twice with different emphasis — quads on Wednesday, hamstrings and glutes on Saturday. Five days only works if the sessions are not all maximal, so the Friday upper day is deliberately the lightest of the three upper sessions. If you cannot recover from five, run MICRO—02 instead; four good sessions beat five mediocre ones.
- →A year or more of consistent training
- →Already recovering well from four sessions a week
- →Wants more weekly volume spread across shorter sessions
- →Sleeping and eating well enough to support five days
- →Can complete four sessions a week without accumulating soreness across weeks
- →Comfortable with barbell squat, deadlift variation, bench and overhead press
- →Has 60 minutes available on five separate days
Get high weekly volume per muscle group by spreading it across five shorter sessions rather than three long ones, with the rest day placed before the heavier back half.
- MondayPush Day — Chest, Shoulders and TricepsHeaviest pressing of the week. Two reps in reserve on the first movement.
- TuesdayPull Day — Back and BicepsVertical and horizontal pulling in equal measure.
- WednesdayLeg Day — Quad EmphasisSquat pattern leads. Keep something in reserve — Saturday is also legs.
- ThursdayRestFull rest. This day is what makes the second half of the week possible.
- FridayUpper Body HypertrophyThe lightest upper day of the three. Higher reps, shorter rests, no grinding.
- SaturdayLeg Day — Posterior Chain EmphasisHinge-led. No heavy squatting today — Wednesday covered that.
- SundayRest
PROGRESSIONMain lift on each day at two reps in reserve; everything after it at one. The Friday upper session runs 10 percent lighter than Monday and Tuesday by design.
- →Run the same five days again next week. Exercise selection holds for at least four weeks so the load log stays comparable.
- →Add load on the lead movement of each day when all working sets reach the top of the rep range: 2.5 kg upper, 5 kg lower.
- →Add sets before adding days: build accessories from three sets to four over four weeks, then reset. Never add a sixth training day.
- →If Saturday's leg session is consistently worse than Wednesday's, you are overreaching on Wednesday. Cap Wednesday at three reps in reserve until it balances.
- →Every fifth week, cut all working sets by a third and hold the loads, then resume the progression from where you left off.
- →Two consecutive weeks of falling performance on any day means deload now, regardless of where you are in the count.
- →5-rep max on bench press, back squat and Romanian deadlift
- →Maximum strict chin-ups and maximum push-ups in one set
- →Weekly working-set total completed at target reps
- →Bodyweight tracked at the same time on the same day each week