About this workout
You joined Planet Fitness because it is ten bucks a month and five minutes from your house. Good. Now you are standing in the middle of the floor with no idea what to touch. This is the plan that fixes that. Three full body sessions a week, built entirely from the machines, dumbbells, cables and Smith machine that every PF location has. No barbell, no squat rack, no problem. You will train every major muscle group three times a week, get stronger on a short list of movements, and add muscle. The equipment limits your exercise selection. It does not limit your results.
Who This Program Is For
- You train at Planet Fitness or any gym without barbells and squat racks.
- You are new to lifting and want a plan that tells you exactly what to do on each day.
- You can get to the gym three days a week and want every session to count.
- You want to build muscle and get stronger, not just burn calories on a machine for 30 minutes.
Who this is NOT for: If you are an intermediate or advanced lifter chasing a bigger squat, bench and deadlift, this is not your program and Planet Fitness is not your gym; you need a barbell and a rack. If you have been training hard for over a year, move to a four or five day split instead.
What You'll Need
- A Planet Fitness membership or any gym with selectorized machines, a cable station and a Smith machine.
- Dumbbells and an adjustable bench.
- 45 to 60 minutes, three days a week, and a way to log your weights and reps.
The Program
Three full body days, run on nonconsecutive days. Monday, Wednesday and Friday is the standard setup, but Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday works exactly the same. Every session hits legs, a push, a pull and some direct arm or core work, so each muscle gets trained three times a week instead of once. The three days are not identical. Day 1 leads with leg press and pressing, Day 2 leads with the Smith machine squat and rowing, Day 3 leads with a goblet squat and a vertical pull. That spread is what keeps the weekly volume balanced and keeps you from beating up the same joints in the same way three times a week. Work through the exercises in the order listed. If a machine is taken, do the next movement and come back.
| Day 1 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Full Body A | |||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
| Leg Press | 4 | 10-12 | 90 sec |
| Smith Machine Bench Press | 4 | 8-10 | 90 sec |
| Lat Pulldown | 4 | 10-12 | 90 sec |
| Dumbbell Shoulder Press | 3 | 10-12 | 60 sec |
| Lying Leg Curl | 3 | 10-12 | 60 sec |
| Tricep Pushdown | 3 | 12-15 | 45 sec |
| Plank | 3 | 30 to 45 second hold | 45 sec |
| Day 2 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Full Body B | |||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
| Smith Machine Squat | 4 | 8-10 | 90 sec |
| Seated Cable Rows | 4 | 10-12 | 90 sec |
| Incline Dumbbell Bench Press | 3 | 10-12 | 90 sec |
| Dumbbell Romanian Deadlift | 3 | 10-12, slow on the way down | 90 sec |
| Dumbbell Lateral Raise | 3 | 12-15 | 45 sec |
| Cable Hammer Curl | 3 | 10-12 | 45 sec |
| Standing Calf Raise | 3 | 12-15 | 45 sec |
| Day 3 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Full Body C | |||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
| Goblet Squat | 4 | 10-12 | 90 sec |
| Close Grip Pulldown | 4 | 10-12 | 90 sec |
| Pec Dec Butterfly | 3 | 12-15 | 60 sec |
| One Arm Dumbbell Row | 3 | 10-12 per arm | 60 sec |
| Leg Extension | 3 | 12-15, one second squeeze at the top | 60 sec |
| Dumbbell Curls | 3 | 10-12 | 45 sec |
| Cable Rope Overhead Tricep Extensions | 3 | 12-15 | 45 sec |
How to Progress
Eight weeks, three phases. Write down every weight and every rep, because progression on paper is the only progression that is real.
Weeks 1 to 2. Learn the movements and set your baseline. Pick weights you could stop two or three reps short of failure on every set. Yes, that feels easy. It is supposed to. You are teaching your body the pattern and finding your starting numbers, and you will be sore enough as it is.
Weeks 3 to 5. Now you push. Hit the top of the rep range on every set of an exercise, then add weight the next session. On machines that is usually one plate on the stack. On dumbbells it is the next pair up. When the weight jumps and your reps drop back to the bottom of the range, that is correct. Climb again.
Weeks 6 to 8. Add one set to the first two exercises of each day and take your last set on the isolation work to within one rep of failure. This is the hardest stretch and your sessions will run closer to 60 minutes. At the end of week 8, retest your top weights, then either run the eight weeks again with your new numbers or move up to a four day split.
Warm-Up and Recovery Notes
Five minutes on a treadmill, bike or elliptical to get warm, then one or two light sets of the first exercise of the day before you touch your working weight. That is it. You do not need 20 minutes of stretching and foam rolling before you lift. On leg press and Smith machine squat days, do an extra ramp up set, because those are the movements where going in cold actually costs you. Save the longer static stretching for after the session or for a rest day.
You do not grow in the gym, you grow in bed. Seven to nine hours of sleep does more for your results than any set or rep scheme I could write. The four days a week you are not lifting are training days for your recovery, not wasted days, so keep them mostly easy: walk, ride a bike, play with your kids. Walking is the most underrated thing in fitness and Planet Fitness has plenty of treadmills. If you are still deeply sore 72 hours later, you went too heavy or you are not eating and sleeping enough. Fix the input before you cut the volume.
Nutrition and Supplementation
This is the unglamorous part and it is the part that decides everything. To build muscle you need to eat slightly more than you burn, somewhere around 250 to 400 calories above maintenance, and you need protein: roughly one gram per pound of your goal body weight, every day. If you want to lose fat instead, run the same training and eat 300 to 500 calories below maintenance with the same protein target. There is no version of this where the training saves a bad diet. Weigh yourself once a week under the same conditions and adjust based on what the scale and the mirror do over a month, not over three days.
Keep it simple: a protein powder to make hitting your protein target realistic, creatine monohydrate, and a multivitamin to cover the gaps in your food.
FAQ
Can you actually build muscle at Planet Fitness? Yes. Muscle responds to hard, progressively heavier work in a reasonable rep range, and it does not know whether the resistance came from a barbell or a cable stack. What you lose at PF is exercise selection and the ability to go truly heavy on low rep barbell lifts. For a beginner, neither of those is the limiting factor. Your effort and your consistency are. Ignore the lunk alarm, it is a marketing gimmick, and train.
Should I do the 30 minute express circuit instead? No, not as your main training. The express circuit is a fine way to get moving if you are coming off the couch, but the loads are fixed and light, so it stops driving growth almost immediately. Run this plan as your training and use the circuit as an optional extra on an off day if you enjoy it.
How do I keep progressing without barbells? The same way you would with them: add weight or add reps. When you hit the top of the rep range on every set, go up. When the stack starts feeling light between plates, slow the lowering phase down and pause a beat at the hardest point, then add the plate the following week. Once machines and dumbbells genuinely run out of room, that is your signal to move to a gym with a rack, not before.
Questions and results
Ask a coach
Running this program? Tell us what week you are on and how the progression is going. A coach answers every question here.