Bro Split, PPL or Arnold Split: How I Found the Training Split That Worked for Me

There is no magical workout split. There is the one that fits your life, your goals, your recovery—and the muscles that refuse to fucking grow.

If you spend enough time around gyms, eventually somebody will tell you that your workout split is wrong.

Bro splits are outdated.

Push/pull/legs is optimal.

Upper/lower is better.

Full body is more efficient.

Arnold knew best.

Some guy on YouTube has apparently solved human physiology because he read three studies and purchased a ring light.

Here’s the less exciting answer:

There isn’t one universally perfect training split.

I’ve used several of them.

Some worked extremely well for me.

Some worked well until my goals changed.

And eventually I learned something considerably more useful than arguing about which split is “best”:

Your training program should reflect the physique you’re actually trying to build.

That’s how I eventually ended up using an Arnold-style split.

But I didn’t start there.

First, What the Fuck Is a Training Split?

A training split is simply how you organize your training across the week.

That’s it.

It isn’t a religion.

It isn’t a personality.

And changing from PPL to an Arnold split doesn’t unlock some previously undiscovered hypertrophy pathway.

You’re deciding when different muscles get trained and how you’re going to distribute your work and recovery.

That’s important, but don’t confuse organization with magic.

Research supports that distinction. A 2024 systematic review and meta-analysis covering 14 studies and 392 participants found no significant difference in strength or muscle growth between split and full-body resistance-training routines when training volume was equated.

In other words:

There are multiple ways to organize effective training.

Your job is to find one that works for you.

My First Stop: The Bro Split

If you’ve been around gyms long enough, you know this one.

Monday — Chest

Tuesday — Back

Wednesday — Shoulders

Thursday — Arms

Friday — Legs

Or some variation of it.

One primary body part gets the spotlight, you beat the living shit out of it, and then you generally don’t train it directly again until the following week.

There’s a reason the bro split has survived for approximately seventeen thousand years.

It’s simple.

You don’t need a flowchart.

Chest day? Train chest.

Back day? Train back.

Arm day?

Congratulations. You’re about to spend an unreasonable amount of time looking at yourself in the mirror.

I trained this way, and it worked.

That’s worth saying because fitness content has this annoying habit of declaring yesterday’s training method completely useless the moment somebody discovers something new.

The bro split wasn’t useless.

I grew. I got stronger. I enjoyed training.

And enjoyment matters more than people admit.

A theoretically perfect program you fucking hate and eventually quit isn’t superior to a good program you consistently follow.

Where the Bro Split Can Shine

You can devote a lot of attention to one muscle group.

You have plenty of exercise variety.

It’s straightforward.

Recovery between direct sessions for the same muscle is generous.

And if you simply enjoy having a dedicated chest day or arm day, there’s nothing inherently wrong with that.

Research doesn’t support the idea that a split routine suddenly stops working because a muscle isn’t being trained every 48 hours. When weekly volume is equated, frequency by itself doesn’t appear to have a large or consistent effect on hypertrophy.

Where I Started Wanting Something Different

The problem for me wasn’t that the bro split didn’t work.

I wanted more frequency.

Instead of doing a mountain of work for a muscle in one session and waiting another week, I wanted to distribute my training differently.

So eventually I moved on.

And that brought me to one of the most popular training splits around.

Push / Pull / Legs

PPL is beautifully simple.

Push: chest, shoulders and triceps.

Pull: back and biceps.

Legs: well…

If you need me to explain that one, we have larger problems.

Run the sequence once and you’ve got a three-day routine.

Run it twice and you’ve got:

Day 1 — Push

Day 2 — Pull

Day 3 — Legs

Day 4 — Push

Day 5 — Pull

Day 6 — Legs

Day 7 — Rest

I spent considerable time training PPL.

And for me?

It worked really fucking well.

PPL Put Mass on Me

My chest grew.

My back grew.

My legs grew.

Overall, I put on a tremendous amount of size using PPL.

So I’m not about to write an article telling you that PPL sucks.

It absolutely did not suck for me.

If my only goal had been get bigger, I could have happily continued doing it.

But eventually I started looking at my physique differently.

Instead of asking:

Am I growing?

I started asking:

What’s not growing enough?

And that was a much more useful question.

Because although my chest, back and legs had developed tremendously, I wasn’t as satisfied with my shoulders and arms.

They weren’t nonexistent.

They just weren’t keeping pace with the rest of my physique the way I wanted them to.

They were lagging body parts.

And once I recognized that, blindly continuing to train everything exactly the same way didn’t make much sense to me.

Your Body Doesn’t Read Your Spreadsheet

This was one of the more useful things I learned through experience.

Different people don’t necessarily need identical emphasis everywhere.

And even on the same person, every body part isn’t necessarily going to progress identically from the same approach.

My legs responded extremely well.

I realized I could train them hard once per week and still get the development I personally wanted.

My arms?

Different story.

They needed more attention.

My shoulders did too.

So why would I continue allocating training exactly the same way simply because a spreadsheet looked symmetrical?

That’s when I started thinking less about the name of my workout split and more about where I wanted my training resources to go.

Time.

Volume.

Recovery.

Attention.

Enter the Arnold Split

The version I eventually settled into looks like this:

Day 1 — Chest & Back

Day 2 — Shoulders & Arms

Day 3 — Legs

Day 4 — Chest & Back

Day 5 — Shoulders & Arms

Day 6 — Legs or recovery depending on how I’m structuring the week

The traditional version simply repeats the three-day rotation.

For my own training, however, the important idea wasn’t blindly copying Arnold Schwarzenegger’s routine.

It was prioritization.

Chest and back could handle being paired.

My legs were already a strong responder.

And now I could give my shoulders and arms the dedicated attention they weren’t getting the way I wanted under PPL.

That made sense for my physique and my goals.

That last sentence matters.

I’m not telling you that because the Arnold split worked better for me, everybody reading this should immediately reorganize their week.

I’m telling you because the process that got me there is more important than the split itself.

Stop Ignoring Your Fucking Shoulders

This was another lesson I learned as my goals shifted from simply getting bigger toward building a physique I found more aesthetically balanced.

Everybody loves chest and biceps.

They’re the mirror muscles.

But shoulders can dramatically change the appearance of a physique.

In particular, I became much more interested in developing my lateral and rear delts.

The lateral delts contribute heavily to the appearance of shoulder width.

More shoulder width creates greater contrast with the waist, which can make the waist look narrower even though you haven’t magically changed the dimensions of your pelvis.

That’s a huge part of the visual effect many recreational lifters are actually chasing:

Broad shoulders.

Developed arms.

A smaller-looking waist.

A pronounced V-taper.

Rear delts matter too.

They’re easy to neglect because you don’t spend all day staring at the back of your own shoulders.

But developed rear delts contribute to that round, three-dimensional shoulder appearance from the side and rear.

If your entire shoulder program consists of pressing something overhead and occasionally remembering lateral raises exist, there’s probably room for improvement.

And no, doing one set of rear-delt flyes every third lunar eclipse doesn’t count.

Volume Matters — But More Isn’t Infinitely Better

This is where we need to separate personal experience from general evidence.

My experience was that increasing the attention I gave my lagging muscles helped me.

Research more broadly supports a relationship between resistance-training volume and hypertrophy, although the relationship isn’t simply “more sets forever equals more muscle forever.” A systematic review/meta-analysis found a graded relationship between weekly resistance-training volume and muscle growth, while subsequent research suggests returns can diminish as volume becomes higher.

And here’s something people sometimes misunderstand:

Frequency can be a tool for managing volume.

Suppose you want to perform more quality work for shoulders.

You could try cramming all of it into one brutal shoulder session.

Or you could distribute that work across multiple sessions.

That’s one reason I like giving certain muscles more frequent attention.

It isn’t because Tuesday and Friday possess special anabolic properties.

It’s because distributing the work can make the program more practical.

PPL Wasn’t Wrong. My Priorities Changed.

This might be the biggest point of the entire article.

I didn’t leave PPL because it failed.

PPL succeeded.

It helped me build considerable mass.

My chest responded.

My back responded.

My legs responded.

Eventually, that success exposed something else:

My physique had changed enough that my priorities needed to change with it.

I wanted more arms.

I wanted more shoulder development.

I didn’t need to continue hammering my legs with the same priority I gave them previously.

So I changed the program.

That’s not program hopping.

There’s a difference between changing your routine every three weeks because you’re bored and deliberately adjusting your training after enough time to identify a weakness.

One is chasing novelty.

The other is programming.

The Best Split Depends on Your Actual Life

There’s another problem with fitness programs nobody likes discussing.

People have jobs.

Kids.

Relationships.

Overtime.

Vacations.

Shitty nights of sleep.

Responsibilities.

You can design the most scientifically elegant six-day training program imaginable.

If somebody can realistically train four days per week, you’ve designed a shitty program for that person.

That’s why I don’t believe everyone should train the way I train.

Maybe you have three days.

Maybe you have four.

Maybe you genuinely love going to the gym six days per week.

Maybe your legs need twice-weekly attention.

Maybe they explode from looking at a squat rack while your arms refuse to grow despite what feels like a congressional appropriation of training volume.

Pay attention.

Your program should fit both your body and your life.

So Which Split Should You Choose?

If you enjoy a bro split, you’re progressing, and it fits your schedule?

Keep fucking training.

If you want a straightforward way to organize higher-frequency training and enjoy the structure of push/pull/legs?

PPL is excellent.

If you enjoy training six days, like pairing chest and back, and want dedicated shoulder and arm sessions?

An Arnold-style split might make sense.

If you’ve only got four days available?

An upper/lower split deserves serious consideration too.

And if you’re relatively new to lifting, you probably don’t need to spend three sleepless nights trying to determine whether PPL produces 4.7% more optimal gains than whatever program some asshole on Instagram is selling.

Pick a sensible program.

Learn the movements.

Train hard.

Recover.

Eat appropriately.

Track your progress.

And give the fucking thing enough time to work.

Then evaluate.

Your Training Split Is a Tool, Not a Religion

I’ve used bro splits.

I’ve used PPL.

I’ve grown using both.

Eventually I settled on an Arnold-style structure because my goals changed.

I had built considerable mass.

I could see what responded easily.

I could see what lagged.

And I wanted to put more training emphasis into the muscles that would change my physique in the direction I wanted.

For me, that meant more attention to arms and shoulders—especially lateral and rear delts—while recognizing that my legs didn’t require the same emphasis to produce the results I wanted.

Your answer may be completely different.

That’s the point.

Don’t choose a workout split because somebody on the internet declared it optimal.

Don’t abandon one that’s producing results because a new program is trending.

And don’t keep following a routine forever simply because it worked when you started.

Train.

Pay attention.

Identify what responds.

Identify what doesn’t.

Adjust accordingly.

The goal isn’t to find the perfect workout split.

The goal is to build a training program that keeps evolving with you.

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆

Five stars require rear delts.

Sources:

• Ramos-Campo et al. (2024) — “Efficacy of Split Versus Full-Body Resistance Training on Strength and Muscle Growth: A Systematic Review With Meta-Analysis.” This is the strongest source for our point that the organization of the split itself isn’t magical when volume is equated. 14 studies / 392 participants.

    PubMed — Split vs. Full-Body Meta-Analysis⁠

• Schoenfeld, Ogborn & Krieger (2017) — “Dose-response relationship between weekly resistance training volume and increases in muscle mass.” Good source for our discussion of weekly volume and hypertrophy.

    PubMed — Training Volume & Muscle Growth⁠

• Pelland et al. (2026) — “The Resistance Training Dose Response: Meta-Regressions Exploring the Effects of Weekly Volume and Frequency on Muscle Hypertrophy and Strength Gains.” This is actually a nice newer source to add because it’s a much more recent synthesis—67 studies and 2,058 participants—looking specifically at volume and frequency.

    PubMed — Volume & Frequency Dose-Response Meta-Analysis⁠

• Currier et al. (2023) — “Resistance training prescription for muscle strength and hypertrophy in healthy adults.” Huge systematic review/network meta-analysis: 178 studies in the strength network and 119 in the hypertrophy network. Particularly useful for the broader point that many different resistance-training prescriptions produce hypertrophy rather than there being one magical configuration.

    Full Study — Resistance Training Prescription Meta-Analysis⁠

Once you choose one, track the result with more than a single number.