How many days you train decides the split — not your goal, and not what someone on the internet runs. Pick your days and the matching sessions are below, movement by movement.
Six is as far as this goes. A seventh lifting day does less for you than a walk and a night’s sleep — so the sixth-day split is below.
One session a week holds what you have and builds slowly. Everything gets trained because there is no second day to catch what you skipped.
Squat and press
Two full-body sessions hit every muscle twice a week, which is the frequency most of the research clusters around. Two days is also the easiest number to actually keep.
Squat and press
Hinge and overhead
The most trained-on schedule there is. Three sessions, every muscle three times a week, a rest day between each. If you are not sure what to run, run this.
Squat and press
Hinge and overhead
Quads and pull
At four days the sessions get long if you train everything each time. Splitting top from bottom keeps each one under an hour and still trains everything twice a week.
Press emphasis
Squat emphasis
Pull emphasis
Hinge emphasis
Five days does not divide into three cleanly. This runs a push/pull/legs block, then an upper and a lower day, so nothing gets trained once and nothing gets hit on consecutive days.
Chest, shoulders, triceps
Back and biceps
Quads, hamstrings, calves
Press emphasis
Squat emphasis
Six days, each muscle group twice a week, each session short enough to finish. This is as much as a schedule can usefully hold; more days is not more progress.
Chest, shoulders, triceps
Back and biceps
Quads, hamstrings, calves
Chest, shoulders, triceps
Back and biceps
Quads, hamstrings, calves
Every movement, and what each one trains →
Add a rep before you add weight. Take every set to within a rep or two of failure, and when you hit the top of the range on every set of an exercise, put the weight up next time and start again at the bottom of the range. That one rule is most of what separates a programme that works from one that does not.
Steady is the whole plan. Add a rep where you can, keep the sessions the same length, and let the progress come from turning up for months rather than pushing any single week.
Two easy sessions a week — a walk, a bike, a swim — covers the heart without eating into recovery.
None of this works on the wrong number of calories. Get your daily target first, then have the week built to it — the recipes resize to whatever your number turns out to be.
Below four days a week, there is no way of dividing the body that beats training all of it each time you turn up: split it, and each muscle gets trained once a week or less. Above four, training everything each session means sessions that run long and the last exercises get whatever effort is left. Four days is where upper/lower has been the standard answer for decades, for that reason.
What your goal changes is not the movements. It is what to expect from them and what to drop first when you are tired — which is why the goal on this page changes the notes and nothing else.
This is general information, not coaching. The macros on this site are computed from gram weights against USDA reference values and you can check them. A training programme is not that kind of claim: it is a convention, and no page can watch you move. Deliberately there are no loads or percentages here — pick a weight you can control for the reps given. If you are new to a movement, get someone qualified to watch the first few sessions. If you are under 18, pregnant, or managing an injury or medical condition, talk to someone qualified instead of a website.