The Upper/Lower Workout Guide: 2, 3 & 4-Day Splits Explained

June 11, 2020

What is An Upper/Lower Split?

Let’s start the logical beginning and look at what this type of workout split involves.

When doing an upper/lower split you alternate between an upper body workout and lower body workout, meaning each part of the body gets a dedicated training session.

This type of workout split offers a lot of flexibility in its scheduling which makes it ideal for a lot of people and whilst it typically sees you working out 4 times per week, it can be adjusted so you’re only doing 2 or 3 workouts per week if needs be.

The typical workout schedule looks like this:

Monday: Upper Body
Tuesday: Lower Body
Wednesday: Rest
Thursday: Upper Body
Friday: Lower Body
Saturday: Rest
Sunday: Rest

As I mentioned before this is the most typical setup but there is a lot of flexibility which means you could move Friday’s workout to Saturday instead, allowing a day of rest on Friday.

I’ll cover this and several other scheduling options a little later on, but now let’s look at which muscles you’ll train in each session.

Upper/Lower Workout Muscle Groups

As you already know this workout split has you train your upper and lower body on separate days which allows you to exclusively focus on that part of the body. This means you’ll train the following muscles on your upper body day:

Then on your lower body day, you’ll train the:

Quadriceps
Hamstrings
Glutes
Calves
Abs

Sometimes people like to train their abs on the upper body day instead, but I prefer to leave it with the lower body workout to balance the length of the workouts.

To train these muscle groups you will want to focus on using compound exercises and building strength over time with the addition of isolation exercises to directly train the smaller, stubborn muscles like calves and arms.

Before we look at how to create your own upper/lower workout let’s cover the benefits of this type of workout.

The Benefits of Using an Upper/Lower Split

Not all these benefits are unique to this type of workout, however, I feel the combination and scope of these benefits help set this workout apart.

It’s lifestyle-friendly: Getting the results you want is about doing what you can maintain in the long-term and flexibility is a key part of this. The upper/lower workout is incredibly flexible and provides a large range of scheduling options which means you’ll always be able to get a workout in whether you want to train 2, 3, or 4 days a week.
It provides optimal training frequency: This workout split allows you to train each muscle group twice per week easily without requiring you to add more workouts or increase the duration of your workouts.
It manages fatigue: Whether you’re using the 2, 3- or the 4-day version of this program it allows you to effectively manage fatigue by reducing or in most cases eliminating the amount of crossover between sessions. This means you don’t train the same muscle group/s on back to back days which increases recovery and reduces injury risk.

Hopefully, by this point, you’re pretty clued up on upper/lower splits and are excited to give one a try. To help you do this let’s go through how you’d build your workout before looking at possible training schedules.

How to Create Your Own Upper/Lower Workout

Putting together your workout involves creating 4 different workouts. This means 2 workouts for the upper body and 2 for the lower body.

However, if you wanted to you could just create 2 different workouts, 1 for the upper body and 1 for the lower body. This would also work.

If you decided to do this, then you must change the emphasis of your workouts from session to session. This means you might start 1 upper body workout with a chest exercise but the next one with shoulder or back exercise.

The below shows you how to create your workouts as well as the type of exercises to include and in what order to do them.

Upper Body Workout 1

Chest exercise
Back exercise
Shoulder exercise
Back exercise
Triceps exercise
Biceps exercise

Lower Body Workout 1

Leg exercise (squat variant)
Leg exercise (knee flexion dominant)
Leg exercise (hip extension dominant)
Calves exercise
Abs exercise

Upper Body Workout 2

Shoulder exercise
Back exercise
Chest exercise
Back exercise
Triceps exercise
Biceps exercise

Lower Body Workout 2

Leg exercise (deadlift variation)
Leg exercise (knee flexion dominant)
Leg exercise (hip extension dominant)
Calves exercise
Abs exercise

Sample Upper/Lower 4-day Workout Plan

Ok, let’s see how this might look once you’ve chosen your exercises and added set and reps requirements for each exercise.

Remember that with the plan below although I’ve recommended certain exercises you can change these provided the workout follows the same pattern and you replace it with a like for like switch i.e. compound chest exercise for another compound chest exercise.

Upper Body Workout 1:

Incline barbell bench press: 3 sets of 6-8 reps
Chin-ups (weighted if possible): 3 sets of 6-8 reps
Standing barbell shoulder press: 3 sets of 8-10 reps
Bent over rows: 3 sets of 8-10 reps
Skull crushers: 3 sets of 10-12 reps
Barbell bicep curls: 3 sets of 10-12 reps

Lower Body Workout 1:

Barbell back squat: 3 sets of 6-8 reps
Bulgarian split squat: 3 sets of 8-10 reps
Romanian deadlifts: 3 sets of 8-10 reps
Standing calve raises: 3 sets of 10-15 reps
Hanging knee raises: 3 sets of 10-15 reps

Upper Body Workout 2:

Seated dumbbell shoulder press: 3 sets of 6-8 reps
Lat pulldowns: 3 sets of 6-8 reps
Dumbbell flat bench press: 3 sets of 8-10 reps
One-arm dumbbell rows: 3 sets of 8-10 reps
Triceps cable pushdowns: 3 sets of 10-12 reps
Dumbbell bicep curls: 3 sets of 10-12 reps

Lower Body Workout 2:

Deadlifts: 3 sets of 6-8 reps
Leg press: 3 sets of 8-10 reps
Hip thrusts: 3 sets of 8-10 reps
Seated calve raises: 3 sets of 10-15 reps
Cable crunches: 3 sets of 10-15 reps

With this workout, you want to use a weight that allows you to do at least the minimum number of reps prescribed i.e. if you needed to do 6 – 8 reps you want to choose a weight that allows you to do at least 6.

If you can’t do 6 then you need to lower the weight, but if you can do 3 sets of 8 then you want to increase the weight in your next session. This is called progressive overload it is key to building muscle.

As for rest times you want to rest 3 minutes between sets of 4-6 reps, 2 minutes between sets of 8-10 reps and 1 minute for anything more than that.

Upper/Lower Workout Scheduling Options

We’ve been talking a lot in this article about the flexibility of this type of workout and this is important as not everyone can commit to regularly doing 4 workouts a week.

Or perhaps 4 weekly workouts are not something you can recover from and will grind you down over time.

It might even be that you simply don’t want to workout 4 times a week for whatever reasons and that’s ok too.

I get it.

We are all different, and to this end here are all the possible schedule options for the upper/lower split whether it’s 2, 3 or 4 workouts a week.

The 2-Day Upper/Lower Split

Monday: Upper Body A
Tuesday: Rest
Wednesday: Rest
Thursday: Lower Body A
Friday: Rest
Saturday: Rest
Sunday: Rest

When doing the 2-day upper/lower split you can put your workouts on any days you choose, making it perfect for people who need to scale back their workouts through a busy period but don’t want to stop training altogether.

When doing this you could just use one version of each workout or alternate between the 4 as you do it. It’s also important to realise that with such low training frequency the 2-day split is aimed at muscle and strength maintenance, not growth.

The 3-Day Upper/Lower Split

With the 3-day split, you’ll be using a rotating schedule where you do one workout twice and one once per week.

Week 1:

Monday: Upper Body A
Tuesday: Rest
Wednesday: Lower Body A
Thursday: Rest
Friday: Upper Body B
Saturday: Rest
Sunday: Rest

Week 2:

Monday: Lower Body B
Tuesday: Rest
Wednesday: Upper Body A
Thursday: Rest
Friday: Lower Body A
Saturday: Rest
Sunday: Rest

The above schedule is, in my opinion, the best way to structure the 3-day split as it gives you the weekends off which generally tends to be when most people are busy and therefore more likely to skip a workout.

This split is also more favourable from a frequency and recovery standpoint which means it’s possible to maintain and build muscle with this setup without struggling with recovery.

Again, with the 3-day split, you can choose whether to just alternate between 2 workouts or incorporate all 4 in a rotating pattern.

The 4-Day Upper/Lower Split

When it comes to the 4-day split the usual set up is 2 back-to-back workouts twice a week. However, there are other options.

Option 1:

Monday: Upper Body Workout A
Tuesday: Lower Body Workout A
Wednesday: Rest
Thursday: Upper Body Workout B
Friday: Lower Body Workout B
Saturday: Rest
Sunday: Rest

Option 2:

Monday: Upper Body Workout A
Tuesday: Lower Body Workout A
Wednesday: Rest
Thursday: Upper Body Workout B
Friday: Rest
Saturday: Lower Body Workout B
Sunday: Rest

Option 3:

Monday: Upper Body Workout A
Tuesday: Rest
Wednesday: Lower Body Workout A
Thursday: Upper Body Workout B
Friday: Rest
Saturday: Lower Body Workout B
Sunday: Rest

Option 4:

Monday: Upper Body Workout A
Tuesday: Rest
Wednesday: Lower Body Workout A
Thursday: Rest
Friday: Upper Body Workout B
Saturday:
Sunday: Lower Body Workout B

Whichever way you decide to schedule your workouts you will always be doing 2 workouts back to back. The main decisions you need to make are, do you want to do all your training during the week, and can you recover effectively for 2 back to back workouts?

The 4-day split is great for building muscle due to the additional frequency of 4 weekly workouts and if other factors (sleep and diet) are managed recovery shouldn’t be a problem for most people.

Again, with several different scheduling options, it’s flexible enough that those who want to train 4 times a week can find an option that works for them.