5-day workout split: how to train five days without burning out

Five days a week gives you room for a lot of training, and it's a good fit if you enjoy the gym and have the time. The risk is that it's easy to pile up more work than you recover from. A good 5-day split spreads the load so no muscle gets hammered on back-to-back days.

Option 1: upper/lower plus a weak-point day

Run an upper/lower split on four days and use the fifth for what you most want to improve: arms and shoulders, glutes and hamstrings, or a lift that's stuck. Keep the fifth day lighter, because those muscles are also trained on the other days.

Option 2: push, pull, legs, upper, lower

Monday push, Tuesday pull, Wednesday legs, then rest, then upper on Friday and lower on Saturday. Each muscle is trained twice, with at least a day between hard sessions for the same muscles. It's a popular way to get most of push/pull/legs in five days.

• Barbell bench pressChest
• Standing overhead pressFront delts
• Pull-upLats
• Barbell rowUpper back, Lats
• Back squatQuads, Glutes
• Romanian deadliftHamstrings, Glutes

Option 3: the body-part split

Chest, back, legs, shoulders, arms, one each day. It works, but each muscle is only trained hard once a week. Read about the trade-offs in the body-part split.

Keeping five days recoverable

• Watch the weekly sets, not just the days. More days should mean the same sets spread thinner, not twice as many. About 10 to 20 hard sets per muscle a week is plenty for most people.
• Leave reps in reserve. Most sets should stop one to three reps short of failure. See should you train to failure.
• Plan a lighter week every four to six weeks. A deload clears the fatigue that five days a week builds up.
• Sleep comes first. If you're sleeping badly, four good sessions beat five tired ones.

Liftsmith keeps a recovery estimate for every muscle from the sets you log, and Pro plans each day around the muscles that are ready, so five days a week stays recoverable even when your week doesn't go to plan.