June 16, 2025

The Beginner's Guide to Choosing a Training Split

When you start going to the gym, one of the first decisions you face is how to structure your training week. Should you train your whole body every session? Split it into upper and lower days? Follow a push/pull/legs structure?

The answer depends on how many days per week you can train and where you are in your training journey.

Full body training for beginners

If you are training 2 to 3 days per week, full body is almost always the right choice. Here is why.

Each time you train a muscle, you give it a stimulus to grow. That stimulus fades over roughly 48 to 72 hours. If you only train each muscle once a week (as a traditional bro split would have you do), you are leaving most of the week without any stimulus at all.

With full body training 3 times per week, each muscle gets stimulated three times. That is three opportunities to grow instead of one. For beginners, this frequency advantage is significant.

Upper/lower for intermediate lifters

Once you are training 4 days per week and have built a foundation of strength and technique, an upper/lower split starts to make sense. You train your upper body twice a week and your lower body twice a week, which maintains good frequency while allowing more total volume per session.

This is a well-researched approach with decades of real-world results. Most intermediate lifters thrive on upper/lower for a long time before needing anything more advanced.

Push/pull/legs for higher frequency

PPL is typically a 5 to 6 day structure. Push days train chest, shoulders, and triceps. Pull days train back and biceps. Leg days train quads, hamstrings, and glutes.

Running this twice per week (6 days) gives each muscle group two dedicated sessions, which works well for intermediate to advanced lifters who have built enough recovery capacity to handle the volume.

PPL is often misused by beginners who see it as what serious lifters do and try to jump straight to it. The result is usually overtraining and underwhelming progress.

The honest answer

The best training split is the one that matches how many days you can realistically train, is appropriate for your experience level, and that you can actually stick to for months at a time.

Consistency over 6 months with a simple program beats 2 months of an optimized program followed by burning out. Gymony picks the right split for you based on how many days you can train and your experience level.