Push/Pull/Legs Split for Women: A 3- or 6-Day Gym Program

This push/pull/legs program for women gives you four sessions (push, pull, and a glute-focused and a quad-focused legs day), 3-day and 6-day weeks, the weekly sets per muscle and a 4-week progression. Still deciding whether PPL is the right split for you? Our guide to the best workout split for women compares the options.

Is push/pull/legs a good split for women?

Yes. Women don't need a different kind of training. A 2020 meta-analysis of studies where young and middle-aged men and women followed the same program found similar relative gains in muscle size and lower-body strength, and larger relative gains in upper-body strength for women.

The real question is how often you can train. The 6-day layout trains every muscle twice a week; the 3-day layout trains each one once. A 2019 meta-analysis of 25 studies found no significant difference in muscle growth between training a muscle more or less often, as long as total weekly sets were the same. A 2026 meta-regression of 67 studies (2,058 participants) agreed for muscle size, but found strength gains rose with more frequent training, with diminishing returns.

In practice, frequency is how you fit in enough good sets: ten hard sets for one muscle are easier to do well over two days than crammed into one.

How to run the program

Each session takes about 45-60 minutes.

Effort is written as RIR (reps in reserve): how many more clean reps you could do when you stop. RIR 2 means two good reps left.

Warm-up (5-8 minutes)

1. Three to four minutes on a bike, rower or incline treadmill.
2. Push and pull days: 15 band pull-aparts, 10 arm circles each way, 8 incline push-ups. Legs days: 10 glute bridges, 10 bodyweight squats, 10 banded side steps each way.
3. Ramp-up sets for your first exercise: 8 light reps, 5 at about half your working weight, 3 at about three-quarters.

Push day: chest, shoulders, triceps

Pull day: back, rear shoulders, biceps

Keep your shoulders down, away from your ears, on every pull. More options are in our back workout for women.

Legs A: glute focus

Legs B: quad focus

Hip thrusts appear on both legs days, so on the 6-day layout glutes get hip thrusts twice a week.

Your weekly layout

3-day push/pull/legs

If glutes are your priority, run Legs A every week instead, and add 2 sets of leg press or Bulgarian split squats so your quads still get enough work. If you can add a fourth day, make it the other legs day.

6-day push/pull/legs

Each muscle gets at least 72 hours between sessions. Miss a day? Do the next session in order rather than skipping it; the week just shifts by a day.

Weekly sets per muscle

These are direct sets in week 2 of the progression below: sets where the muscle is a main target.

On the 6-day layout, chest, shoulders, back, glutes and quads all get 10 or more direct sets a week. Hamstrings, arms and rear shoulders get 6-8, and arms and rear shoulders also get indirect work from pressing, rows and pulldowns. The 3-day layout gives roughly half.

How much is enough? A 2017 meta-analysis of 15 studies, mostly in untrained adults, found that more weekly sets meant more muscle growth, and the authors suggested at least 10 sets per muscle a week to maximize gains. The 2026 meta-regression also found more sets helped, with diminishing returns, and that counting indirect sets as half a set (biceps during rows, for example) predicted results best. Lower volumes still built muscle in that research, just less on average, so the 3-day layout is a solid start.

Your 4-week progression

In weeks 3 and 4, chest and back go from 10 and 16 to 12 and 18 weekly sets on the 6-day layout.

Use double progression: keep a weight until you hit the top of the rep range on every set, then add the smallest jump available and build the reps back up. On dumbbell lifts, small jumps such as 15 lb to 17.5 lb (or 7 kg to 8 kg) are normal. After week 4, take an easier week (half the sets, RIR 4), then start the next block from your new weights.

Common mistakes

• Choosing six days for a four-day life. If you miss sessions most weeks, run the 3-day layout well rather than the 6-day layout badly.
• Taking every set to failure. Six sessions a week leaves less room to recover. Keep to the RIR targets: RIR 1 is only for small exercises and, in week 4, the last set of your first lift.
• Dropping the small exercises. Lateral raises, face pulls and curls are quick, and they're how your shoulders and arms reach their weekly sets.
• Treating legs day as optional. Legs get only a third of your sessions, so each one counts. For more options, see our lower body workout for women.
• Never logging weights. You can't beat last week's numbers if you don't know them.